Don't tell me that Nic Wise can't someday play in the NBA, or that his tardiness in committing to Sean Miller's first Arizona team is a bluff.
Some say Wise's reluctance to re-up for his senior year at McKale Center is simply a ploy; he wants to be shown a little love. Well, sure, who doesn't? That's got to be part of it.
But I think Wise's unofficial holdout is genuine; he suspects his value is greater today than it might be next April
Here's why: In the last 11 games of Arizona's basketball season, Wise was the best player in the Pac-10. Only Cal point guard Jerome Randle compared. Both were superb.
Wise averaged 20 points a game. In the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament, boom, he went off, 50 points. Nobody could guard him. In a weekend sweep of USC and UCLA, he scored 53.
He was better over that five-week, 11-game period than UCLA's Darren Collison, ASU's James Harden and anybody on league champion Washington's roster. He was more productive, more clutch, than teammates Jordan Hill and Chase Budinger.
Do you realize that as Arizona's third scoring option, Wise scored 548 points? That's more than ex-Wildcat NBA players Hassan Adams, Larry Demic, Marcus Williams, Bison Dele, Sean Rooks or Eric Money scored in a season.
Wise won't be a first-round draft choice in June, not a chance, but that doesn't mean he's not someday an NBA player. The two Pac-10 players of the last 20 years whose size and style of play most closely compare to Wise's are UCLA point guards Tyus Edney and Darrick Martin. Both became NBA players.
As a collegian, Wise is as good as Edney and Martin and, if he plays for the Wildcats next season, will probably be better than both.
Martin, who was undrafted out of UCLA, has played in all or parts of 13 NBA seasons. Edney, who was the No. 47 overall pick in 1995 after leading UCLA to the national championship, played four years in the NBA and a decade of pro seasons in Spain, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, Italy and the Ukraine.
And yet it would be a considerable mistake if Wise chooses not to play for Sean Miller.
Wise is soft-spoken and eschews the media spotlight but over the last nine months made it known that he didn't always think playing for Arizona was in his best interests. He could've transferred to somewhere near his Houston home, Baylor perhaps, and found some security. To his credit, he didn't jump off a listing ship; he made the best of it.
Last week, Arizona's new coach flew to Texas to meet with Wise and his father, Greg Wise, and surely attempted a very soft sell. You can almost imagine their conversation:
"Nic, we need you, man."
"You're the fourth Arizona coach who has told me that."
For every good reason for Wise to play at Arizona in 2009-10, there is an opposite reaction.
He'll be the featured star, an All-Pac-10 front-runner. But it's also likely he'll play on a sub-.500 team that won't challenge for the NCAA tournament.
He'll get all the shots, maybe score 20 points a game. But isn't it also true that opposing defenses will be able to gang up on him and beat him into submission some nights?
So why not bail out now, get a contract for $100,000 or thereabouts with a mid-level European team and work in a situation that doesn't involve massive rebuilding?
Wise isn't a lot different than UA power forward Michael Wright after the 2001 Final Four. After averaging 15.6 points and making the All-America third team, Wright watched as teammates Richard Jefferson and Gilbert Arenas bolted for the NBA.
Undersized as a 6-foot-7-inch power forward, Wright understood that he wasn't going to suddenly grow three inches and improve his draft stock. The Knicks chose him No. 38 overall in the draft and, during the brief exhibition season in which Wright averaged just five minutes a game, he was released.
Wright has since played in Poland, Spain, Israel, Germany, France, Korea and Turkey with serious success, and he probably earns close to $500,000 annually. It's not the NBA, but by the time his athletic clock expires, he should have money in the bank and a good chance to live a comfortable life.
Like Wright in 2001, Wise isn't going to hit a growth spurt anytime soon. He's always going to be a 5-10 point guard, swimming upstream in a game of much taller players.
If he leaves now, we understand. If he comes back, he's the man.
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