Sielski: What if Kobe had been in Simmons' shoes?
One of the big concerns about Ben Simmons, the 6-foot-10 wunderkind from Louisiana State whom the 76ers are likely to select with the No. 1 pick in this year's NBA draft, is that his team didn't achieve all that much in his only season there.
One of the big concerns about Ben Simmons, the 6-foot-10 wunderkind from Louisiana State whom the 76ers are likely to select with the No. 1 pick in this year's NBA draft, is that his team didn't achieve all that much in his only season there.
Though Simmons averaged more than 19 points, nearly 12 rebounds, and nearly five assists a game, LSU went just 19-14 and didn't qualify for the NCAA tournament. To put that incongruity in perspective, since the NBA instituted the draft lottery in 1985, only once has the top pick been a college player whose team did not play in the tournament that season: Pacific's Michael Olowokandi in 1998. Drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers, Olowokandi was a bust, and he serves as an obvious cautionary tale for the risk that Simmons seems to present. Can he be a truly transcendent player if he can't even lead his team into the tournament? How much do a player's coaches, his teammates, and his surroundings matter when trying to make an accurate evaluation of his talent and projection of his future?
After exploring some of the questions about Simmons, these among them, in a column a week ago, I discussed them in more depth over beers with an old friend of mine. I've known him since the fall of 1993, when we were students at La Salle University, and as a counterpoint to the uncertainty over Simmons, he offered a smart and interesting hypothetical:
Go back 20 years, he said, to the spring of 1996, when Kobe Bryant was finishing his senior year at Lower Merion High School and announced that he was taking his talent to the NBA. Imagine that Bryant, as was rumored he might, decided instead to play college basketball at La Salle. Would the Explorers have made the NCAA tournament with him, and if they hadn't, would that blemish have given you pause about drafting him in 1997?
There's a lot to unpack in that scenario, and you have to begin by establishing some context. The only reason that La Salle was thought to be a consideration for Bryant was that his father, Joe, was an assistant coach there under Speedy Morris. And the truth was that it was never a serious consideration. "Kobe wasn't going to come to La Salle," Morris said. If he went to college, "he was going to go to Duke. I was sure of that."
It's no wonder why. Having not made the tournament since 1992, La Salle went 6-24 in 1995-96, its first season in the Atlantic Ten. Because the university had no on-campus arena then, the Explorers played all their home games in the Civic Center, and, the following season, in the Spectrum - two buildings that don't exist anymore. Once, during a road trip to Iowa City with the team while I was writing for the student newspaper, I returned to the team hotel and in the lobby encountered several players chatting with two University of Iowa cheerleaders. One of the players introduced me as "the backup, backup point guard." I was 5-8 and 150 pounds, yet based on their reactions, the cheerleaders didn't find it at all surprising that there might be a spot for me on the roster.
In 1996-97, what would have been Bryant's freshman year, the Explorers went 10-17. He'd have been paired with another dynamic freshman guard, Roman Catholic alumnus Donnie Carr, who averaged 23.9 points a game that season. With that backcourt, Morris said, "we would have been in the tournament. I guarantee it."
It's what you'd expect a coach to say, but the state of La Salle's program at the time makes it an open question whether Bryant would have transformed the Explorers into a 19- or 20-win team. Nevertheless, given Bryant's skills and makeup, given that he was just the 13th overall pick in 1996, it's difficult to see how a season of college basketball, even at La Salle, would have lowered his draft stock for 1997.
"If Kobe would have played, it would have given people more of an opportunity to see his greatness," Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer said. "Whether or not Kobe made the NCAA tournament, you would see his thirst for the game. You'd see his hatred of losing."
That's a key distinction between Bryant then and Simmons now. It goes beyond their disparate styles of play - Bryant the attacking scorer, Simmons the unselfish facilitator. Bryant's influence on each game and his fury over each loss would have been naked. Simmons' weren't, at least not to the same degree, and the fact that LSU had won 22 games and made the tournament the season before his arrival makes the Tigers' relative lack of success with him all the more mysterious.
The other benefit that Bryant enjoys, of course, is that we can look back with the knowledge that he became an all-time great. In hindsight, had Bryant played a year of college ball and entered the 1997 draft, the only player who arguably should have been picked ahead of him was the one who was taken first overall: Tim Duncan.
That would have left Bryant to the team with the second pick that year: the Sixers.
@MikeSielski