Thankfully, Shelden has made over $11 million in the NBA and is still in the league. I'm not sure what Shelden has to do with Mason though. They are very different players.
Most of our high-level, McDonald's All-American players probably have the goal of getting drafted into the NBA, like it or not.
Saying that Miles is a four year guy implies that he made a choice to finish at Duke instead of going to the NBA. I do not believe that the NBA was ever an option for him following his junior year. I do think that Mason could be drafted in the first round in this year's NBA draft.
I am sorry, but I do not see what makes you believe that Mason has never had intentions of leaving early, or that his NCAA tournament game would affect his decision to stay at Duke. Gerald Henderson was certainly ready to go the NBA after we got creamed by Villanova and had a real shortage of guards for the next season. Josh McRoberts was ready after a first round NCAA tournament loss to VCU. I think it's pretty silly to try to project onto players what you would like for them to be thinking. I'm not sure what about Mason would lead to to believe that he would not to leave Duke early for the NBA if that option were available.
Austin is back on twitter, promising to prove doubters wrong. No news on where these doubters are going to be put to rest yet.
The tweet came from @AustinRivers_0, which I don't think is his real account, his is AustinRivers_25. It was too good to be true.
I also saw the referenced tweet. I'm not sure this is his actual twitter though. http://twitter.com/#!/austinrivers_0
So now my question is: have any of the other Duke players (that we expect to be back) resumed their twitter activity?
Well if he doesn't return for next season that tweet is a HUGE tease... HUGE. FYI, you really can't test the waters anymore because the NCAA deadline for withdrawing ones name for the draft is before the NBA's early entry date
Yea, that's not his real twitter account.
Try this:
https://twitter.com/#!/AustinRivers25
Sounds like the other one is trying to suck us all in!
For Duke there isn't one. Coach K has said on more than one occasion that he is not a fan of "testing the waters". If a Duke kid declares, K considers them gone. So, I imagine he works with Austin and Mason like he normally does, gathering data, and meeting with the families to discuss the merits of staying vs declaring. After that it becomes go or stay, no inbetween.
FWIW, ESPN's draft expert Chad Ford just published his NCAA Rounds 1&2 NBA Stock Watch column. He bucketed everyone as "Good" or "Bad" and Mason was honorable mention in the "Good" bucket while Seth Curry was honorable mention in the "Bad". Austin was not mentioned. He bases his ratings on conversations with NBA scouts.
I think that Duke's lack of focus on traditional low post offense actually helps our guys who put up decent stats. They look at someone like Mason, see what a good season he had and wonder what he could do if he played somewhere that made him a real focal point of the offense. There is a lot of room in the NBA for 6'10" guys that can run and jump which is why I think Miles will get a real look. As for Mason, I think he's a sure first rounder this year and will only come back if he wants another year of the college experience.
As for Austin, I think we're in kind of a several year lull for high impact PGs and SGs. While their is a ridiculous number of superstar point guards in the NBA right now, the shooting guard position is just as weak. Scanning the draft forecasts for this year and next, there are a ton of quality 3s and 4s and relatively few 1s and 2s. I think it would do Austin a lot of good to come back as a captain and get a real chance to be the acknowledged leader of the team. But, it's important to remember that his life has been all about the NBA...he's been around the NBA game, not the college game, his whole life. In that way, being at Duke was kind of an outlier - by headed to the NBA, he'd really be "going back home". I hope he'd stay to absorb K's teachings, and to get reps as "the man". Getting "the man" reps, I think, really helps a guy take his game to the next level because it fuels that confidence.
I'm not sure, but the other account claims to be twitter verified, and I'm pretty sure that one's not Austin (the one with AustinRivers0).
That account had a lot of tweeting, and I mean A LOT, between February and March when the team decided to give up Twitter.
If you do a twitter search, there are actually a ton of Austin Rivers pages, but a lot of them say they are fan pages and not the real account. I wonder how they get deleted.
Austin's latest tweet is a bit interesting.
Can you explain what that means that Austin wasn't mentioned?Billy Dat
FWIW, ESPN's draft expert Chad Ford just published his NCAA Rounds 1&2 NBA Stock Watch column. He bucketed everyone as "Good" or "Bad" and Mason was honorable mention in the "Good" bucket while Seth Curry was honorable mention in the "Bad". Austin was not mentioned. He bases his ratings on conversations with NBA scouts.