Published: July 09, 2009 03:18 am      

HERTZEL COLUMN - Extra year has its benefits

MORGANTOWN — Judging by the conversation in this city’s taverns and the endless flow of texts and tweets, it is a foregone conclusion among the public that Devin Ebanks will jump from West Virginia University to the National Basketball Association at the end of this season.

The rules being what they are, that a player must wait at least one year past his high school class graduates before he can enter the NBA draft, has many people actually feeling they are getting a bonus season out of Ebanks as he will return as a sophomore.

All of this nonsense has penetrated our blogasphere and been speculated in the more respected traditional media, but that does not necessarily make it true.

Ebanks seems to be a sensible young man raised with both ethics and values that will allow him to make an intelligent decision after the 2009-10 basketball season comes to a conclusion, and he may even have been given a road map to follow from this last NBA draft.

The idea of going to the NBA isn’t just for the immediate cash reward, although that is certainly alluring and hard to pass up, but even more important is having the ability to survive long-term in “The League” and maximize career earnings.

And that may come with another year’s growth, competition and developing skills at the college level.

The road map for Ebanks perhaps was not put together by Rand McNally but instead by Williams and Clark. That, of course, would be the Terrence Williams and Earl Clark of the University of Louisville, both of whom bypassed chances to enter the NBA draft a year earlier and benefitted greatly from it.

Williams was the 11th pick of the draft, taken by the New Jersey Nets president Rod Thorn, the former WVU star, and Clark went 14th in the first round to Phoenix.

Clark, it may be recalled, actually expected to jump to the NBA after his sophomore year in 2007-08. He declared for the draft after receiving what can only be described as bad advice, but one day as he sat in a hotel room in Houston he realized he made a mistake.

“Hardest phone call I ever had to make,” he told Eric Crawford of the Louisville Courier-Journal, speaking of the call he made that day to coach Rick Pitino to ask him if he could come back and play the 2008-09 season.

Williams stayed all the way through his senior year and became a dominant star and first-round pick, something he never would have been had he left early.

When coaches have players who are in a position to leave early for the NBA, they find themselves in a really difficult spot. Certainly the player has monetary needs for himself

and for his family. He also is getting advice from friends and from agents or runners for those agents.

He’s pulled toward “The League,” as if someone were tugging on that gold chain that hangs around his neck.

The coach realizes that he benefits in the long run by sending players to the NBA, knowing others with similar ambition will follow.

When Jodie Meek left Kentucky early this year, a move that many believed to be premature, new coach John Calipari shrugged it off and told Kentucky fans to get used to it.

“Every year we’re going to be doing this because there will be a guy here for one year and he’ll make that decision,” Calipari said. “Don’t be mad. Be happy for him and his family and know that we’ll go get another guy that may only stay one year.”

Coaches have an obligation to their players to see that they get that NBA chance if it comes but, at the same time, there has to be an obligation to the school that pays the coach upwards of $1-to-$2 million to field the best team he can and sell tickets.

There is often more to be gained for a player by staying in school than there is in jumping to the NBA.

North Carolina All-American Tyler Hansborough used all of his eligibility at North Carolina and never regretted it.

“I have no regrets about any of it, whether it helped or hurt my draft stock,” he was quoted as saying after the draft. “I’m a national champ. I had a great time in college at North Carolina. I got my degree. And I got to be around people I really enjoyed for four years.”

Ebanks will get to see up close and personal this year what staying in school an extra year did for his teammate, Da’Sean Butler, as well as seeing how much he improves this year and could improve in the following season.

If he’s a can’t-miss NBA player, there is no reason to stay. But if there is room for a large jump forward by staying, there’s certainly nothing wrong with playing through your junior year.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.