Dear Kyle Singler,
Last week, you had a perfect opportunity to announce that you were staying at Duke for your senior season. You returned from Indianapolis as the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player, greeted by 9,000 screaming fans in Cameron Indoor Stadium. When you got to the podium to speak, you were showered with chants of “One more year!”
And you ignored them.
Which, at the time, led me to one of two conclusions: Either you had already decided to declare for the NBA Draft, or you weren’t sure what you were going to do. You haven’t announced your intentions since then, so I’m going to assume it was the latter.
Unfortunately, you’re running out of time before the April 25 deadline to declare. You’re probably receiving more opinions than you know what to do with, but I’m here to offer mine as well.
As you probably know, there are plenty of reasons for you to bolt for the NBA. Thanks to your performance in the NCAA Tournament, your stock has risen, and now you’re being projected as a first-round pick. You’ve won a national championship, so there is no higher team honor for you to accomplish. There’s always the chance you could get injured as a senior, like West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler, and see your draft position worsen.
And perhaps most importantly, a lockout may mean that there won’t be a 2011-2012 NBA season. Sure, you would still be drafted next year, but the league may shut down just days later. If it doesn’t return until 2012-2013, that’s another year in which you are not making any money—and another year’s delay until your rookie deal expires and you are eligible for a more lucrative second contract. If you stay at Duke one more season, you would be 26 by the time the two guaranteed years of your rookie contract expire, and 28 when the two option years, which will probably be picked up, are over.
But that doesn’t mean you should panic and declare just because of a possible lockout. Whether you go pro this year or next, a 2011 lockout would wipe out one year of your NBA career. Yes, it would push back your eligibility for a second contract. But is there really that much of a difference between being a free agent at age 28 instead of 27?
You may even be able to make up the disparity by coming back for your senior season. Your stock shot up because of your Tournament performance. Just think what could happen if you played an entire season like you did the final month of 2009-2010. You may play yourself into the lottery, which would mean a big pay raise.
The difference in salary between the No. 27 pick and the No. 14 pick—the last of the lottery—is $630,500 for the first year, and that gap only grows over time. Over the course of the four-year rookie contract, the difference is $2.8 million. So if you move up that far, you’ve more than made up for the year you lost by staying at Duke, as well as the lockout season.
If you leave this year, you may not even get a guaranteed contract. I said you’re projected to be a first-round pick, but it’s not a lock. NBAdraft.net has you going 19th to Portland, and draftexpress.com has you at No. 27 to Oklahoma City. ESPN’s Chad Ford ranks you the No. 43 prospect in this year’s class, and he pegs you as a late-first to early-second round pick. There’s a big difference between the two. If you fall to the second round—and you will get plenty more information from Duke about how likely that is to happen—you won’t get a guaranteed NBA contract.
That kind of drop is at least conceivable because you would be coming out in a pretty strong draft year, particularly at the small forward position. You have to contend with the likes of Al-Farouq Aminu, Wes Johnson, James Anderson, Quincy Pondexter and maybe Gordon Hayward. If that pushes you to the second round, your early NBA career will not be very comfortable. You will be guaranteed nothing, instead of essentially guaranteed four years in the league.
Just ask Josh McRoberts—a guy who once looked like a lottery pick, but then spent time in the D-League wilderness before finding a place in the NBA—what that’s like.
So there’s the money issue. There’s also playing time. You’re used to playing every game, and nearly every minute of each one. That probably won’t happen as an NBA rookie. Just ask Gerald Henderson, who went in the lottery but has played in just 41 games, averaging 7.7 minutes per contest, for the Charlotte Bobcats through Monday.
More than anything else, you should come back because you obviously enjoy playing at Duke. Because Blue Devil fans appreciate your toughness more than NBA fans will. Because you can design T-shirts at Duke. Because you would get a Senior Night.
Because you have a chance to have your number hang from Cameron’s rafters. Because, as Nolan Smith said, the 2010-2011 Blue Devils “could be something special.” Because as good as one national championship is, back-to-back is better.
You should return because at Duke, when a columnist suggests you come off the bench for one or two games to try to break a career-worst slump, your coach says it’s “unbelievable” and fans react as if that writer had proposed revoking your scholarship. Because people you’ve never met leap to your defense to tell that columnist—OK, it was me—that he’s a moron.
And that was before you were a Final Four MOP.
Kyle, you don’t owe Duke fans anything, and no one would fault you if you left. You came to Durham as a highly-rated recruit, stayed three years and won a national championship. For a lot of people, that would be enough. But you have a chance for more: more money, more accolades, more championships.
Don’t let the promise—really, the possibility—of guaranteed NBA money blind you. Staying at Duke for your senior season will pay off in the long run.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.