Sunday evening, Carsen Edwards announced his decision, and it is final.
But the reality of it was that there wasn't all that much of a decision to make. If the Purdue All-American's mind wasn't already made up last spring that he'd be leaving this spring — and it very well may have been — then any choice remaining to be made was taken off the table in the past month.
Edwards had to go. In a business where striking while the iron is hot is a necessity, he had no choice.
Even the few doozies I've heard from in the past week utterly devoid of the ability to see things from anyone else's perspective but their own must realize this. There was nothing Edwards reasonably could have done biding his time at Purdue another year, giving a weak draft pool a year to strengthen, to help himself more than hurting himself, and "legacy" doesn't pay the bills, doesn't "help Mama out," as Edwards has written on the tape on his wrist during his Purdue career, the most revealing look into who he actually is we got during his time in college. Nobody loves his family more than that kid, nobody is more driven by and for them, and especially in situations like these, business is the most important consideration there is. He will get his degree one way or another, I'm sure.
Edwards' regular season as a junior at Purdue was a complicated one, masked by the fact that Purdue won big anyway. Surely, we can all agree on this.
But the NCAA Tournament was stuff of legend, perhaps the greatest stretch of basketball from an individual Purdue's ever seen, Glenn Robinson, Rick Mount and their ilk included. It was an extraordinary run for Edwards, who made Purdue the talk of college basketball there for a while, affording it exposure money just can't buy. There's no putting a price tag on the branding punch and visibility Edwards earned the program in March, not a single penny of which he'd have seen anyway. Now, he can get paid for it. Now he can make money off the show he put on on college basketball's biggest stage.
It's not going to be an easy path for him. If there's one sure-fire question his junior season answered about Edwards the NBA prospect, it's this: All that point guard/lead guard/facilitator stuff — that natural category his physical dimensions push him into — forget about it. He's never going to be that player people wanted him to be, and that's OK.
The pros are about finding the right fit, not all that dissimilar to college, and it's best to sort through this stuff on the front end. Edwards is not going to be a point guard in any sense of the traditional meaning of the term.
What he is is a scorer, with a singular focus on putting basketballs through nets, and the nuance and physical gifts to do it better than just about anyone. I never thought I'd see a better scoring guard at Purdue than E'Twaun Moore, and I just did, because Edwards is a professional scorer, a technician in that sense whose confidence and ability to make each moment its own being both his greatest strength and greatest vulnerability, and you take the good with the bad, and the bad isn't as bad in the NBA because there are so many more possessions.
There's a role for this specific brand of player in the NBA, and it's good work if you can get it, and the realistic possibility is that space-and-pace dynamics in the Association amplify Edwards' strengths better than the college game could. It's more of a full-court game, and bench scorers — those guys who come in three or four minutes at a time against an opponent's worst defender to change the pace of the game and simply get buckets — can be high-value pieces.
It may not be a straight line for Edwards. The factors he'll have to overcome — height, questions about basketball sense, situational awareness, etc. — all the things that weren't gonna change next season, they're not gonna change before June, either. He may have to work his way up, and the path may lead through the second round, may lead through the G-League.
I do think Edwards is realistic enough to understand this, and that's half the battle. It may benefit him, to need a team more than a team needs him, because he will have to adjust to his surroundings now, not the other way around, as it's been. He will have to listen better than he ever has, practice better than he ever has and work every bit as hard as he always has, and not just on his own game, but on functioning alongside those around him. People don't realize with this generation of players the massive difference between working out and practicing. Edwards has made himself a brilliant scorer during all those hours by himself, or with a trainer, in the gym. You can't tell me it also hasn't contributed to his occasional bouts with tunnel vision during games.
Edwards has been a fascinating case at Purdue, as complicated a player as perhaps has ever come through the program in my frame of reference, so engaging in one setting, so disengaged in another. So fearless as a player, so sensitive to even the mildest criticism, public or private, otherwise.
It was a hell of a three years for Edwards at Purdue, virtually from Day 1, not long after which he dunked on Isaac Haas in a practice, a few weeks before lighting up Spain during the Boilermakers' foreign trip. The rest is history, one of the greatest scoring careers the program has ever seen and will ever see.
Edwards scored a hell of a lot of points — had he returned, he may have left as the Big Ten's all-time scoring leader — and more importantly helped Purdue win a hell of a lot of games. I promise you that Matt Painter would tell you that Edwards made him a better coach, taught him some things about dealing with people.
His greatest legacy, however, at Purdue may just lie in the memories.
People will never forget this past NCAA Tournament, the very event that left Purdue's All-American without a choice.
He had to go.
But the reality of it was that there wasn't all that much of a decision to make. If the Purdue All-American's mind wasn't already made up last spring that he'd be leaving this spring — and it very well may have been — then any choice remaining to be made was taken off the table in the past month.
Edwards had to go. In a business where striking while the iron is hot is a necessity, he had no choice.
Even the few doozies I've heard from in the past week utterly devoid of the ability to see things from anyone else's perspective but their own must realize this. There was nothing Edwards reasonably could have done biding his time at Purdue another year, giving a weak draft pool a year to strengthen, to help himself more than hurting himself, and "legacy" doesn't pay the bills, doesn't "help Mama out," as Edwards has written on the tape on his wrist during his Purdue career, the most revealing look into who he actually is we got during his time in college. Nobody loves his family more than that kid, nobody is more driven by and for them, and especially in situations like these, business is the most important consideration there is. He will get his degree one way or another, I'm sure.
Edwards' regular season as a junior at Purdue was a complicated one, masked by the fact that Purdue won big anyway. Surely, we can all agree on this.
But the NCAA Tournament was stuff of legend, perhaps the greatest stretch of basketball from an individual Purdue's ever seen, Glenn Robinson, Rick Mount and their ilk included. It was an extraordinary run for Edwards, who made Purdue the talk of college basketball there for a while, affording it exposure money just can't buy. There's no putting a price tag on the branding punch and visibility Edwards earned the program in March, not a single penny of which he'd have seen anyway. Now, he can get paid for it. Now he can make money off the show he put on on college basketball's biggest stage.
It's not going to be an easy path for him. If there's one sure-fire question his junior season answered about Edwards the NBA prospect, it's this: All that point guard/lead guard/facilitator stuff — that natural category his physical dimensions push him into — forget about it. He's never going to be that player people wanted him to be, and that's OK.
The pros are about finding the right fit, not all that dissimilar to college, and it's best to sort through this stuff on the front end. Edwards is not going to be a point guard in any sense of the traditional meaning of the term.
What he is is a scorer, with a singular focus on putting basketballs through nets, and the nuance and physical gifts to do it better than just about anyone. I never thought I'd see a better scoring guard at Purdue than E'Twaun Moore, and I just did, because Edwards is a professional scorer, a technician in that sense whose confidence and ability to make each moment its own being both his greatest strength and greatest vulnerability, and you take the good with the bad, and the bad isn't as bad in the NBA because there are so many more possessions.
There's a role for this specific brand of player in the NBA, and it's good work if you can get it, and the realistic possibility is that space-and-pace dynamics in the Association amplify Edwards' strengths better than the college game could. It's more of a full-court game, and bench scorers — those guys who come in three or four minutes at a time against an opponent's worst defender to change the pace of the game and simply get buckets — can be high-value pieces.
It may not be a straight line for Edwards. The factors he'll have to overcome — height, questions about basketball sense, situational awareness, etc. — all the things that weren't gonna change next season, they're not gonna change before June, either. He may have to work his way up, and the path may lead through the second round, may lead through the G-League.
I do think Edwards is realistic enough to understand this, and that's half the battle. It may benefit him, to need a team more than a team needs him, because he will have to adjust to his surroundings now, not the other way around, as it's been. He will have to listen better than he ever has, practice better than he ever has and work every bit as hard as he always has, and not just on his own game, but on functioning alongside those around him. People don't realize with this generation of players the massive difference between working out and practicing. Edwards has made himself a brilliant scorer during all those hours by himself, or with a trainer, in the gym. You can't tell me it also hasn't contributed to his occasional bouts with tunnel vision during games.
Edwards has been a fascinating case at Purdue, as complicated a player as perhaps has ever come through the program in my frame of reference, so engaging in one setting, so disengaged in another. So fearless as a player, so sensitive to even the mildest criticism, public or private, otherwise.
It was a hell of a three years for Edwards at Purdue, virtually from Day 1, not long after which he dunked on Isaac Haas in a practice, a few weeks before lighting up Spain during the Boilermakers' foreign trip. The rest is history, one of the greatest scoring careers the program has ever seen and will ever see.
Edwards scored a hell of a lot of points — had he returned, he may have left as the Big Ten's all-time scoring leader — and more importantly helped Purdue win a hell of a lot of games. I promise you that Matt Painter would tell you that Edwards made him a better coach, taught him some things about dealing with people.
His greatest legacy, however, at Purdue may just lie in the memories.
People will never forget this past NCAA Tournament, the very event that left Purdue's All-American without a choice.
He had to go.
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