Originally Posted by
tommy
First, sorry about the comment about Lawrence. My ignorance - I didn't know it was that kind of "oasis" town. I still have a hard time fathoming how coastal kids or other city kids would choose the environment there, lovely though it may be, over towns or cities that may provide significantly more in terms of entertainment options, community diversity, proximity to bigger cities, high growth/business opportunities, or other attributes that some of the schools that Kansas competes with for national recruits offer, so that's maybe why I think Self (and Williams and Brown before them) have been excellent salesmen for the Kansas program.
As for the rest of the post, earlier in the thread you stated "I don't understand why coaches wouldn't talk about their past success with players. I mean, in the past 4 years, Bill Self (with a massive assist from big-man coach Danny Manning) has put Darrel Arthur, Brandon Rush, Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun*, Cole Aldrich, and the Morris brothers in the NBA as front line players." I took that to mean that you were crediting Self and Manning with developing these players, having started with not a whole lot and turned them into "front line" NBA players, by which I thought you meant as synonymous with "top notch." Maybe you instead meant "front line" in terms of positions on the court -- Kansas's front line -- but then why include Brandon Rush, who is/was a shooting guard?
Don't get me wrong -- I agree with you and others on this thread that Kansas has more consistently focused its offense on inside play, or at least trying to go inside first, than has Duke in the most recent years. But I don't think it's entirely accurate to say that the Kansas staff started out with lumps of clay and turned them into NBA players. Checking the Scout ratings, unless I'm misreading them, Arthur was rated the #2 recruit in the nation in 2006. In 2003 Kaun was #6 and Jackson was #15. In 2007 Aldrich was #7. The Morris twins were lower in 2008, in particular Markieff. But these guys were all rated as pretty good-to-excellent prospects entering college.