And here it comes: The waiting game. This has become a new tradition in the last two years concerning Kentucky basketball. We wait and see which players decide to stay and which players decide to test the NBA waters.
Brandon Knight, Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb and most recently DeAndre Liggins have all expressed possible plans to jump to the NBA. Liggins recently stated that he wants to meet with his family in order to discuss rather or not it would be a good decision to go pro. I hope Liggins does what is best for him. He comes from a tough back round and the money would be good for his family, but one more year at the college level could do wonders for his draft status.
The wild card this year is the possibility of an NBA lockout. If some of these guys decide to go pro and the lockout does happen, they would be stuck in limbo. They would not be playing in the NBA and they would not be playing in college. They would be hanging out, thinking of what might have been.
The NBA lockout is a much more drastic situation than the NFL lockout due to the fact that 17 NBA teams are in the hole. Owners are begging for a hard salary cap and the players want to hear nothing of it. The Bleacher Report has a nice article about it and explains it with much better detail than I can. Where the NFL is making money and fighting about how to spend it, the NBA is losing money with some franchises and trying to figure out how to save them. The fighting between the owners and the players could become brutal because the players are not going to want to take salary cuts, which is being floated as the best solution to the problem.
The lockout could start after the 2011 NBA Finals which end in June. The deadline for college players to enter their name for the NBA draft is April 26. If they do not hire an agent, they can back out. Needless to say the players don't have a lot of time to weigh their options.
My hope is that they research the lockout and understand what the ramifications will be if a lockout does happen. The NBA will be there next year but college basketball will not if they decide to turn pro.
And then there are the always present "Calipari is going to coach at (fill in team here) next year" rumors. We just need to get used to this. As long as Cal is having success at UK he is going to be rumored to be coaching in the pros year in and year out. I don't see it for the simple fact that he got so close this year, has a ton of talent coming in and possibly some of this year's biggest stars sticking around.
It's going to an interesting ride in the next few weeks. Buckle in and check Sportsthat for updates and analysis.
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