NBA PM: D’Angelo Russell Should Enter the Draft

D’Angelo Russell Should Enter the Draft

Ohio State point guard D’Angelo Russell has had a monster season, which has led to the freshman being projected as a top pick in the 2015 NBA Draft.

Russell has averaged 19.3 points, 5.6 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 1.6 steals this season, while shooting 45.8 percent from the field and 41.5 percent from three-point range. NBA talent evaluators are in love with his skill set and his 6’5 frame, which combine to make him a very difficult cover.

After such a dominant season, it seems unlikely that the 19-year-old would slip outside of the top three or four picks on draft night, barring an injury or something catastrophic happening.

Many mock drafts currently have Russell as a top-three selection and there’s a chance for him go as high as No. 1 if a team like the Philadelphia 76ers wins the lottery since they have a talented frontcourt and are in need of a point guard.

However, Russell insists that he doesn’t know if he’s going to leave school to enter the NBA Draft. And this doesn’t seem to be the usual “I’m not focused on that yet” answer that many prospects give just to dodge a question and not become a distraction. He is adamant that he hasn’t made a decision and even admitted to being irritated that people don’t believe him.

“It’s not like I’m only telling a selective group of people what I’m going to do after the season,” Russell said, according to Ari Wasserman of the Northeast Ohio Media Group. “I haven’t spoken on it. I am giving everyone the same answer. It’s the truth. I’m not trying to shy away from any publicity or any of that. My answer is always the same because it’s the truth. When you’re telling the truth, all of your answers are always the same.

“Everybody has a dream. You’re always going to do what’s right for you. Me and my family will make a decision of what’s right for me and what’s right for us as a family. I know it will all happen when the time comes. At this time in my life when people ask me about it, I just don’t know. And it’s like it’s not good enough. But I really don’t know. So when I tell people that, I just don’t know, man.”

Wasserman notes that Russell’s father, Antonio, has stressed the importance of having an education and valuing intelligence, which could also be making this decision tougher for the point guard.

However, it seems that the smart decision here would be for Russell to enter the draft. When a prospect has a chance to be the top overall pick and their floor seems to be as a top-three selection, returning to school will likely only hurt that player’s stock rather than help it.

Freshmen who leave school after one impressive season are picked very high because they have shown glimpses of what they can become and still have a lot of potential (the word that always comes up around the draft). When a player returns to school for an extra year (or more), some of the mystery surrounding them goes away. The sample size becomes much larger, and what tends to happen is that prospects are picked apart and their upside is questioned, especially if they don’t make huge strides from one year to the next.

They are also risking injury, which can really hurt a player’s stock. Players tend to assume that they’ll remain a top pick, but that isn’t always the case. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be in the same position one year later, which is why leaving school is the safe choice when a prospect is being projected as a top pick.

There are a lot more examples of returning to school hurting a player’s stock than helping it (since there’s really nowhere to go but down if a player is being projected as one of the top picks). Look no further than Perry Jones III, Willie Warren and Jared Sullinger among others as examples of players who were projected to go high in the draft after their first collegiate season and then eventually fell on draft night after returning to school (and lost millions of dollars as a result).

Even if an individual doesn’t freefall down draft boards, they may still drop down a few selections, which can still be a big deal. Over the first three years of their NBA career, the top pick will make $14,396,600 whereas the sixth overall pick, for example, will make $8,578,100 (a difference of $5,818,500). That’s a ton of money and that’s just focusing on those prospects’ NBA contracts; the top pick will get more endorsement opportunities and money as well.

Russell is a talented kid who has the skills and physical tools to face NBA-level competition. Also, the best way for a young player to improve is by entering the NBA, since they’ll have the best resources in the world at their disposable and can focus all of their time on basketball (rather than having to balance academics with athletics, for example).

It makes sense that Russell wants to sit down with his family and think long and hard before making such an important, life-changing decision.

Jabari Parker did the same thing last year, since he was reportedly torn about entering the NBA versus returning to Duke to play alongside this year’s loaded team that features his close friend Jahlil Okafor. However, at the end of the day, Parker entered the NBA and became the No. 2 overall pick.

Russell would likely have a similar outcome if he also decides to enter the NBA, which is why that’s the best decision for him. If he wants to get his degree later, more power to him. Many players have done that over the offseason or taken online classes during the year even, and that’s the smarter move rather than risking everything to play one more season of college basketball.

Al Harrington Announces Retirement

After 16 seasons in the NBA, Al Harrington announced that he is retiring at 35 years old.

“I’m officially retired,” Harrington told Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. “I don’t know if there’s paperwork that I gotta fill out or anything. But my career is over.

“I’m very happy with what I was able to accomplish. I was able to change a lot of people’s lives in my family, including myself in a game that I eventually fell in love with and will always be in love with. And hopefully I can stay around the game until I die. It was a fun ride. It went by fast, too. It was like one minute I was 18, the next I was 25 then was 30 and now I’m 35. It was a fun run. Met a lot of great people.”

With Harrington wanting to remain around the game, it’s possible we’ll see him coaching at some point in the future. He is actually spending the remainder of the 2014-15 season helping the Denver Nuggets’ coaching staff since he is close with interim head coach Melvin Hunt.

This season, Harrington played for the Fujian Sturgeonsof of the Chinese Basketball Association, but he left the team after 56 days. He admitted to Dempsey that he was really homesick and wanted to get back to the United State.

Over the course of his 16-year NBA career, Harrington averaged 13.5 points and 5.6 rebounds while shooting 44.4 percent from the field.

Harrington was the 25th overall pick in the 1998 NBA Draft. He was just 18 years old, entering the league straight out of high school. He had stints with the Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets, Orlando Magic and Washington Wizards throughout his career.