Coach K Doesn't Want You To Be So Excited About Exciting Players

This college basketball season is one of the most exciting in recent memory, due in no small part to the presence of superstar freshman Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins, and Julius Randle. But Mick Krizilonski thinks that we should all stop being so excited about these awesome players, because Mick Krizilonski is the worst.

Here's Coach K tisk-tisking ESPN for hyping this year's spectacular freshmen class:

I think part of it is that the people who show our games, show NBA, too, so they're constant thought is cross-promoting.

[...]

In college basketball, you should not want to tell one story. And if the one story you're telling is a lead-in to not even your sport [the NBA], then somehow our sport needs to kind of control that more. That's my take on it. That's why I think there should be a Commissioner for basketball so we work together.

[...]

These kids [the freshmen] are all great, don't get me wrong. But there are other great kids. Two kids who played in the summer for me in a five-day mini camp in Vegas with 28 other NBA players were McDermott and Smart. Well, they're two of the best players in the country. They may be the two best.

This is just precious. Krzyzewski might be the last person on earth who still thinks that college basketball exists and is as popular as it is for any reason other than the fact that it is the NBA's de facto farm system. If guys like Wiggins and Parker were allowed to jump straight from high school to the NBA, far less people would give a single shit about college basketball, and Krzyzewski would possess far less prestige and money than he currently does.

Mike Krzyzewski's legend doesn't exist without players like Jabari Parker and Andrew Wiggins, but he desperately wants you to think that it does. He wants you to believe that he and college basketball were borne out of some fantasy world where nothing is about money and everything is about the purity of the game. He's full of shit.

[ Zags Blog]