It's the most wonderful time of the year folks: March Madness. Brackets are busting, CBS is working overtime, and everyone's holding their breath for upsets. My bracket is still relatively intact, but Virginia Commonwealth's crazy win over Duke on Thursday really messed up my West region.
With much talk and controversy going around about when players should leave college to enter the NBA draft, I got to thinking about how that Duke game could have been very different with just a few new rules. In this age of multi-million dollar paychecks, leaving school early is almost expected of excellent NCAA athletes. Let's take a step back and see how this NCAA tournament could have been radically different if players were required to stay in college for a full four-year career before entering the big leagues.
Imagine if Luol Deng hadn't entered the NBA draft in 2004. After leading Duke to the Final Four as a freshman, Deng quickly declared himself ready for the NBA. In his lone season there, he was the second-leading scorer and rebounder for the Blue Devils.
Now let's fast-forward to the 2007 tournament. Deng would be a seasoned senior on a Duke team otherwise overflowing with youth and NCAA inexperience.
My bet is that he'd be up for Player of the Year and be leading a team that would be seriously contending for a National Championship. Instead, Deng is nowhere to be found in the NCAA, and Duke was knocked out in the first round by a no-name team that had everyone guessing what "VCU" stands for.
Instead, Deng is making over $2.6 million and averaging 18.7 points per game, trying to lead the Bulls to their third consecutive playoff appearance. Not too shabby, but does it compare to three more years of college life for free, plus the realistic shot at a National Championship?
Imagine if Tyrus Thomas had played more college ball at LSU. Thomas played one season with LSU as a redshirt freshman, and, like Deng, he helped lead his team to a Final Four appearance. With Glen "Big Baby" Davis, Thomas was on a team that had the potential to come back this season and again be a major contender.
After being drafted fourth overall in 2006 to the Trailblazers, he was quickly traded to the Bulls and is now making over $3.2 million. Thomas made his priorities pretty clear during All-Star weekend, when he shared that he was only in the slam dunk competition for the "free money."
Had Thomas been required to stay with his team for another few seasons, not only would LSU have actually made it to a postseason tournament, but he probably would have matured enough to know the difference between "free money" and an experience of a lifetime.
And this is just looking at people who actually went to college. What if athletes had never been allowed to enter the draft right out of high school?
LeBron James would be a senior at a big name school, which, with his apparent homestate alliance, would likely be Ohio State. Imagine an Ohio State team featuring not only the beast that is Greg Oden, but such a phenomenon as James. This Big Ten powerhouse would undoubtedly dominate everyone's brackets and the tournament itself, and this Buckeye team would go down in history as a legend in NCAA basketball.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to current NBA players who could have had major impacts on their college teams today. Had they not entered the NBA draft, Andrew Bogut, Chris Paul and Jordan Farmar would all be at Utah, Wake Forest and UCLA, respectively.
While entering the draft early has its benefits (namely a ridiculously large check), the competition found in March Madness is something you can't buy in the NBA. Every game in the NCAA tournament needs a top performance or you're heading home, something the drawn-out NBA playoffs can't claim.
You can wait four years for the mansion and the Mercedes Benz, but March Madness is just something you'll never be able to experience again after you enter the draft.
See more at http://media.www.dailyvidette.com
