Portal combat
Pitino sounds alarm on the other Madness post-Selection Sunday
INDIANAPOLIS — Rick Pitino is sounding the alarm — the transfer portal alarm.
Get ready for free agency the day after Selection Sunday, when the portal opens and players switch schools like everyone else changes clothes.
It’s coming.
“You’re going to see what I’m talking about the day after Selection Sunday, you’re going to see it,” the Hall of Fame coach predicted. “It’s going to get to the point, somebody’s going to take them [the NCAA] to court that they want to transfer mid-semester to play.
“I didn’t play Peyton Siva or Russ Smith as freshmen [at Louisville]. I think Peyton played a few minutes. We developed them into a national championship team, so the thing that’s disturbed me so much is what’s going on and I don’t like this talk, even amongst my [coaching staff], about, ‘OK, let’s look at this player from this school or this school right now because I hear they’re going in the portal.’ I just hate that.”
The landscape of college basketball changed in the spring of 2021, when the NCAA began allowing undergraduate players to transfer once without having to sit out a season. Initially, players who wanted to transfer a second time had to sit out a year unless they were graduates. Then, in December, a federal judge overrode the NCAA rule for the current year amid several states suing the NCAA, alleging the rule was in violation of federal antitrust law. It remains uncertain what will happen next season in regards to multiple transfers who aren’t graduates, but the general thinking is that players will not have to sit out at all.
St. John’s figures to be active in the transfer portal, as starters Daniss Jenkins, Joel Soriano, Jordan Dingle and Chris Ledlum are out of eligibility. The hope is Pitino can keep his young core of sophomores RJ Luis and Zuby Ejiofor and freshmen Brady Dunlap and Simeon Wilcher together, and build around them. But there are no guarantees. If a certain school values a player more than his current school, that could lead to an unexpected departure in the Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) era.
The new normal is that continuity is rare. College rosters will have vastly different looks season to season.
“You know why when I say, this is the unhappiest I’ve been in a season, you know why?” Pitino said. “It wasn’t because of that [Seton Hall] game, I was very calm at that press conference. It’s because of the state of college basketball. It’s not the game I’ve loved for 50 years, 48 years, whatever it may be.”
He later added: “I hated the fact that every single good player in the MAAC got poached to go to a different place. It’s just very disappointing for me, and a lot of the coaches [Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim and Jay Wright] have gotten out because of that, not necessarily NIL. I’ve been throwing things out, like make them employees, make them sign contracts, just trying to come up with something, but I listened to the president of the NCAA the other day.
“And he said can you put something in to stop people from transferring twice? His response was, no, coaches leave whenever they want. But coaches have contracts, and coaches have to pay $3 million, $4 million, $20 million if they want to leave. I just think it’s very, very difficult to do what I’ve done for 35, 40 years, make players better, build them up, have them back.”
Steve Kerr predicted over the summer that Tom Thibodeau and New York would love Donte DiVincenzo, and more than six months later, it’s impossible to dispute that assertion.
The Warriors’ head coach will get to see the improvement made by the Knicks’ starting shooting guard Thursday night in his team’s lone visit to Madison Square Garden this season.
DiVincenzo has been a constant throughout the Knicks’ injury-plagued recent stretch, averaging 16.7 points with a stellar .423 shooting percentage from 3-point range over 40 games since moving into the starting lineup in December.
His career uptick began in his lone season with Golden State one year ago, landing him a free-agent contract with the Knicks last summer.
“Not even basketball, just life. All those guys — I only spent a year out there — but it was a really, really good year for me on and off the court,” DiVincenzo said about the Warriors following Tuesday’s loss to the Pelicans. “Those guys embraced me. The staff embraced me, Steve, everybody over there.
“So I still hear from them. I still check in with them. So one, I’m looking forward to competing against them, but also I’m just looking forward to them getting into town and seeing them and everything.”
Over his first four NBA seasons with the Bucks and the Kings, DiVincenzo had connected on just 34.7 percent of his 3-point attempts, but that figure rose to a career-best 39.7 percent in 72 games (36 starts) last year alongside two-time MVP Steph Curry with the Warriors.
After DiVincenzo declined his $4.7 million option, the Knicks made him their key offseason target and signed him to a fouryear deal worth $50 million in July, reuniting him with former Villanova teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart.
“Tom’s going to love him, because Donte is a grinder. He’s gritty and he plays hard every possession. Tom is going to love that,” Kerr told The Post’s Zach Braziller at the summer league in Las Vegas. “His competitiveness is going to fit right in.
“The Knicks really struck me as a competitive group last year. Thibs is going to love him, then the Villanova connection with Josh and Jalen. That’s real, those guys are [NCAA] champions together from college. I think that connection will help, and then he’ll give them another two-way player, another guy who can handle the ball and play off of it, and defend on the other end. Guys like that are super-valuable.” Especially because the 26-year-old DiVincenzo mostly has remained healthy during his first season with the Knicks. He missed one game this month with a hamstring issue, but he is tied with Hart for the most games played on the team with 58.
With Brunson sidelined with neck spasms — joining Isaiah Hartenstein (Achilles), Julius Randle (shoulder), OG Anunoby (elbow) and Mitchell Robinson (ankle) out of the lineup — DiVincenzo shot 7-for-18 from long distance and scored 23 points in Tuesday’s loss. It marked the second-most attempts from beyond the arc in one game in franchise history, behind J.R. Smith’s 22 in 2014.
With 184 made 3-pointers already, DiVincenzo is on pace to eclipse since-traded Evan Fournier’s franchise record of 241, set in 2021-22.
“Overall, everything. The hustle. The shooting,” Thibodeau said Tuesday when asked what DiVincenzo has brought to the Knicks this season. “He came into the season shooting really well, he got off to a great start. And I thought that was a byproduct of the work he put in during the summer.
“He hit the ground running and hasn’t stopped. He’s another one, having all the players out, he’s really grown during this stretch. This is probably his best stretch of basketball and he’s doing it on both sides of the ball.”