Harris is leaving Memphis again
It was the classy but confounding goodbye note that sent everybody reeling.
Those words Tyler Harris put out on social media Saturday afternoon, they left a pit in your stomach. He wasn’t just leaving. He was pushed out.
“In life there are several choices and decisions you have to make,” Harris wrote after his decision to enter the transfer portal again became public. “This one was not mine.”
This was not the ending anyone had in mind for the best story the Memphis basketball team had going. Except maybe Penny Hardaway.
I’m sure this will all make sense eventually, once Hardaway adds SMU’S Kendric Davis, or USF’S Caleb Murphy, or whomever else he’s pursuing to fill his roster. Just as a loomthat’s ing infractions case didn’t prevent Kansas from winning a national championship, it is unlikely to prevent Hardaway from putting together a team that can compete at the top of the American Athletic Conference again.
Some might be scared off by the potential sanctions, especially the prospect of a postseason ban. Enough will still be enamored with Hardaway, especially those focused on making it to the NBA.
But I wish college basketball were still a sport in which it made sense for everyone involved to bring back a player like Harris.
A player who came back home as a walk-on after realizing he never should have left. A player who never once publicly complained about his role. A player who delivered in some of the team’s biggest wins. A player who symbolized why this town is so madly in love with Tigers basketball. A player who, apparently, Hardaway doesn’t need anymore.
This was one of Memphis’ own, and he felt discarded. It doesn’t seem right.
why the Harris news hit so much harder locally than the announcement of Emoni Bates’ own foray into the portal that resonated nationally.
It’s actually stunning when considering the most dire moments of the season.
Remember when Hardaway ripped the team’s veterans after losing at Ole Miss in December and declared he was only going to use the players who care about Memphis? Harris started the next game.
Remember when Hardaway had that memorable press conference rant after losing to SMU, with his team decimated by injuries? Harris scored a season-best 24 points in a two-point win at Tulsa the very next game, a game that ignited the Tigers’ late-season surge.
Memphis doesn’t end its awful NCAA Tournament drought without Harris. Now, he’s gone again.
Can you imagine the controversy if it were a coach who didn’t have the Memphis bona-fides of Hardaway
doing the dumping? It’s a ruthless business, college athletics. It’s another reason why the players deserve to transfer more freely.
“Penny told him he wanted a whole new team,” Harris’ mother wrote on Facebook, “and that team didn’t consist of Tyler.”
This, of course, is only one side of what happened. Hardaway has his reasons.
Maybe Harris wanted to be on scholarship this season. If indeed Davis ends up transferring to Memphis, maybe Hardaway didn’t think the two could coexist. There are certainly roster additions coming. It’d be naïve to think there might not be more to this.
Chemistry has been this program’s biggest pitfall the past two seasons, and solving it early is the biggest lesson Hardaway said he learned. But there’s an argument that the turnover within the program each offseason is the biggest contributing factor to those cohesion issues.
There have been 37 players to come through Memphis since Hardaway became coach four years ago. It’s a lot. It’s also college basketball today.
Kansas had 35 players during that same time span. Hardaway isn’t the first coach to tell a player to seek another option. It’s not even the first time he has done it at Memphis.
Harris and Bates became the eighth and ninth Tigers players to either enter the portal or declare for the NBA draft since the season ended last month, and future lottery pick Jalen Duren joined the exodus Monday. Even if Lester Quinones and Deandre Williams elect to return, the roster is indeed going to be different.
Nonetheless, Hardaway frequently spoke of Harris in glowing terms, and turned to him this season more than anyone anticipated when the arrangement to bring Harris back as a walk-on was announced. It surely pained Hardaway to tell Harris he was going in another direction, just as it pained fans to see it play out this weekend.
But Hardaway warned us. He warned them. Just as soon as Memphis lost to Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament.
He knew these Tigers wouldn’t and couldn’t stay the same, and perhaps he also knew what that would eventually mean for someone like Harris.
“I know exactly where I need to go as a coach,” Hardaway said almost exactly one month ago from the podium in Portland, Oregon. “I told the team that I’m hungrier now than I ever have been.”
Nobody figured that meant he would be willing to devour the best story Memphis basketball had going.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto