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| Birch has been condemned for simply leaving |
A McDonald's All American out of Notre Dame Prep, by way of Canada, Birch was thought of as the top shot blocker in the class of 2011 and regarded by many as the highest rated recruit ever to choose Pittsburgh.
Birch came to the United States two years ago to attend a Winchendon School that was among the top prep programs in the country. When the school scaled back on their commitment to basketball, head coach Mike Byrnes left to be an assistant at Robert Morris and the team's top two returnees, Birch and Villanova freshman Markus Kennedy, left for ND Prep and Brewster respectively.
With his decision to leave Pittsburgh, Birch has been publicly ridiculed by Panther teammates, the national media, and his former coach at ND Prep.
Pitt center Talib Zanna told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about an instance in which Birch hurt his wrist, noting that it "looked like he was crying."
Brad Wanamaker tweeted, "Guess everybody ain't for tough coaching and competing for minutes."
Jermaine Dixon joined in on the Twitter fun, "If he think some just going to be given to him cause of who he is then he went to the wrong school... not going to happen under Coach Dixon."
Days later, ND Prep head coach Ryan Hurd blamed "advisors," saying that the situation "isn't going to end well for Khem."
The piling on peaked this week when Sports Illustrated's Seth Davis wrote a feature article on a decision he dubbed "foolish" without speaking to Birch or getting anything more from head coach Jamie Dixon than "there's nothing I can say as far as what his thinking was... the kid made a decision and moved on, and so have we."
That was apparently enough evidence for Davis to surmise that Birch "ostensibly left Pittsburgh to improve his chances to be a pro, but the move had the opposite effect."
He continued, "Part of being a professional is learning to fight your way through adversity. Why would any franchise commit to pay big dollars to a player who can't commit to sticking things out?"
Being so entrenched in the college game, perhaps Davis has had little time to pay attention to NBA landscape over the past two years. There's no other explanation for such an inane question.
Looking further back than the recent comings and goings of Lebron, Carmelo, and CP3, in the mid-'70s Bobby Knight and Indiana lost a small forward who needed only a month to determine that Bloomington was just too big for him. It didn't stop Red Auerbach from rebuilding his franchise around the once awkward teenager who didn't just "stick it out."
Davis wrote a book a few years ago about how Larry Bird and Magic Johnson transformed the college game. The book detailed how the introverted Bird felt out of place at Indiana and left, which is ironic in light of Zanna commenting this week that Birch was isolated while at Pittsburgh.
The buzz out of Pittsburgh was that Birch didn't want to work for his minutes, that he couldn't handle tough coaching, yet Birch flourished under Byrnes at Winchendon, a coach who is anything but timid.
The main culprit, according to Davis' article, is a culture in which young men have the capability to jump from one AAU team to the next, from one high school to another, in an effort to one day parlay this game into a scholarship, and in many cases, a career.
In an attempt to provide a coach's perspective on why so many college basketball players "bail on college" Davis spoke with Arizona head coach Sean Miller and Oregon's Dana Altman.
The same Dana Altman who, in 2007, announced he was leaving Creighton to take the head coaching position at Arkansas (which, in fairness to Davis, he noted in the article).
A day later he had a change of heart and returned to Creighton.
By 2010 he was off to Oregon.
In 2009, Miller first turned down the Arizona gig before accepting a counteroffer from the school that was "too good to pass" according to ESPN's Andy Katz at the time.
Just two years later, Miller took a weekend to determine if he wanted to leave Tucson for the opening at Maryland, before committing to Arizona once again after having his contract extended.
No one begrudges these coaches for doing what they deem to be best for themselves and their families, and Davis certainly brings up a growing concern among college basketball coaches, but in a world in which coaches come and go as they please and conferences are decimated by presidents who "have to do what is best for the long term interests of the university,", it is disingenuous and hypocritical to imply that the increasing transfer rate is due strictly to the changing face of prep and summer basketball.
Just as it is unfair to dub Birch "foolish" with no evidence of why he made the decision he did.
Davis derides transferring student-athletes for what he deems a "lack of commitment." A lack of commitment isn't a problem created solely by the "AAU culture" when the culture of college athletics is one in which players are shuttled 2,000 miles to play a conference opponent, and others are on their second or third head coach since they first stepped on campus. Those who decide to transfer must sit for a year before they can see the court again, while many cannot transfer to a school within their current college's conference - a rule that makes less and less sense with the tenuous nature of conference alliances.
If they are as talented as Khem Birch, they get ridiculed by their teammates, questioned by their high school coach, and held up as a flimsy example by a national writer to highlight a growing problem in the college game that has so much more to do with a flawed system than it does a lack of commitment from the young man.
If only mass transfers were the biggest problem facing college basketball today.
Do as I say, not as I do.
