These are the sorts of things that do a disservice to both college and pro basketball. It’s just fine to compare players from different eras within the confines of their particular realm – wondering if Bill Walton could have pulled off a 21-of-22 shooting night in 2015, or just how many home runs Barry Bonds would have hit against 1960s pitching – but modern comparisons between current pro and college athletes seem gauche, tactless and only designed to draw attention to the voice making the comparisons.
Unluckily for us, SMU coach Larry Brown has never minded falling on the wrong side of tact, and has never shied from drawing attention to himself.
The former ABA and NBA coach, in making the media rounds prior to his Mustangs’ opening round matchup against UCLA on Thursday, decided to be the latest one to delve into the needless “how-would-Kentucky-do-in-the-NBA” nonsense:
Nobody needs this.
Coming from an NBA scribe who doesn’t watch nearly as much college basketball as I’d like to, as someone who has seen way more of the New York Knicks than I would like to (both the current 14-win version of the Knicks, and Larry Brown’s miserable 23-win Knicks team from 2006), I am more than secure in pointing out that the Eastern Conference is as bad as it has ever been, and that the Kentucky Wildcats are a devastatingly good college basketball team.
The 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats would also be a devastatingly bad NBA basketball team. They’d be absolutely perfect for the Eastern Conference, in fact.
The East is awful. Two teams, those Knicks and the infamous Philadelphia 76ers, are outright tanking the season. Two other teams, the struggling Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons, are attempting to pick up the pieces left by the salted-crop work of the franchise’s previous general managers. The Brooklyn Nets are helmed by an owner and general manager who love to watch profits burn, the Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat and (to a far lesser extent) the Charlotte Hornets have been beset by injuries this year, and the Boston Celtics don’t mind taking their time through a long, loooong rebuilding effort.
The three teams that are tied for the seventh, eighth and ninth spots in the East are currently on pace for 38 wins. Kentucky could finish the season 40-0.
The Wildcats, as John Calipari pointed out just a few games into the team’s perfect regular season, would also be destroyed by any number of Eastern Conference teams. Even by the Knicks and Sixers, two squads made up almost entirely of 10th men.
Kentucky currently features four players who could be drafted in the lottery portion of June’s NBA draft, with seven overall players listed as being likely for selection in most mock drafts. The Wildcats are taller than most NBA teams. The team has won 34 consecutive games by an average of 20.9 points per contest, and by comparison the 72-win Chicago Bulls team of 1995-96 won by an average of "only" 12.3 points per game. This is an incredibly good basketball team whose status is more or less assured even if the squad is knocked off in an upset in the Elite Eight.
Such is the nature of one-and-out setups like the NCAA tournament. For the same reason that Kentucky could be upended by Notre Dame in a week and a half, the Kentucky Wildcats most certainly could take a game from any number of NBA Eastern or Western Conference lottery teams. Such is the nature of sport, and this is a huge part of the reason many of us who have ignored NCAA basketball all year will tune into March Madness. NCAA-niks who have ignored the NBA all season would do the same if Golden State and Oklahoma City had a one-game opening-round playoff series this April.
To wit:
"You can't beat them unless Kentucky really helps you, but that's what makes March Madness March Madness," Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said. "You don't have to beat them four out of seven. You just have to be the better team for three hours."
What Kentucky couldn’t do is take a seven-game series against any NBA team. Or a five- or three-game series. And it certainly couldn’t produce the mediocre record needed in order to win 46 percent of games in an 82-game season and make the playoffs out East.
Ignore this year’s NBA rookie class for further proof of evidence, as every rookie’s context in his initial year varies as he deals with disparate roles, franchises and injury woes. Look at the 2014-15 Minnesota Timberwolves for further proof, though.
This team has won just 21 percent of its games this season, good for last in its conference and just percentage points up on the Knicks overall. The Timberwolves feature the last two top overall picks in the NBA draft and two other recent lottery picks who have played very well in Shabazz Muhammad (us NBA folks are as surprised as you are) and Zach LaVine. The team ranks last in defensive efficiency this year and 25th in offense.
The Timberwolves also have lost twice to a somewhat older but far less heralded batch of hopeful NBA prospects from Philadelphia by a total of 17 points. The Timberwolves may feature a cadre of All-Stars and perhaps the NBA’s best two-way player in Andrew Wiggins five years from now and no active Sixer outside of Nerlens Noel may be making an NBA impact in 2020, but Philadelphia is older and arguably deeper than Minnesota. As all NBA teams are, in comparison to Kentucky.
As it is when discussing the greats of female sports, why do we have to denigrate both sides in order to make a stupid, basic-cable-TV-level “point?” Kentucky, despite the amateur impermanence of its future NBA stars, and despite not having yet played in the postseason, might already be a legendary NCAA team. Why is it that bored types like Larry Brown have to now rank the Wildcats amongst awful-at-worst or forgettable-at-best NBA teams? Why can’t we just let Kentucky be Kentucky?
When will we stop putting microphones in front of Larry Brown?
When he stops talking, one supposes. This might take a while.
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