Patterson leaving early...not so fast

… but I will do it again here.

If Patterson is projected by trusted people around the Association as a lottery pick, he should declare for the draft. Reasoning: He is getting a guaranteed NBA contract worth many millions of dollars.

If Patterson is projected outside the lottery but inside the first round, his decision process should favor entry into the draft. Reasoning: It is probably better to go ahead and enter, but it is also a defensible and reasonable position to play another year in college with the idea of trying to raise your stock to a higher level. You have to balance the positives against the downside risk of injury or poor play.

If Patterson is projected outside the first round, he should not consider an early entry. Reasoning: No guaranteed contract, and he has an opportunity to raise his standing by playing another year or even two. There is downside risk of injury, but it is probably worth the tradeoff of raising your stock into a guaranteed contract.

I would bet a large sum of money that this will be substantially the same advice Coach Gillispie gives to the Patterson family after this year.

Concerning education — I understand the commitment of mothers and fathers to education. It is laudable, honorable and in most cases, very wise. In most cases. Patrick Patterson is an exception to that, and here is why:

Patrick Patterson is going to be a professional basketball player. There is no doubt that is what he desires, and it is an ability few are given. He isn’t going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or any other of the professions with high earning potential that require a college degree. While a commitment to education is great, why do we want our kids to go to college? Clearly, it is not so that they can pursue a career as an auto wash attendant — we want our kids to get an education 1) so that they can make a good living and 2) so they can pursue what they love.

Education is not an end in itself, and never has been except for a few elite people who have nothing better to do than collect degrees. Education is a means to an end — either a life’s pursuit, financial and family stability, etc. Patrick Patterson’s life’s pursuit, at least in the early part of it, is going to be be professional basketball, a profoundly lucrative profession. Success in that profession does not require a college degree, but it often does require the good judgment to “strike while the iron is hot.” Even better, you can still play in the NBA and get your college degree — it happens all the time.

Some will argue that “you can’t get your life as a kid back,” but now ask Josh McRoberts if he thinks he made the right decision playing an extra year, and playing himself out of the first round and straight into the D-League. He’s out of that now, or was, but his career is off to a dubious start, and all because he failed to take advantage of an opportunity. He has neither a college degree nor a viable professional basketball career at the moment, as far as I can tell.

It is unfortunate that kids often have to leave school early in order to take proper advantage of an opportunity, but that is a pretty small downside to the benefits of being a first rounder in the NBA. If Patterson finds life in the league too stressful, he can quit anytime, take his millions, finish his education and become whatever he wants. If he passes on the opportunity and loses it, like McRoberts, how will his parents feel then?

If Patterson is a largely considered to be a lottery pick by the end of the season, no reasonable person should encourage him to stay at UK. Patterson, by nearly all accounts, is a young man of impeccable character. It would take an act of utmost avarice to forgo an NBA career and place your family in guaranteed financial solvency, an that act seems wholly inconsistent with his reported reputation.

Did not know this was such a hot button issue. Tru, sorry I never saw the other thread, didn’t mean to repeat.

In all fairness though,. I think its a bit unfair to automatically assume he is going to be gone after this year.
Honestly, would you leave if by doing so you would knowingly leave your team with nothing? If PP goes early and we don’t get another big guy, we are in serious trouble.
PP isn’t obsessed with personal gain like many players in the pros, he enjoys the college atmosphere here at UK, we all do, not to mention his parents and others have said he is going to stay all four years.
Then again, when the league calls and the money starts a-ringin, who knoes?

with the AMAZING number of long and impassioned comments—who knew the issue of whether it could ever be a wise decision for potential lottery pick to stay in school was such a hot button?—this has got to be the fastest-exploding discussion (non-Tubby division) that I have ever seen. I know I’m a little late to the party here, but damn it, I’ve been superbusy over the last couple days and haven’t had time to fomulate some of the thoughts that have been flitting through my head, so I’m going to do it now, even though everybody else is probably over it.

First of all, the mention of Hansborough was interesting to me—that since his father was a surgeon (or something?), he was okay to stay in school without being thought insane. So the logic seems to be that worst case scenario, Hansborough never gets the huge NBA windfall he could have had, but his family is still the same upper-middle class it always was, and Tyler’s got a college degree plus oodles of local celebrity and name recognition and networking opportunities. So it’s okay for him to make this potentially risky decision because the potential negative outcome isn’t exactly catestrophically bad. But for the purpose of our discussion, we’ve been kind of assuming that PP’s family is basically middle class (I have no idea about the Patterson family finances, but this seems to be the assumption so I’m going with it). So it seems to me that the potential risk for the two players is basically the same—we’re just talking a matter of degrees here, not a fundamental difference. Neither family would actually lack for the necessities in life, one just has more of the luxuries than the other. What huge NBA money would add for both players is a LOT of life’s luxuries—while those are undoubtedly nice, to me they would be worth risking if something was really, really important to you. Now if we’re talking your family is so poor you can’t afford health care and there’s not enough food on the table, then yes, it is harder to see how you could pass up a potential huge payday.

One more point I’ve been thinking about is how no one has mentioned actual basketball here. Is it ridiculously naive of me to think that it is laudable for a player to want to gain strength and skill and maturity and experience in a more nurturing enviroment so he might actually become a competent pro-level basketball player some day? I don’t watch much NBA basketball so I’m hardly an expert on this, but it sure looks to me like a lot of these players that come out very early are quite simply NOT READY for NBA basketball when they arrive. Sure, they’re getting paid either way but if it were me, I’d want to make sure I was going to be competent and did a good job if someone was going to pay me an obscene amount of money for a very high profile job (I should point out that I am NOT naive enough to think that a player would ever think this way—extreme confidence in their own abilities is probably a necessity for top flight athletes). Like Tru said, PP is not in college to be a lawyer or a teacher—he’s going to be a professional basketball player. Because I think because that IS true, staying in school to become the best professional basketball player he can be when he gets there (rather than drawing the check as you take your lumps) would actually be a pretty admirable choice.

Something that’s suprised me about the discussion is the implication from some that it is not just illogical but actually willfully irresponsible for a player in this position to not go get the money for his family while he can. I have a hard time with this. First of all, it isn’t the responsiblity of a grown child to provide his parents with millions. I don’t see how it would make the child irresponsible to chose his own way over making himself and his parents and cousins and uncles rich (again, my assumption is that the parents in question are not actually poor to start with) and I don’t believe any good parent would wish for their child to do this. I do believe if it was my own child I wouldn’t want him to make such an important decision based solely on money, and CERTAINLY not for the benefit of my own bank account.

I should say that I actually DO think Patterson will probably leave after this year, and I wouldn’t in a million years fault him for this is he makes that choice—I just think it’s such a personal, nuanced decison that it isn’t one size fits all.

So sorry for the ridiculous length of this post—if in fact anyone is still reading : ) Obviously, I find this topic fascinating.

Tru says:
Forget about the family, if the concept of providing some of them a piece in the event of a windfall bothers you. What about the person in question? Potentially risking a guaranteed contract for millions for … what, exactly? That "what" is really, really important.

The “what” I’m talking about is personal happiness. I’m not particularly talking about Patterson here, but more just a theoretical situation. If there was a theoretical uber-talented athlete who happened to absolutely love college, it really meant a lot to him, loved college basketball and his classes and the whole college experience, loved the idea of playing for glory for his school and the fans, loved his coach and his teammates, and he had a great amount of team spirit and loyalty, and wanted like crazy to win a championship with his team…IF all that was true, AND his family wasn’t living in poverty…I don’t think the guy should be considered irrational to take that risk, in fact I think it would be quite honorable and certainly very rare in our materialistic society.

I am fully aware that I’m not being totally neutral here—I love college basketball so much that I’m giving it some sort of honor or purity over professional that it probably doesn’t deserve. Obviously if I’d grown up loving, say, the Miami Heat instead of the Kentucky Wildcats, I might feel differently. So yeah, I know I’m biased. I’ve never been an athlete, but to me it seems like being a part of a college team, playing for your teammates and coach and school and fans (and playing for future money, yeah, I know), would be something really special, compared to playing for a paycheck. And the thing is, it’s not a MASSIVE risk. It’s possible but pretty unlikely that staying when you could go could mean you’re never ever able to earn money playing basketball again. More likely, the risk is that you might end up earning LESS money by your stock going down—like Noah, say. And as was pointed out, there is insurance to protect you from the risk of a totally blown career.

And it’s not that providing your family with a windfall bothers me—I’d love to do that for my parents!—but the thought that daddy getting a Caddy in place of his Chevy would be more important than a kids hopes and dreams (again, theoretically) DOES bother me a little.

I sound embarrasingly earnest and idealistic, don’t I?? : )

DJ Augustin, undersized point guard, First-Team ACADEMIC All-American, supporting family and financially stable situation and all, also talked many a time of staying for four years and completing his college degree.

Alas, the lure of guaranteed first round money is often too strong for one to resist.