May 12, 2023

Can the Remy magic ever be recaptured?

We got our guy. The new Dickman seems like a great fit for Self’s system—Jayhawk-expert Athletic writer C.J. Moore says he can be a “monster” at KU. I’ve seen comps to Dedric Lawson—who absolutely ate at KU and won’t ever get credit for it because the ‘19 team got torpedoed out of the tournament by Auburn, we don’t talk about Auburn!—but with a “you gotta guard me out here” three-ball in his pocket. That’ll play!

But at what cost?

I’ll get to Udeh in a minute—losing Udeh hurts, and I’m going to put off discussing it as long as I can. We seemed to have entered a new micro-era of the transfer portal. The player movement has been fast and furious, and we’ve got a couple of seasons’ worth of evidence that a move can really change the lives and basketball outlooks for players. Players know that, and there’s no penalty for the change-up if you make it count. Generally speaking, I’m for anything pro-player—they got too screwed for too long in the pre-NIL era.

The NIL has been an enormous recruiting weapon for Kansas—both incoming forward Marcus Adams (who I’m really excited about, no one’s really talking about this Adams and I like that) and Hunter Dickinson have directly mentioned the NIL’s impact in their decisions. While one could argue that Dickinson’s comment here about his “worst case scenario” is strange, off-putting and not exactly the most HYPE preseason jump-off, I kind of like this dude’s transparent level of dgaf—he really inflated the bag with his alleged indecisiveness, and now he’s getting around $4M to ball out. He’s an extremely cocky villain in a teen movie set at a ski resort. Good work, big fella! Do you!

However, when you add a player who is bound to play a lot of minutes, it creates a one-in, one-out situation at Kansas. I’ll start with the possible silver lining, if you want to call it that—Udeh hitting the portal makes it feel likely that former Duke commit Mackenzie Mgbako, a five-star small forward, will be coming through that door. On paper, opening night, Kansas is vastly more talented than they were at the end of last season.

But losing Udeh sucks.

Udeh is big, fast, and has good hands—my dad made a good point that Udeh, in limited time, would pick clean guards, not just big men. There’s a striking raw ability there, a combination of skills that are rare. He was a few hundred reps shy of being a true defensive tornado like we haven’t had since Udoka. Dickinson and Mgbako are known for their offense, and that’s all fine and good—we need easier half-court and short-clock offense, which has been the case for a while. A quick offense can be a good offense! But we’ll lose some force on D.

Something I think about too much about is the offense/defense balance in college, and how much that actually matters. The NBA is less physical than college, but more skilled1—if the pro game trickles down, is there a world where more skilled offensive players in college beat sheer defensive physicality? If a team said “screw it” to learning complex offensive sets, and just worked 100% of that time on skill development (free throws, ball-handling, and just ten million shots)… what would that do? Anything? Can a college team really be that dominant on offense, enough to overcome the stalwart, disciplined defenses that have cut the nets down in recent past? Is it worth trying generally, and is it worth trying at Kansas?

On a basketball level, Kansas is going for it. However, I wonder how many fans will feel lost without the development narrative we’re used to with beloved Jayhawks like Devonte’ Graham, Frank Mason and Thomas Robinson and others. This is an extremely transactional time for college basketball, mirroring the pros in perhaps an unflattering way. It brings to mind the Seinfeld “you’re rooting for laundry!” bit. But it feels particularly sharp right now, and that might create a disconnect between diehard Jayhawk fans and the program.

In our banner year, the Remy Martin lotto ticket paid out, bigtime—he was the best player on the floor in the Creighton game and his bench offense in the title game became a huge part of the comeback. The portal giveth and taketh away, that’s something that’s always been true in the portal era. However, does all of this noise keep piling up to the point where no one will willingly invest their time and attention into our players? We’re about to find out!

I had a Scandoval analogy I was going to make but I lost it. See you next time Streakers.