Furphy

Johnny now becomes the latest poster boy for the crapshoot that is declaring for the draft. While staying in college another year would be no guarantee the probabilities are on his side that it would have been a financial gain for him. As a 2nd round pick he will make at most $1.2MM per year with no guaranteed money. More likely he will get just under $600k and spend the majority of his time in the G-league. That also is not guaranteed so injury is a big risk. Whereas if he stayed at KU for another season and proved his worth and made it into the first round, even at the 30th pick he would have about $4.5MM guaranteed over two years. I feel for the kid. And that is assuming he received zero NIL which it seems like someone posted on here that he could not receive because of his foreign player status. He could also end up overseas which for him might not be too bad of a deal since he is from Australia. In fact, he might be well served to go play in Australia for a season, earn about the same he would earn in the G-league or around $600k per year and get some more exposure and playing time. Rough break. He got some bad advice. Having said all that, his life is not going to be anything other than good either way, It is just that he had visions of grandeur that is not panning out.

Around pick 24 I started thinking, he has a gig lined up down under and went through the draft seeing if he'd get a better offer. For his sake I hope I'm right. .

BB down under is pretty big but no where near the USA and Europe. Universities/Colleges only have the equivalent to intramural teams so going pro is the only option. I believe pro-teams can only have a limited number of foreign players so there are opportunities. Will be interesting to see what Johnny decides. Like many of you, I thought he was at least one year premature going pro especially in light of him joining KU so late last Fall.

PS. Will be down under in two weeks for a three week family and fun visit. Will keep me eyes and ears open for anything interesting.

I long ago came to the conclusion that mock drafts are a lot like political poles and advertising: they’re highly unreliable and are created to catch eye balls while having little to do with reality. This is an extremely erudite board and we all knew he wasn’t first round material either by the eye test or analytically.
Another example of “The King has no clothes,” phenomenon.