Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - FLORY ENTERS PORTAL AND DRAFT | Could Bidunga Still Return to Bill Self & Kansas?

Starting point is 00:00:00 For the second stray year, Florida Bidunga has entered the transfer portal. He's also entered the NBA draft. I cannot stand this current age of college basketball. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's going on to Eric Johnson with another episode of Locked on Jayhawks. A little bonus episode is Flore Bidunga has entered the NBA draft and the transfer portal. We're going to break it all down on today's episode.

Starting point is 00:00:34 as well as how this potentially affects KU's roster build, Bill Self-Roster Build. And if this could just be a repeat of last year where Flory entered the portal and then wound up coming back to Kansas, could that just happen again here for Flory? Let's start with the news. This was tweeted out by Pete Thammell earlier this evening

Starting point is 00:00:53 from Pete Thamel of ESPN. Sources Kansas sophomore Flory Bedunga intends to declare for the NBA draft while maintaining his collegiate eligibility. He also intends to enter the transfer point. portal as he's keeping open the option to return to college. Now, if you look at most mock drafts, they have him in the second round where he would, I feel pretty good that he would get drafted. But you know, you never know. Maybe you could sneak into the late first round, but it's a really good draft, like probably going to be a second round pick if he stays in, but at the very least he can

Starting point is 00:01:24 go through the process, right? And this becomes complicated for a couple reasons here. It's the timing of everything in terms of how long this whole process could take. Now, again, Kansas was able to get him back last year. But this is basically twofold now. Last year, he just entered the portal and KU was able to get him back out of the portal. Now you have to get him out of the portal and out of the NBA draft process. It becomes a little bit more difficult. Now happening in a second year in a row, it's like, you know, do you hit a certain wall

Starting point is 00:01:51 of your bill self where you're tired of dealing with the guardians of Flory, which I've said repeatedly before. Like I've heard Florey is a great kid. I've heard the guardians are disliked among the industry. Let's just put it that way. So could he still come back? I mean, after last year, I'm absolutely not going to rule it out. And Flory obviously had a great season.

Starting point is 00:02:10 He was the Big 12 defensive player of the year. He put up really good stats with his points and rebounds. But it's not as easy to just be like, well, just do what you did last year and bring him back. And I'm going to tell you why, the big reason why is money, but it's also a little bit based on how you're trying to build this roster. We'll get into that next. Today's bonus episodes brought to you by TurboTax. It's tax time. but for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is a lot.

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Starting point is 00:03:37 players could wait a month to commit. But I think after what we saw at the football period where there was the shorter window, you're going to see commits come hot and heavy and come very fast. Now, the basketball one's a bit different because the football one, they were trying to get them done before the start of the semester. You won't have to worry about that with basketball as long. Like it's a much longer window to win the summer semester would start up. But there comes a line here where it's like, if Florey is going to play this out,

Starting point is 00:04:05 like you can't just if you're Kansas sit there going hey we're assuming we're going to need X amount of dollars probably a pretty hefty fee i don't know three four million dollars to bring florrie back onto the team and we have to set that aside we can't use it and bring in another player and then what happens if all of a sudden flory does stay in the NBA drafter then what happens if florrie all of a sudden does decide to transfer to there's been rumors for i don't know weeks now that like duke had been tampering and and that he's going to end up going to duke who knows if that that happens or not. But let's say like you end up with a situation where you haven't attacked the transfer portal at the center position and you're waiting to see what's going to happen to

Starting point is 00:04:45 Florey and then all of a sudden you get to that point and it's weeks. It's a month down the road and Florey decides he's going to go to Duke. And now you're sitting there with this extra money that you don't have to use on the player you would have wanted to use because he has committed elsewhere over this period of time. And now you're kind of stuck with your hands and your pants without, you know, a stud center that you want. So that certainly makes it complicated. And it makes me think that, like, if you remember that the Flory situation was resolved, I would say, I don't know, was it within days or something of him entering the portal?

Starting point is 00:05:17 I would just say, like, that feels like the one to me. If they can get it resolved of Flory in the next, I don't know, week, for instance, somewhere around that amount of time, then, yeah, you bring Flory back. But the other thing you'll see is when you look at the transfer portal right now, I don't know that there's a lot of great wings in the, train for portal right now. There's a lot of like smaller guards who can score coming up from smaller schools. And the one position that I actually feel good about in the portal right now is the center position. That feels like honestly you can make the argument the center position is the

Starting point is 00:05:48 best available in the portal for Star Power right now. And we're going to do a bonus episode. I think tomorrow talking about some of the players that now I'm keeping an eye on in the portal that I think would be interesting fits if you don't bring Flory back. So we'll get to that later. that makes it complicated too that it's like okay well if you don't know for sure for he's going to be back do you just say let's take the known commodity this guy wants to transfer here and then there's the money element of this too right like um i think the idea for for k u was yeah floor abdunga was going to get a raise from what he was making last year and he was going to make a good amount of money but is there a line on that money you know like like with

Starting point is 00:06:28 darren peterson for instance i don't know that there would have been a line for k u in terms of the money obviously there's there's a limit of what you can actually do, but or where you're tapped out. But like, I think with every player nowadays, it becomes a conversation of, I think I want you on the team, but at what cost? You know, it's like, I don't know, like if you bring on a player to be, if you give a player star money, but they're a role player, like that's a misuse of funds, even if you like the player, if that makes sense. And so I wonder what that line is with Florey, because Florey is one of the best defenders. in the country. And that is clearly worth a big dollar, right? A really good shop blocker,

Starting point is 00:07:08 um, good rebounder. The offense though comes and goes. We know when he played against bigger opponents, the offense struggled a bit. And the proof is in the stats, I mean, in the quad one games that Kansas played this season, Flore's point per game average dropped to about 10 and a half points per game. And Flores field goal percentage dropped to 54% on the season in quad one games. Those are not very good offensive numbers for a center who is usually very efficient for. from dunking the ball. So, and we saw it at the end of the season, kind of an inability to score on the post up and stuff. Now, he can clearly get better at those things and he is such an impactful defender that I would want to have him on the roster. And I've kind of said all along, like,

Starting point is 00:07:47 I would love for KU to go after like these offensive-minded players in the transfer portal and just say, hey, you have Bill Self and you have Florey anchoring the defense. That'll be enough for the defense and figure out the offense with just getting good talent. Well, losing Florey makes that a little bit more complicated. Now, like I said, they're some interesting centers that are in the transfer portal that you can go to. But that is the conundrum for KU. There's the timing conundrum and there's the money conundrum. What is the number that we are worried that if the number goes to, that we're going to be eating into the rest of the roster for a player who we think is really good and really valuable, but does have limits to his game and the

Starting point is 00:08:25 timing element of, well, is it going to cost us potentially other players in the portal? And the other thing is because this is the second straight year where this has happened, are you more likely to just say, okay, this is just a pattern now, like go do what's best for you, go do something else? I don't know. It'll be very interesting to see kind of what happens there. So how does this affect Bill Self, the rest of his roster builds for KU? We'll get to that next. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Robin Hood.

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Starting point is 00:10:41 But again, different stakes, kind of this go around will make things very interesting. So how does this affect the rest of the roster for KU? Well, for one, like I said, it's going to be very telling what does Bill Self do in the portal. You know, do you just say, hey, we don't know what's going to happen in Flory. Let's go get the best center we can in the portal. And if Florey does want to come back, we'll try to make it work and play too big basketball. Or do you say, sorry, like you miss. your chance or the flip side is do you just bring in like a body somebody that you would be like

Starting point is 00:11:10 okay i'm fine if he's being a rotation player and that'll hold down the fort at least give us the bodies there and if florey does end up not coming back then we'll look to the international market later in the game you know i i mean all of those are options i will say this like you got to retain retain paul and bia now for security i think in general with the way he finished the season you would think that Paul and Bia would have been a priority, so to speak, to retain, obviously at a different price level of Flory, but what if Paul and Bia now comes out and says, hey, Florey's gone, I want an extra $100,000? You know, I don't know, maybe that's worth it just to retain the security or something like that. Does this also make it more likely that Bryson Tiller could return to Kansas?

Starting point is 00:11:49 Now, to me, that felt like a 50-50 decision to begin with, but does this free up more funds for KU to say, hey, you know what, we want some continuity back, we want some continuity in the front court, or does it make it less likely? Like, does Bill Self feel comfortable with Tiller at the five, or does Bill Self prefer Tiller at the four? And if you're bringing him back now without Flore, you just slide him more to the five, you know? So I think that kind of becomes an interesting question too.

Starting point is 00:12:14 And then in general is like, what do you do with the rest of your roster additions? Because again, as I was saying, like, if you're looking into the transfer portal saying, hey, let's get all these offensive-minded players because we know we have Florey Padunga to anchor the defense, well, now you don't have that in your back. back pocket anymore. So yeah, sure, maybe you can find somebody who brings good defense at the center

Starting point is 00:12:36 position in the portal. But until you do that and until you know you have that good defender at the center position, do you have to be less open to different players in the portal who are like, I just did a transfer portal deep dive on Isaiah Johnson. And I thought Johnson would be, it would make for a good target for KU. But the question is, if you brought in, say, Isaiah Johnson and had him next to Taylin Kinney, That might not be a very good defensive backcourt, but I was like, ah, it could be fine. You have Bill Selfial, you have Floyd Bredunga.

Starting point is 00:13:05 Well, now you don't have a floor of Bordunga. So then you have to now worry about those things where you're like, well, we can't bring in the players who have questions about the defense right now. I think it's going to be very, very interesting. And who knows? Like, again, is this just a ploy to get more money out of Kansas? And maybe KU made a final offer and the guardians didn't like it. And they said, all right, we're going to enter him in.

Starting point is 00:13:24 And KU has to come back with an extra $500,000 or whatever to get them to come out. Who knows what the process is here. but I'm telling you this one is definitely more complicated than it was last year. All right, that'll do it for this bonus episode of the show. We will have a, what does the roster look like right now episode in full coming out tomorrow? And then we'll try to have a bonus episode coming out Friday afternoon talking about who are some potential names that might make sense for KU to kick the tires on if they do go a different direction from Flory. All right.

Starting point is 00:13:52 This has been locked on Jayhawks. See you next time for another edition of the show.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - FLORY ENTERS PORTAL AND DRAFT | Could Bidunga Still Return to Bill Self & Kansas?

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