Giannotto: NBA Draft is best pitch for Hardaway at Memphis
Hardaway could see 2 Tigers become 2020 lottery picks
The stance Penny Hardaway took illustrated the crossroads at which Memphis basketball finds itself.
He had spent two years trying to position the Tigers as the most Nba-friendly college basketball program in the country. Two years of touting that he and Mike Miller and the rest of the Memphis basketball staff were best equipped to prepare the sport’s best recruits for the professional ranks. He had spent two years giving this pitch to his top recruiting target, Jalen Green.
And then, all of a sudden, Green picked the NBA G League over Memphis. He signaled to basketball prospects everywhere that he believed there was a better way to reach the NBA than the path Hardaway was selling.
So what Hardaway said Friday, that the G League’s new initiative to sign the top recruits in the country to lucrative developmental contracts is “almost like tampering,” was both self-serving and completely sensible given the circumstances.
As Memphis basketball confronts a wave of not-so-good developments in recent months, the NBA remains the single-most important argument Hardaway can use to combat the uncertainty his program is encountering at the moment.
Whenever the 2020 NBA Draft occurs, there’s a decent chance the Tigers could have two lottery picks. In James Wiseman and Precious Achiuwa, it’s almost certain Memphis will have two first-round draft picks.
You know many other schools can even consider the possibility of two lottery picks this year, based on the various mock drafts out there? Maybe Florida State. Maybe Washington. Maybe Arizona. And not Kentucky or Duke or Kansas or North Carolina, or any other blue blood program.
None, meanwhile, has a consensus top-three pick like Wiseman. None has a remote chance at having two top-10 picks, which is what the most recent ESPN mock draft predicts for Memphis.
So that pending NCAA infractions case, the high probability that Virginia Tech transfer Landers Nolley II can’t play during the 2020-21 season, even the roster that looks solid but surely not as spectacular as Hardaway hoped for heading into Year 3 — a historically strong showing in the draft could help offset a lot of those concerns.
Sure, there will be naysayers who point out Wiseman played all of three games for Memphis, who will claim Memphis had very little to do with Wiseman being selected where he’s going to be selected in the 2020 NBA Draft.
But for one, he still chose to put his basketball future in Hardaway’s hands at the AAU, high school and college level. And he’ll still likely be listed as attending Memphis on draft night. That’s not nothing for impressionable teenagers.
It also ignores what Achiuwa achieved under Hardaway. It ignores that the way Achiuwa was deployed by Hardaway, as a small-ball center, made him more intriguing to NBA scouts.
His draft stock, at least according to ESPN, improved at Memphis.
This is how Hardaway can reset the narrative back to where it was before last season began, when the entire country was drooling over his No. 1 recruiting class. It would be proof that Hardaway’s pitch has merit, that his word is as good as John Calipari and Mike Krzyzewski and every other coach who chases after the nation’s best recruits and tells them they’re going to make them ready for the NBA.
That’s something the G League’s experiment, which will feature top prospects playing exhibition games and training as part of a select team coached by former Memphis assistant Sam Mitchell, won’t know for sure until we see where Green, Isaiah Todd and Daishen Nix get drafted.
For all the talk of this new world order with the insertion of the G League into the college basketball
recruiting process, the premise of its success rides on the notion that top recruits aren’t ready to compete against the G League right now, but a year from now they’ll be ready to be top picks in the NBA Draft.
It’s entirely possible it will work, that it will force Hardaway to recruit differently. But it could also be to a prospect’s detriment to go an entire year without a competitive game, all while the NCAA’S new stance on name, image and likeness makes college basketball more palatable and lucrative.
Even in a worst-case scenario, if Wiseman and Achiuwa drop a bit once the actual draft happens, this is likely still to be the best draft in Memphis basketball history. Only in 2006, when Rodney Carney and Shawne Williams were selected back-to-back with the No. 16 and No. 17 picks, did the Tigers have two first-round draft picks in the same year.
Heck, it’s been a full decade since Memphis had just one first-round pick (Elliot Williams, No. 22 in 2010) and eight years since a Tigers player was picked at all (Will Barton, No. 40 in 2012).
It’s further proof that, if not for the avoidable Wiseman eligibility debacle, Hardaway has been an asset to his alma mater. Even with the avoidable Wiseman eligibility debacle, there’s little debate the current prospects of Tiger basketball are better than what Hardaway inherited.
It’s the future that feels worrisome. It’s the unknowns of the NCAA’S new Independent Accountability Resolution Process and the sanctions that could loom if it doesn’t go Memphis’ way. It’s a roster that seems incomplete without Nolley and Green, and the fact that every Memphis basketball coach since Gene Bartow who reached Year 3 has made the NCAA Tournament by Year 3.
So yes, the NBA may well be tampering with Hardaway’s hopes and dreams at Memphis. But at this point, the NBA is also still the best way for him to achieve them.