... on the Matt Haarms news.
Look, I don't intend to belabor this story, but putting additional thought into a subject before writing about it is usually a good idea. We just don't live in that world as media all the time, particularly when there's breaking news.
So, a couple additional thoughts here to go along with yesterday's analysis.
• The quotes Haarms gave Rivals.com about having an "NBA-ready" skill set is so the opposite of any line of thinking he ever revealed while at Purdue, it's hard to believe it's the same guy talking. Again, he shrugged his shoulder last spring at going through the NBA process when there's no reason whatsoever not to. Prior to the season, asked about it again at Big Ten media day and he again sort of shrugged his shoulder and said, "The NBA process is about showing yourself but I felt I could do a lot more by just being in the gym."
Asked if he was even thinking about the NBA, he said, "If I get a chance to play in the NBA one day, that would be a dream, but I don't have any reason to be thinking about that right now. I'm just trying to be the best player I can be at the college level. If I have success with that, then I'm sure opportunities will come from that. If I'm worthy of it."
Again, what a player says and what he is really thinking are often two different things, but actions do speak louder than words, and Haarms didn't act on NBA ambition last spring, and in my experience with him he's always been a pretty straight-shooter in terms of meaning what he says.
It's not uncommon for players to start thinking more about the NBA as their careers wind down, but normally that happens during great seasons (and is often stoked by an external influence of some kind). Haarms didn't have a great season, and a lot went into that, not the least of which was injury, and that was apparently part of Painter's message to him after the season.
Point here, I guess, is that clearly Haarms has begun really focusing on his professional prospects, and that would seem to jibe with the playing time and style-of-play considerations we wrote about yesterday.
Haarms might have been the best backup center in college basketball next season, but that doesn't change the fact he'd still have been the backup center, with a natural cap on his minutes.
In that sense, hard to really blame him. He just never seemed like the sort to make a move like this. Obviously that was wrong.
• There is risk here at this moment in history.
Haarms may be picking a school the same way he might buy a shirt off eBay and he may not set foot on his next school's campus 'til fall in a perfectly reasonable scenario. In which case there will be no summer practices, no off-season to familiarize oneself with new teammates and limited opportunity to learn a new system. For a player who obviously wants to showcase himself at his next stop, that may make for a complicated situation.
And that goes both ways. If Purdue is going to try to recruit a grad transfer, those are significant concerns. The difference, if Purdue gets somebody, chances are that player is not coming in looking to build an NBA résumé and needing to produce accordingly. IMO, if Purdue can just find a ditch-digger who's willing to play a role on a good team, great. That's a hard thing to find on the mercenary market, and a harder thing to assess over Zoom or FaceTime.
• I don't know if the Internet has gotten this storyline about him transferring because he was the only guy who wanted to win on Purdue's team out of its system, but I will say this: Haarms is a great human being, a great student, a very good basketball player and a good teammate, I think, but also a guy with a lot of things going in his life on and off the floor, and if you think he was that guy who lived for basketball and basketball alone and would step on somebody to win a college basketball game or some such thing, you are mistaken. Don't confuse demonstrative with cut-throat. The competitive streak Purdue needed this season and never seemed to have needed to start with its older, more experienced players. It did not. Haarms is not absolved of being part of that, nor are any of the other returnees, Sasha Stefanovic and Evan Boudreaux perhaps notwithstanding.
That's not a criticism of Haarms, necessarily, just reality.
This team was obviously missing something, something really important, and Matt Painter's comments all throughout the season about putting in time to be good was targeted at no one player, but applied to many, and this was not a team that to a man lived for basketball, and I think Haarms was very much part of that.
And that's what may be interesting should Haarms wind up at a blueblood. He'll be challenged competitively unlike anything he's probably ever experienced. For that reason, I just have a really hard time seeing him in a culture like Kentucky's or somewhere like that, where basketball is the first, second, third and fourth priority.
• You all know that I love Haarms as a player. I was his only All-Big Ten vote (I think) following his sophomore year and I voted him Preseason All-Big Ten this season. I thought he'd have a first-team All-Big Ten sort of season.
That being said, there is very little precedent for players thriving after transferring out of Purdue, (Kendall Stephens being the only name that comes to mind), and there is no discernible precedent — and obviously there's some hypothetical unknown here — for Purdue getting worse because this guy transferred or that guy transferred.
That being said, this is a loss that could buck both those trends, because I think this is the most impactful of any. I think if nothing else, this may hit Purdue where it hurts in terms of having a safety net behind Trevion Williams, who may never play 32-plus minutes per game and remains vulnerable to foul trouble, and who's not a great defensive player.
That being said, the things Purdue misses most about Haarms are probably the reasons he's transferring — because he'd wound up as a part-time player and at times a defensive specialist. If he wants more, those two realities make it hard to blame him.
It just reminds, too, of tandems like AJ Hammons and Isaac Haas and Dakota Mathias and Ryan Cline and how fortunate Purdue may have been that none of those guys developed wandering eyes while sharing minutes with other players or coming off the bench even though they were starter-caliber players at a high level.
Look, I don't intend to belabor this story, but putting additional thought into a subject before writing about it is usually a good idea. We just don't live in that world as media all the time, particularly when there's breaking news.
So, a couple additional thoughts here to go along with yesterday's analysis.
• The quotes Haarms gave Rivals.com about having an "NBA-ready" skill set is so the opposite of any line of thinking he ever revealed while at Purdue, it's hard to believe it's the same guy talking. Again, he shrugged his shoulder last spring at going through the NBA process when there's no reason whatsoever not to. Prior to the season, asked about it again at Big Ten media day and he again sort of shrugged his shoulder and said, "The NBA process is about showing yourself but I felt I could do a lot more by just being in the gym."
Asked if he was even thinking about the NBA, he said, "If I get a chance to play in the NBA one day, that would be a dream, but I don't have any reason to be thinking about that right now. I'm just trying to be the best player I can be at the college level. If I have success with that, then I'm sure opportunities will come from that. If I'm worthy of it."
Again, what a player says and what he is really thinking are often two different things, but actions do speak louder than words, and Haarms didn't act on NBA ambition last spring, and in my experience with him he's always been a pretty straight-shooter in terms of meaning what he says.
It's not uncommon for players to start thinking more about the NBA as their careers wind down, but normally that happens during great seasons (and is often stoked by an external influence of some kind). Haarms didn't have a great season, and a lot went into that, not the least of which was injury, and that was apparently part of Painter's message to him after the season.
Point here, I guess, is that clearly Haarms has begun really focusing on his professional prospects, and that would seem to jibe with the playing time and style-of-play considerations we wrote about yesterday.
Haarms might have been the best backup center in college basketball next season, but that doesn't change the fact he'd still have been the backup center, with a natural cap on his minutes.
In that sense, hard to really blame him. He just never seemed like the sort to make a move like this. Obviously that was wrong.
• There is risk here at this moment in history.
Haarms may be picking a school the same way he might buy a shirt off eBay and he may not set foot on his next school's campus 'til fall in a perfectly reasonable scenario. In which case there will be no summer practices, no off-season to familiarize oneself with new teammates and limited opportunity to learn a new system. For a player who obviously wants to showcase himself at his next stop, that may make for a complicated situation.
And that goes both ways. If Purdue is going to try to recruit a grad transfer, those are significant concerns. The difference, if Purdue gets somebody, chances are that player is not coming in looking to build an NBA résumé and needing to produce accordingly. IMO, if Purdue can just find a ditch-digger who's willing to play a role on a good team, great. That's a hard thing to find on the mercenary market, and a harder thing to assess over Zoom or FaceTime.
• I don't know if the Internet has gotten this storyline about him transferring because he was the only guy who wanted to win on Purdue's team out of its system, but I will say this: Haarms is a great human being, a great student, a very good basketball player and a good teammate, I think, but also a guy with a lot of things going in his life on and off the floor, and if you think he was that guy who lived for basketball and basketball alone and would step on somebody to win a college basketball game or some such thing, you are mistaken. Don't confuse demonstrative with cut-throat. The competitive streak Purdue needed this season and never seemed to have needed to start with its older, more experienced players. It did not. Haarms is not absolved of being part of that, nor are any of the other returnees, Sasha Stefanovic and Evan Boudreaux perhaps notwithstanding.
That's not a criticism of Haarms, necessarily, just reality.
This team was obviously missing something, something really important, and Matt Painter's comments all throughout the season about putting in time to be good was targeted at no one player, but applied to many, and this was not a team that to a man lived for basketball, and I think Haarms was very much part of that.
And that's what may be interesting should Haarms wind up at a blueblood. He'll be challenged competitively unlike anything he's probably ever experienced. For that reason, I just have a really hard time seeing him in a culture like Kentucky's or somewhere like that, where basketball is the first, second, third and fourth priority.
• You all know that I love Haarms as a player. I was his only All-Big Ten vote (I think) following his sophomore year and I voted him Preseason All-Big Ten this season. I thought he'd have a first-team All-Big Ten sort of season.
That being said, there is very little precedent for players thriving after transferring out of Purdue, (Kendall Stephens being the only name that comes to mind), and there is no discernible precedent — and obviously there's some hypothetical unknown here — for Purdue getting worse because this guy transferred or that guy transferred.
That being said, this is a loss that could buck both those trends, because I think this is the most impactful of any. I think if nothing else, this may hit Purdue where it hurts in terms of having a safety net behind Trevion Williams, who may never play 32-plus minutes per game and remains vulnerable to foul trouble, and who's not a great defensive player.
That being said, the things Purdue misses most about Haarms are probably the reasons he's transferring — because he'd wound up as a part-time player and at times a defensive specialist. If he wants more, those two realities make it hard to blame him.
It just reminds, too, of tandems like AJ Hammons and Isaac Haas and Dakota Mathias and Ryan Cline and how fortunate Purdue may have been that none of those guys developed wandering eyes while sharing minutes with other players or coming off the bench even though they were starter-caliber players at a high level.
