NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Like a town sandbagging against a flood, Oregon is bracing for Luke Ridnour’s departure to the NBA. This is a trust fall, and we’re not going to catch Rid on his way to the hard floor of the pros. Unless he wants to be caught, in which case we’ll not only catch him, we’ll throw rose petals in his every footstep and feed him grapes until he’s full and all that.
But what about the other square in “Luke Squared”?
What about Luke Jackson?
After Oregon’s loss to Utah in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Jackson said, “For me personally, I just need to look at where I’m at and make a decision. I feel like I had a good year.”
With sure-fire first-rounder Ridnour, we plead “please don’t go.” With Jackson, we wonder “what the what?”
Luke Ridnour could not go to the NBA. Luke Jackson should not go to the NBA.
We present evidence.
Last year, 42 underclassmen and high schoolers declared themselves eligible for the NBA Draft. Exactly half didn’t get drafted. Most of those were from schools like Shelton State or Brown Mackie JC (yes, those are actual schools, and yes, their basketball players were stupid enough to think they’d be drafted).
But then there’s the case of Adam Harrington, one of those unlucky 21. Nope, he’s no relation to the former Oregon golden-boy quarterback, he’s just a prototypical guard/forward who spent three years at Auburn.
Turns out he should’ve spent
a fourth.
The similarities between Harrington and Jackson are like the similarities between Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Harrington is 6-foot-5, 200 pounds. Jackson is 6-foot-7, 215. Both are slashers who can hit the three, both play or played at decent schools in power conferences. They even look like each other.
Harrington’s tale is wrapped in yellow cautionary tape. He came out early last season, but his phone didn’t ring on draft day. He signed with the Dallas Mavericks in October last year, and played 13 games before he was released in January. After some time in the developmental United States Basketball League, he’s currently in the middle of a 10-day contract with the Denver Nuggets. Those are the 16-57 Denver Nuggets, for whom he’s played all of 17 minutes in two games.
Harrington is the poster boy for NBA abstinence. And that’s the fate for not-so-action Jackson if he follows Harrington’s path.
Jackson is hardly fresh meat for many of the carnivorous Internet draft debates. Even Ridnour’s buzz is fading as the stock of senior Kansas guard Kirk Hinrich is rising like Microsoft in the 90s. Ridnour out-played Hinrich in December, but the Kansas guard is getting the attention now as his team delves further into March Madness (see: Hinrich lighting up Arizona like the Wildcats were Christmas lights on Saturday). Yeah, Oregon exited the NCAA Tournament kinda early.
But back to Jackson. NBADraft.net, which is one of the few media outlets to predict both rounds of the draft, doesn’t list Jackson among the 58 choices. He’s ranked 17th nationally among juniors by the site. He’s certainly not ranked as a first-round choice by ESPN, The Chicago Tribune or other pontificators who don’t dare to venture into second-round territory.
The experts agree, you and me agree, but does the Super Curly-Haired Duo agree? With each other?
This could very well be a package deal. Two Lukes for the price of one. Buy one Luke, get the second one half price. It shouldn’t be, but they’ve stuck so close together up to now, it wouldn’t be a shocker if they got agents together, bought yachts together, that sort of thing.
The NBA doesn’t know what it’s getting, evidenced by the silence on Jackson and the slipping hype on Ridnour. Oregon fans, of course, know exactly what they’re giving up. Two may go. One may go. Does it matter? It won’t be the same unless both come back.
So throw another sandbag on the wall, dig another trench. We might need two.
One for each square.