(John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports)
It may have seemed unfair to Jayhawk fans last week that I rated the team as the worst in recent history in producing NBA talent. I wanted to take a few minutes to examine why this is the case (and why Kansas is able to keep winning the Big 12 in spite of it). Perhaps it seemed like I was bashing Kansas, but I did not mean to. The Jayhawks are one of my favorite college teams to watch and I think Bill Self is the best college coach.
In fact, Self is part of the problem. He is such an excellent coach that he is often able to cover up a player’s deficiencies and accentuate the best parts of their games to the benefit of the team. If this isn’t the ultimate defense of a coach, I don’t know what is. Kansas’s offensive system relies on passing in order to probe the opponent’s defense. This is the kind of system I was arguing for when I wrote about the overreliance on point guards. Nearly any Jayhawk can facilitate the offense. For this reason, I thought Marcus Morris and Julian Wright would be good pros. The jury is still out on Morris, but Wright couldn’t shoot enough to make it. Kansas players are generally good passers, but the NBA is a dribbling league.
Self is also able to get his players to concentrate on defense or to be able to hide them effectively. One of the main knocks on Thomas Robinson early in his professional career is that he lacks defensive awareness. This wasn’t a problem at Kansas because they could use zone and Jeff Withey erased many of Robinson’s miscues. In addition, Robinson’s athleticism allowed him to make up for mistakes against college teams. In the pros, miscues result in layups for the other team.
The second part of the equation is recruiting. Self is a good recruiter, but he rarely gets top players. Next year, Joel Embiid and Wayne Selden may be the exceptions. They are both five-star recruits as rated by ESPN. Previous five-star recruits were Josh Selby and Xavier Henry, who both spent one year in Lawrence before heading to the NBA (and it seems like Memphis for a time). Selby had some issues with his recruitment and did not play right away. He was inconsistent when he did play, and he was a little too me-first for the Kansas system. Henry was a decent player who could be a long-time backup in the NBA. Ben McLemore was a four-star recruit who had to sit a year to get his academic house in order. In terms of McLemore’s draft stock, I am less worried about his Kansas lineage than his lack of aggression on the court. While the Jayhawks program is one of the best, it isn’t like Kansas is a hotbed of hoops recruiting. I don’t mean to demean the state, but there are certainly more basketball players being produced in bigger cities. Recruiting players to Lawrence must not be an easy trick as well.
All in all, Kansas basketball should be celebrated. The team plays the right way (shares the ball on offense, plays excellent defense), wins consistently, and players improve as they stay on campus (see Travis Releford). Kansas is a model college basketball program, even if they haven’t produced professional players.
Perry Missner is a college basketball enthusiast who writes for RotoWire along with several other outlets. He welcomes your comments on Twitter at @PerryMissner or via email at [email protected]
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