March 22, 2007
McLeaving
Earlier today I was thinking about one of the articles I want to write after the season is over. I was thinking about Duke's team next year, with everyone returning and three McDonald's All-Americans coming in. Josh McRoberts didn't live up to preseason expectations, but if you ignore his high school accolades, he still has a pretty promising future as a college player. With another year of practice and maturity to go with his current skills and athletic ability, he could still develop into an All-American-caliber player.
Little did I suspect that just an hour later I'd hear that McRoberts has decided to go pro. Wow. This isn't nearly as surprising as Shavlik Randolph leaving early, but it did catch me off guard. I thought he might leave last year, but after this season? Could any NBA team really be salivating over this guy? He couldn't dominate in college and showed all kinds of red flags - an unwillingness to bang, a tendency to shy away from big shots, a fragile ego, a generally poor grasp of how to use his talents. All of those weaknesses are correctable, but the NBA is a damn difficult place to learn. This isn't exactly a Will Avery situation - 6'3" guards are a dime-a-dozen so if you can't play right away, you'll get cut - but it's just really hard to imagine that he can succeed at the next level. Sure, he'll make a team and stay in the league for at least a few years - if Randolph can do it, McRoberts can - but anything more than that is going to require a complete attitude readjustment.
On the flip side, I'm pretty sure this is a good thing for Duke. Clearly this year's team had some problems with chemistry. They didn't play often as a cohesive unit and were generally less than the sum of their parts. When that's the case, losing your "best" player is often the best thing that can happen. Instead of everyone waiting around for McRoberts to grow a pair and become a leader, they can rally around each other and let Paulus step up as the unquestioned captain (although I'm sure DeMarcus Nelson will be co-captain). Duke still has a lot of young, developing talent and has more on the way. If their jersey said something like "Clemson" or "Virginia" on the front instead of "Duke," they'd have everyone optimistically looking toward next year and wondering how a school like that acquired so many players.
Don't be surprised when the rumors start leaking out that Krzyzewski pushed McRoberts out the door. Maybe K has heard of the Ewing Theory.
My father and I were talking about Ewing in the pro's and he thought that Ewing originally was going to have success like Bill Russell in the pro's but nobody knew then that Ewing would end up playing 20 feet away from the basket on offense. Olajuwon played more like a traditional center and had more success. (Maybe now the NBA has caught up with Ewing with Nowitzi and people like that, although I believe that NBA players have now become so proficient at the 3-pointer, which once seemed such a difficult shot, as to ruin the look and feel of the game.)
He also lost a lot of his quickness after he went to the NBA. Bad knees.
McBob, McFloperts, The Great White Hype.
Unless he was the source of all of Duke's chemistry problems, this is subtraction by subtraction- our best passer, our best rebounder, our only post defender, and one of our best scorers (even if he didn't live up to expectations.) Maybe he wasn't great, but he was very good, and unlike recent Duke teams this team has a distinct shortage of very good.
With McRoberts gone, Duke is going to put a smaller lineup out on the court made up entirely of shooters. It kind of reminds me of Duke w/o Boozer in 2002, where the team actually played better spreading the court and shooting threes. I think that kind of Duke team is the scariest to play against.
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