OSU basketball: Returning to college is best for Le’Bryan Nash
The first time that I saw Le’Bryan Nash play in person, I had one overwhelming thought.
Don’t turn pro yet, kid.
There is no doubt that the Oklahoma State freshman possesses some special talents on the basketball court. He glides around the floor. He looks so effortless.
Then again, those things are part of the reason that I hoped he would stay at least another year. Nash is a physical specimen, but he doesn’t dominate games. He doesn’t take it to defenders enough. He doesn’t impose his will regularly. He doesn’t get to the basket, or at least get himself better shots, often enough.
And if you can’t do those things to dominate a college game, how in the world are you going to hang in the NBA?
So, I heaved a big sigh of relief Monday when our man John Helsley reported that Nash is likely to return to the Cowboys next season.
“I can tell you this,” Nash told Helsley, “it’s 70 percent I’m coming back. I can tell you that. I feel I’m not having a big (enough) year to go to the NBA. I really feel like I could come back and really make an impact.
“I’m just going by this season right now. I just keep playing right now. I’m not really looking at the NBA.”
Right on.
Every year, we see underclassmen declare themselves eligible for the NBA Draft when they really aren’t ready. I’m not one of those people who says every player should stay in college all four years. There are always guys who are ready. Kevin Durant. Derrick Rose. Blake Griffin. The list goes on and on.
But for every success, there are two or three failures.
And for a player like Nash, the pressure to leave has to be significant. This was a guy who was tabbed a for-sure one-and-done player coming out of high school. Everyone expected him to spend just one season in college. Everyone said he would be on his way to the NBA after this year.
No doubt Nash has heard all of those projections. He knows that people expected him to have this great freshman year at OSU and to leave Stillwater for Sacramento or Phoenix or some other NBA hamlet.
But the truth is, he’s not ready to make the jump, and the fact that Nash recognizes that is no small thing. He could’ve just stuck to the one-and-done script, declared himself eligible for the draft and been gone. To see that he’s not having a great year takes maturity. To change a course that so many have laid out for him takes courage.
Now, Nash didn’t say that he was a hundred percent sure he would return to OSU. He said he was 70 percent sure. That still leaves the door open to him leaving.
Here’s hoping that he shuts that door completely.
The NBA needs to wait.
NBA: Lin-Sanity Reaches OKC
The Jeremy Lin phenomenon has come to Oklahoma City.
Of course, it arrived about three or four years ago.
Just ask Oliver Ting.
“It was hard to find a Harvard game that aired, but I’ve been following him since he was there,” he said of Lin’s college days. “I looked up to him.
“He was sort of my hero even way before the savior of New York.”
Ting is one of eight basketball players at Classen High School who is Asian-American. I had a chance to talk with all eight of them yesterday for a column that will be posted on NewsOK.com later today and will appear in The Oklahoman tomorrow.
It was fascinating discussing Lin-Sanity with them. A couple of the guys weren’t aware of Lin until he started his NBA career — unceremoniously, many of them added, having been dropped by Golden State and Houston before sticking in New York — but most have paid attention to him since his college days.
I don’t want to tell you everything that’s coming in the column, but you’ll want to check it out.
Power Lunch Chat with Jenni Carlson
HS basketball: The kid in the pink shoes
Everyone notices Jordan Pina’s pink shoes.
Actually, most people do more than that when they see what the senior guard at Classen High is wearing. Some make fun of him. Some heckle him. Some even start not-so-nice chants about his kicks.
But Pina isn’t changing them.
“Not unless I find some more pink ones,” he said. “That’s the only way I’ll change shoes.”
That’s because Pina wears them to honor his mother, Robin. She died of breast cancer in 2008.
Pina and his four older sisters watched as their mom battled the insidious disease for three years. She had surgery. She had radiation. She had chemotherapy. She still went on about her life, being the disciplinarian that kept her kids in line while being the nurturer that would gladly whip up a batch of the spaghetti that her son loved so much.
By Thanksgiving of 2007, she was doing better. Her hair was even starting to grow back.
“Then,” her son remembered, “it just came right back.”
Less than two months later, Robin was dead.
Since then, her children have done everything possible to support breast cancer awareness. All the girls got tattoos. They do the walk during the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. But Jordan never really had a tribute of his own.
Then, he saw the pink Nikes a couple years ago.
“I had to get ‘em,” he said. “The first day I saw ‘em was when I had to go get ‘em. I got a lot of hassle about it at first (from friends), but I know what it means, so it really doesn’t matter.”
These shoes, by the way, aren’t subtle. We’re not talking about a white or black shoe with pink trim or pink accents. We’re talking about pink shoes. Almost every inch of the Nike Hyper Dunks that he’s wearing this season are pink, from the leather to the stitching to the soles.
And in the sometimes unforgiving world of high school sports, kids can be cruel. Pina, one of Classen’s top scorers, admits that some of the things he’s endured and some of the words he’s heard surprised even him. He not only hears the barbs but also feels the sting, even if it’s only momentarily.
“Away games, it’s crazy,” he said. “People, they always talk about my shoes. Every game.”
Even in the face of ugliness and ridicule, he isn’t about to change.
It takes courage for a teenage boy to have that kind of intestinal fortitude, but to honor the memory of his mom and spread the message about breast cancer awareness, he’s willing to put up with it. Let the heckling come. Let the chants start.
“Doesn’t faze me,” he said. “I’m not taking these off.”
Big 12 football: The schedule is out! The schedule is out!
Our long regional nightmare is over.
The Big 12 football schedule has finally been released, blasted out by the conference offices mid-morning on Tuesday.
And in case anyone thinks I’m overstating the “nightmare” part of this whole thing, think again. When the schedule was going to come out was easily the No. 1 question that I — or anyone else in the sports media in these parts — has received in the past couple months.
Everyone has wanted to know when they could mark their calendars to be able to, um, mark their calendars.
It’s a nod to how much life in this neck of the woods revolves around football in the fall. Want to get married? Want to have a bake sale or a fall festival or a community parade? Better not do it when Oklahoma State or Oklahoma is playing.
Unless, of course, you don’t want anyone to come to your shindig.
Now, everyone can look and see when those really big games are on the schedule.
The Sooners open Big 12 play hosting Kansas State on Sept. 22, an open date for the Cowboys.
The Cowboys open conference play the following week with a huge game against Texas. That’s a weekend that the Sooners currently have open, but unlike the Cowboys, they didn’t release their entire schedule Tuesday morning. That leaves open the possibility that the Sooners could play one last non-conference game that weekend.
Wedding planners and civic leaders, you might want to avoid Sept. 29.
Another day to avoid? Oct. 13.
That’s when OU plays Texas, and while OSU is playing a much less appealing game at Kansas, much activity ceases in the state that weekend. Best to avoid.
I’d also steer clear of Oct. 20 and Nov. 10. Both teams are home those weekends, the only times that happens during the entire Big 12 slate. OSU has Iowa State and OU has Kansas in October, so neither are marquee games, but still, trying to get people to do anything that isn’t football-related that weekend will be a stretch. The same goes for that weekend in November when West Virginia is at OSU and Baylor is at OU. That might end up being the best two-game weekend of football in the state next fall.
There are other big weekends, of course. The Cowboys host TCU on Oct. 27 and Texas Tech on Nov. 17. The Sooners go to West Virginia on Nov. 17, then finish the season at TCU on Dec. 1.
But, of course, there’s no bigger weekend to avoid than Nov. 24 — Bedlam.
Think that game in Norman will be kind of a big deal after last year?
Yeah, me, too.
So, if you’re looking to plan something in the fall, your best bets are Oct. 3, Nov. 3 and, well, maybe you should just go with a summer wedding.
NFL: Patriots aren’t mad at Wes Welker
Lots of Patriots have been skewered and roasted since New England’s loss in the Super Bowl.
None more than Wes Welker.
The Oklahoma native and New England receiver has been in the cross hairs since dropping — his word, not mine — a fourth-quarter pass that would’ve almost certainly helped the Patriots run the clock and seal the victory. Fans are mad. Teammates’ wives are fuming. Well, at least one very notable spouse is.
But it sounds like New England’s front office brass isn’t ready to fire up the spit and fry Welker. There’s more and more talk that the Patriots are not only going to re-sign Welker, whose contract is expiring and is about to make him an unrestricted free agent, but they’re also going to take it a step further and give him the franchise tag.
Welker’s desire to remain in New England has been well reported, but the Boston Globe pointed out today that Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft has also expressed his desire to see Welker remain with the team. “Usually a good sign that something will get done,” the Globe mentioned.
It’s a great point. It’s one thing when a player wants to stay with a team. It’s quite another when the player and the guy signing the paychecks wants that.
And nothing anyone with the Patriots’ front office has said since the Super Bowl has made anyone think that anything’s changed.
In fact, on Thursday, Globe writer Greg Bedard went on the Armando and Perkins radio show in Miami and indicated that he knows what New England plans to do with Welker.
“He’s going to be tagged, that I know for pretty much certain,” Bedard said, clarifying that it’s the franchise tag the Pats would use. “If they don’t, he’s going to sign with the Jets and they’re going to have to try and cover him twice a year, or the Dolphins … They want him back. I don’t see why things would change now, but the way it stood before the Super Bowl, they’re going to tag him.”
Interesting, for sure.
(Also interesting, I’m sure, for the editors at the Globe. One of their guys going on Miami radio with such news? Sure hope he broke it in the Globe before that.)
For as tough a week as this has surely been for Welker, this is great news. I mean, getting re-signed by the Patriots and getting the franchise tag won’t change what happened on Sunday. New England still lost. Welker still had a hand in a play that could’ve won them the game.
But he deserves every good thing that happens to him. To think, he could go from a guy who was barely recruited out of high school and undrafted out of college to someone who is a “franchise player” in the NFL. And he could do that after suffering a knee injury that most folks believed would leave him a shadow of his former self. That’s pretty heady stuff.
Well-deserved stuff, too.
Power Lunch Chat with Jenni Carlson
