Posted on Sun, May. 04, 2008

Too early, too late and right on time

UK'S EIGHTH-GRADER | NBA OPPORTUNITY LOST | TUBBY'S DOCTORATE

Mark Story

What I know: Billy Gillispie has accepted a verbal commitment from a California eighth-grader to play college basketball -- in the 2012-13 season.

What I think: The University of Kentucky just can't find a happy medium when it comes to basketball recruiting.

In its latter years, the knock on the Tubby Smith coaching regime was that it was perpetually late to the recruiting party and therefore always behind and in scramble mode on the recruiting trail.

But offering scholarships to kids who have yet to enter high school is erring at the opposite extreme.

I'll preface this by noting that Gillispie and his staff are reputed to be working their (Wildcat) tails off in recruiting. UK basketball needed that infusion of energy.

But c'mon. Middle schoolers?

There is something disturbing about college coaches taking the values-warping pressures of recruiting into our nation's junior highs.

In practical terms, I suspect it's going to be an exercise in folly. The earlier in the development process in which a coach makes a decision on a player's ability, the more likely that evaluation is to be wrong.

Some of these early commitments may work out. But I suspect many are going to yield a bumper crop of "messy" divorces when schools have to pull offers from kids who haven't developed as hoped.

Gillispie is not the first Division I coach to accept a commitment from a player before he even begins high school. Southern California's Tim Floyd did it last summer.

In the hyper-competitive world in which the coaches exist, they clearly are not going to be able to resist the pressures to "get in" on prospects at ever-earlier ages.

Responsible authority needs to save the coaches from themselves. The nation's college presidents, working through the NCAA, need to pass a rule that says no college scholarship in any sport can be offered to any player sooner than, say, the first day of their junior year of high school.

What I know: The NBA's Seattle Sonics appear on the verge of moving to Oklahoma City.

What I think: I'm headed for a rant. It frosts me that Okla-freakin'-homa is on the verge of getting NBA basketball and Kentucky seems unlikely ever to have a team at the highest level of the sport we have long claimed to love the most.

As someone who grew up in the Louisville media market in the 1970s and loved the old Kentucky Colonels of the ABA, I've always been of the opinion that an NBA franchise in the Derby City:

1.) could succeed;

2.) might help unify the perpetual gap between Louisville and the rest of the state;

3.) would not hurt college basketball in our state one bit, and might even help it (If you want to argue that, I have a question for you: How has the University of Memphis hoops program fared since the NBA's Grizzlies moved to Graceland?)

4.) would be great fun.

Watching the Hornets and the dazzling Chris Paul advance in the NBA playoffs this spring has been painful. Before they relocated to New Orleans, the Hornets were in serious talks to move from Charlotte to Louisville.

Then the civic leadership in our state's largest city did what it has always done when an NBA team has seemed within grasp.

Blew it.

Now, seeing the state of Bob Stoops, Barry Switzer and the Boomer Sooner poised to get the NBA while Kentucky seems all but shut out for good is almost cruel.

Oklahoma City?

"It's beyond comprehension. Really, just beyond comprehension," said J. Bruce Miller, the Louisville attorney and a point man for the (many futile) efforts to bring NBA basketball to Kentucky. "Back when we were talking to the Hornets and the Grizzlies, Oklahoma City wasn't even on the NBA's map."

Louisville, of course, has a new $250 million downtown arena being built. You'd think that would put our state back in play for the NBA.

You'd likely be wrong.

Conventional wisdom is that the highly favorable lease terms granted to the University of Louisville in the new arena locks out any hope of getting an NBA team in the foreseeable future.

Says Miller: "I had an NBA owner say he looked at Louisville and saw a city with the potential to be a Charlotte, a Nashville, an Indianapolis, yet it was trying to be Knoxville. He just couldn't understand it."

Makes two of us.

What I know: The University of Kentucky conferred an honorary doctorate of humanities on Tubby Smith this weekend.

What I think: This was a very classy gesture on the part of UK President Lee Todd and Co.

I had a chance to talk to the Minnesota coach Wednesday night in Louisville before he was among eight inducted into the (state of) Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame.

Smith seemed relaxed and looked five years younger than in his last days in the pressure cooker of coaching UK basketball. I asked Tubby if, being soon to receive a doctorate, he planned to go Dr. Jack Ramsay on us.

Said Smith: "Next time you see me, you can call me Dr. Smith."