Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Impact on Kansas Jayhawks Basketball of Johnny Furphy's Looming NBA Draft Decision One Week Away

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we're a week out from Johnny Furphy having to decide if he's staying in the NBA draft. We're going to discuss what happens based on that decision. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. He's Nick Schwert. You can find him at Nick underscore Schwert.

Starting point is 00:00:31 And on today's edition of Locked On Jayhawks, we're going to be talking Johnny Furphy a week out from the decision. So we'll be breaking down that. I guess the decision could come at any moment now whenever he has. But the deadline for doing that is the 29th, the midnight of that. So a week out from that, we'll get to who cares, talking some other KU basketball, KU football, whose stat line is any way to wrap things up.

Starting point is 00:00:55 Thank you to tuning in to this episode of the show. Thank you to every dayers tuning in to each and every episode of Locked on Jayhawks here. So Nick, one week out from decision day for early NBA draft entrance. And obviously there are some, I don't know, maybe interesting transfer portal targets that this applies to too. But for this episode, talking about Johnny Furphy and how this decision going one way or another affects 2024 to 2025.

Starting point is 00:01:21 I guess before we get into like the effect of him coming back versus leaving, do you want to put a percentage on, on what you would think would be him coming back to school would be. Um, well, you know, if to answer that question,

Starting point is 00:01:38 I have to basically answer where I think he's going to get drafted. And yeah. Do you want some latest mock drafts? Because I have about five or six. Yeah, I want to hear some because I was looking at a few earlier today and I saw two mock drafts that previously had him in the first round,

Starting point is 00:01:57 that previously had him, I think, as a late teens, early 20s, and both of them now have him in the early second. So I'm interested to see what you've found as well. Yeah, so he's 23rd on ESPN, 18th on CBS Sports, 27th on Yahoo, 22nd on The Athletic. But all four of those were done before the week of the combine. So we haven't seen an update there. The ringer, which was also done before before the combine happened had him 34th which

Starting point is 00:02:26 that one was interesting because it said literally from kevin o'connor in the the blurb it said furphy seems unlikely to stay in this year's draft class considering his youth and raw skills but that seems to be counter with what other people are saying and then maybe one of the ones you looked at was the one that was released on tuesday which was from Bleacher Report. And it had Johnny Furphy at 34th. And the blurb there mentioned his athletic test results were disappointing at the combine and a 189-pound frame at his size suggests he's at least a year from being physically ready for NBA minutes. Now, what I think is interesting there about that comment, and this is probably where the

Starting point is 00:03:02 biggest debate, I think, lies between the people who are like, he needs to go in the NBA or he should come back or whatever, is you get the people who are saying he should come back to college because he can develop his game a little bit more and he'll be more NBA ready when he goes. Then you get the counter to that, which is the people saying, why can't he work on his game while he's in the NBA and develop while he is in the NBA when it is his job? And I do think there is 100% validity to that. I also do think there is something that people don't talk about a lot, which is when you invest a draft pick in a guy, the clock is ticking as soon as you bring him on, right?

Starting point is 00:03:34 You only have two, three years before you have to make a decision on a team option if we're bringing the guy back. It's easy to say the NBA team, hey, we're going to bring him on and develop him and let him sit for a year, and then he's going to play. But a lot of times that happens. And then they're like, Oh, this guy's two years from being able to play.

Starting point is 00:03:49 And then he ends up on another team before he has success. But anyway, there's the info in the mock drafts. So what percentage would you like to put on it? I'll tell you the percentage. I think of him coming back is higher now than it was before the combine. I think before him coming back as higher now than it was before the combine. I think before the combine, I probably would have put it at like a 25% chance.

Starting point is 00:04:10 He comes back. I still think more likely than not, he's going to stay in the NBA draft, but it might be closer to 60, 40 right now because everything you just laid out, Johnny Murphy wants to get to the NBA at his highest possible value, right? At what point in time will the NBA be highest on you? Now, the answer to that probably would have been

Starting point is 00:04:34 halfway through last season, but you have to ask yourself, is there a chance that my value is going to be higher next year? And then you also ask yourself the worst case scenario, is there a chance my value is lower? Where do those final numbers come out? Like at your floor, are you still getting drafted? Because right now we know he's not at his ceiling that much. We know, or at least we think we know,

Starting point is 00:04:57 but he could be in the same position next year, be a year older. So NBA teams, like you mentioned, they don't want to take unnecessary risk on a guy just because he's young, just because he's 18 years old or 19 years old, whatever Furphy is to say, Oh yeah, we're getting them at the best possible chance. No, because the flip side is we haven't seen that much of him and we're not sure he's that good. You laid it out. He's skinny. He's not an explosive athlete. Like, yes, he can, he can finish above the rim, but he's not somebody that screams explosion. He doesn't have long arms. I think he was like six, seven and a half with six, eight wingspan. So I'm struggling to find the one thing with him

Starting point is 00:05:37 that NBA teams are going to look at and say, we can't pass that up, which is why I think there is debate over whether or not he's a first round pick, because there are some things to like, there are some cons with his game, which is, is kind of a weird spot to be in if you're Johnny Furphy and trying to make this decision. Yeah. And I would agree with you that 60, 40, but still that means both of us are leaning toward him staying in the draft. So let's start there. Your first reaction, you see the breaking news, wherever you're getting the news from that he is going to stay in the NBA draft. What would be your first reaction? I don't think I would have much of a reaction to be honest with

Starting point is 00:06:15 you because like we've talked about all off season, this is kind of what we expected to happen. So if I hear that he's staying in the draft, I say, okay, like AJ store, Rylan Griffin, it's your time. Even guys like Zeke Mayo. I know that we always get into the position battles and the guys who are potentially gunning for certain spots, but as we know, it can be very fluid between the secondary guards and the wings. You can interchange them. You can play three wings, you can play two point guards. so it really affects all of the guys specifically the incoming transfers and then there's a trickle down effect from there if you want to get into dudes like ricky's passport and say okay well now there's one less guy for you to

Starting point is 00:06:54 have to beat out in order to get minutes on this team so i think i because i've been operating all off season with the idea that he's not coming back, it would, it wouldn't really change anything. Him staying in the draft. Now that would, that would probably change my thought process and the guys that I'm looking to have specific roles a little bit more than him deciding to stay in the draft. Right. And for me, it almost becomes a little bit of, Oh, he stayed in the draft. Who is Kansas going to get next? Like that becomes my immediate reaction of what guy is Kansas going to get? What other players are going to stay in the draft process?

Starting point is 00:07:27 Who's going to still be available there? Because it feels like to me, if he comes back, like maybe your roster is just kind of set, at least as far as like the real rotation players are going to be going after. Maybe you add somebody who's more developmental. On that note, by the way, I think the rotation is set. If Furphy comes back, okay, cool. Now we start to do the math. Who's the odd man out. But if Furphy stays in the draft, this rotation set,

Starting point is 00:07:53 and I know that there are names. I get it. I know that people want to get this kid from BYU. I know that like, Oh, what about this guy? What about that? That's fine. I'm not denying that there are talented players out there that could potentially be in this rotation. I'm telling you, I'm looking at KU's roster for next year. And I see eight, I see nine guys. I don't really see a hole that KU needs to go and fill. Sure. I think it would be less about that. And maybe it would be one of the few years that, and I'm going to do an episode on this at some point, because I actually went back and looked at the rotation each and every year under Bill Self to be like, did he ever stretch it to maybe nine deep in a year where maybe they were a little bit deeper? And when you're talking rotation, it's a little difficult to quantify because you're talking like, are you talking total minutes?

Starting point is 00:08:40 Are you talking games played, minutes per game? Are you talking about when it's NCAA tournament time and the game's on the line? But you could go back to, for instance, I don't know, the 2011 team, which that team was pretty loaded. They had basically a nine-man rotation that year. And by some metrics, they had a 10-man rotation that year. So I do think it's possible they could get Balloon up if Furphy came back

Starting point is 00:09:02 or if they did land, say, a Jackson Robinson or something like that. But yeah, I do think it's it's I don't know, it's going to be hard to crack the rotation for any new player if they're not like really, really good. OK, flip side of this. If Johnny Furphy does decide to return, you see that news. What would be your first reaction? Can I cuss on here? Right? Like that's holy shit. Holy shit. They were already the number one team in the country preseason. And now you return a guy who was your third, arguably second best player last year.

Starting point is 00:09:33 It's like one of those good problems to have. If you get Johnny Furphy back, I'm sure dudes like AJ store and Ryland Griffin are, are going, wait a minute. The coaches told me he was for sure going pro, right? Because those conversations were had by the way, when Bill Self and Curtis Townsend and Norm Roberts are out there recruiting these guys, Johnny Furphy and his NBA decision comes up in

Starting point is 00:09:57 probably all of those conversations and those recruitments. They're saying, Hey, listen, we're losing a lot. We're losing two of our top three scores from last year. Oh, what about Furphy, coach? Oh, yeah, he's gone. Yeah, we're not expecting him to come back, which at the time they may have actually believed. You bring Furphy back into the mix. One of these guys who we've spent the last month and a half talking about their role, how they fit, why it's a great fit, why we're high on them. One of them is going to play more of a secondary role on this team or bye-bye, right? They're going to say, you know what? On second thought, maybe I'm going to reopen this recruitment. There were a couple other pitches that were pretty enticing. Maybe I'll revisit those because

Starting point is 00:10:40 Furphy is going to play like Furphy. I don't care what you think about any of these incoming guys and how good they are or how good they would have been on last year's team. I know that I've said KJ Adams is going to see a reduced role on this team. Johnny Furphy is not. Johnny Furphy is going to be a starter. He is going to play 30-plus minutes a night. He is going to be one of the go-to guys for this team offensively. So we can argue about who's going to lose out a spot, but I don't see Johnny Furphy losing

Starting point is 00:11:08 playing time to any of the guys that KU brought in. Yeah. And I do think, yeah, it affects Griffin in store. Maybe the minutes go down a few here or there, maybe the possessions, the shots go down a few here or there, but honestly, my, the name you mentioned KJ Adams is the one where I find it most intriguing because it's like all this conversation that seems to be pretty divisive among KU fans. Is KJ going to be in the starting lineup or is he not? I think it becomes easier to get to the avenue of not if Furphy comes back because at that point, like he brought Ryland Griffin over as a starter from a final 14. Is he really coming off the bench?

Starting point is 00:11:43 Like AJ Storr was all Big Ten second team. He was going to be all Big Ten preseason team this year 14 is he really coming off the bench like aj store was all big 10 second team he was going to be all big 10 preseason team this year is he really coming off the bench like obviously dewan and hunter aren't coming off the bench furphy coming off the bench he's going back from being a possible first round pick to come back to school to come off the you know what i mean like you start to make it a little bit easier to get to that conversation of maybe it makes kj off the bench and that would be my i, I think, first reaction. Yeah, and I think KJ's coming off the bench. It's just a matter of how many minutes is he going to play. And you have to start getting into these conversations of,

Starting point is 00:12:14 okay, let's say we play Furphy, Storr, Griffin. All of them are playing 30 minutes a night. And then we've still got Zeke Mayo. We've still got Rakees Passmore. You've got Flory. Like whoever you think is going to be in that rotation you start getting into these combos of what does KJ bring to the table that those guys can't and vice versa and I think it will become increasingly difficult for KJ to have feathers in his cap to say oh yeah I'm but I can do this because those guys are all six seven seven, six, eight athletes who can shoot.

Starting point is 00:12:46 And with KJ, you're six, five, you're an athlete, but you can't shoot. You don't really rebound that well. Kind of a liability on defense. I'm not trying to bag on the guy, but these are the real conversations that this coaching staff is going to have as they try to figure out this rotation. We're going to continue on who cares a little talk about some of the recent walk-on additions, some football stuff on this episode of locked on Jayhawks.

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Starting point is 00:13:53 Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay guaranteed fit only available to U.S. customers. All right, continuing on here with another episode of Who Cares? We're going to talk about two subjects, then figure out which one you care a little bit more on. So this was news that came out yesterday. Big 12 presidents and chancellors voted unanimously to authorize House settlement terms of the NCAA case right now, which basically means there's this case going on where a bunch of these schools and conferences are going to have to pay back past athletes for NIL stuff. And they're coming to a settlement that basically could lead to,

Starting point is 00:14:30 basically schools would pay say around $20 million per year out of their own money and, you know, read more details on the stuff, but kind of interesting there or college football, 25, the video game coming out in July. What do you care more about? I mean, you know, the answer the answer you know the answer to this you set me up because this is the easiest who cares I've ever been a part of you talking about one thing like the NCAA's ongoing fight towards amateurism and paying players that I don't care about at all just tell me how it ends right I want to skip right to the season finale and that's it I don't care about at all. Just tell me how it ends, right? I want to skip right to the season finale and that's it. I don't need to see episodes one through nine. Meanwhile, something

Starting point is 00:15:11 I've been waiting a decade for patiently, mind you, I am so excited to waste so much time, be so unproductive, be a terrible partner to my fiance, Be a terrible friend to anybody who's not playing that game because I'm going to have an online dynasty. I'm going to take Kansas to the college football playoff. We're going to win titles. We're going to recruit five stars. We may even join the SEC. I cannot wait.

Starting point is 00:15:37 I cannot wait to take the reins of a program in this college football game. And no matter how good or bad it is, it will be the greatest game ever to me. I just, I fail to see even with my lofty expectations, how it's not going to meet and surpass them. Yeah, no, I, I agree. I'm way more psyched about the second thing. Okay. Uh, KU adding a walk-on and Noah Shelby, who's going to red shirt after he transferred from rice or KU adding an in-state walk-on and will thang vol uh so i haven't exactly grinded the tape on will thang vol can you tell me anything about him i can tell you that he's a shooter i can tell you that uh i talked to some people who saw him play in the 5a state like tournament or whatever and said that this kid's really good um but it's also a walk-on so you remember we did

Starting point is 00:16:27 this with like i i've started to try to pump the brakes on this happening but um it feels like every few years there's a walk-on that comes on where it's like he's better than like a lot of the other walk-ons the ku brings on you know what i mean like he's like legitimate to enough to play it like a really good d2 or like maybe a little winstrah exactly exactly and that's what I was thinking and yeah we talk ourselves into you know maybe by the time they're a senior they could be a seventh eighth man they could be Connor Tehan and it like never happens I I mean there are instances right Matt Kleiman who's like running for something in office right now right uh connor t hand i guess but i don't know you know i can see where you're kind of directing me you're kind of hurting me to one answer but i'm actually gonna just because you did that i'm actually

Starting point is 00:17:15 gonna go with will thing ball am i saying it's a great last name it's a great last name he looks exactly how i pictured i just looked him up on Twitter. Um, you know, I'm not really that interested in either one of these guys, because as you said, they're walk-ons. I know Noah Shelby, maybe it was a little bit more highly touted coming out of high school, but sign me up. You know what? I'm ready to be wrong again. Will thing ball is the next great hope from the state of Kansas. And I think he is going to be, you know, on that short list of guys like T-Han and Matt Kleinman. And then it's pretty much it. That's pretty much it, but he's going to be number three. Okay. I love that.

Starting point is 00:17:51 I mean, that'll just open up so many different, like for the KU students who are camping, lots of names you can work with that with. Oh yeah. That's great. Okay. Last one here. KU football recruiting Bryce Foster, the transfer center from Texas A&M

Starting point is 00:18:04 or Happy Gilmore making a sequel? Again, I think you know exactly which way I'm going to go with this. Happy Gilmore making a sequel. Unfortunately, unlike college football playoff, which I waited 10 years for, we've been waiting 20 plus years for Happy Gilmore. And unlike the college football video game, my hopes for this are much lower. I'm not expecting to be blown away. Sequels very rarely do well.

Starting point is 00:18:29 Comedy sequels hardly ever do well, especially ones where you try to take 20 years off. Did you see the Dumb and Dumber sequel? Like, did that did that do it for you? Like, it's like if they tried to come back and do Wedding Crashers, I would go see it. Trust me, I'll see it. I'll watch it the first day it comes out but i'm not going into it expecting it to be like a classic comedy that lives up to the expectations it's two different adam sandler's too right that was prime adam sandler this is like

Starting point is 00:18:56 this is the adam sandler who might be a billionaire now yet doesn't really seem too keen on on making great movies you know our tastes change comedy in general change these comedians change so my my expectations are low but if it just gives me a few little callbacks to the first one some inside jokes the lines the one-liners that we've been repeating with our friends for two decades that alone will make it worth it like i went and saw the anchorman sequel one time. I didn't watch it a second time. My friends and I didn't talk about it afterwards. We weren't saying, Oh my God, did you see that one scene, you know, where brick did the same thing that he did in the first movie, but it was good. What? No, it won't be anything like that. It's just gonna, it's gonna get a billion watches on Netflix,

Starting point is 00:19:44 right? It will be the most streamed movie on Netflix. And then everybody will get on Twitter to talk about how much it sucked. We know how this is going to go, but that's okay. That's okay. For me, it's Bryce Foster, just because I don't think it's going to be very good.

Starting point is 00:19:57 And I'm not going to let it ruin the first one. Bryce Foster could not be very good. Bryce Foster might not even be a Jayhawk. Who knows? Right. So, you know, I feel like you have, could not be very good bryce foster might not even be a jayhawk who knows right so you know i feel

Starting point is 00:20:05 like you have you're judging the movie unfairly compared to bryce foster who you're just excited about knowing i am telling you the movie is not going to be good there is hope for bryce foster to be on you don't know that you don't know pretty good about that i feel pretty i would wager a very large sum that that it will end up very poorly. Yeah. An idea. So good. And honestly, they waited 25 years. Yeah. You know, like at least with the hangover, they knew they had something going good. So they just cranked out a couple of sequels right away. Like get in while it's hot. Usually if there's an idea that's really good, they don't sit on it for two and a half decades. Also a mistake not to call it happier Gilmore, but all right, let's finish up.

Starting point is 00:20:47 Whose stat line is it anyway on Locked on Jayhawks? All right, we're back for whose stat line is it anyway? I'm going to give a stat to Nick and he's going to try to guess who it is. So this is a KU basketball stat. How many Kansas players had double digit dunks this past season you are a dunk aficionado I am I am a dunk aficionado thank you uh okay so I know one KJ Adams definitely had double digit dunks he led the team with 59

Starting point is 00:21:19 you know Hunter had a lot of buckets around the rim how many dunks though you know, Hunter had a lot of buckets around the rim. How many dunks though? You know, um, I'm going to go with three. Okay. The correct answer is four. Okay. Do you want to name the other three or try to? Yeah. So I'm going to go KJ.

Starting point is 00:21:39 Yep. Johnny Furphy. Furphy is fourth with 11. Okay. Hunter Dickinson. he is second with 17 how about parker brown park around his third at 13 i did not think you would get that one and you always love throwing in some parker brownies nobody talks more parker brown than you do i like how you just got Parker Brownie. Yeah. Do you, I don't know, does that like do anything for you that you had basically one guy who was like a good dunker?

Starting point is 00:22:12 And I know we've gone into this before that, like, I know it sounds silly because dunks are just fun and they're entertaining and it's fun to say and everything, but like legitimately best teams dunk it a lot because you have a lot of good players, a lot of good transition plays, a lot of good athletes, stuff like that. It's not always the case, right? There's some teams that play below the rim, but like from Kansas's perspective, the best teams, a lot of times have the most dunks. I don't know. Does that mean anything to you? Well, yeah, it does mean something to me, but I would take it a step further and say that the best teams get most of their buckets from dunks and threes. Okay.

Starting point is 00:22:45 You got a terrible combination of none of that, right? They didn't dunk it well, and they didn't shoot threes. I think next year's team is going to be much more proficient from shooting. And while they may not dunk as much Hunter Dickinson, a pretty efficient post score. I know that kind of goes against like conventional analytics and,

Starting point is 00:23:06 and what they think good shots are versus bad shots. But if you have the very best of the person who does that and Hunter, then I think I'm okay with that being the starting combination of how KU is going to get their offense. All right. Well, how many dunks did KU add? This is the next question.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Quick follow-up to that. More dunks, AJ store plus Zeke Mayo plus Rylan Griffin or Hunter Dickinson plus Elmarco Jackson plus Kevin McCuller? I'm going to say the transfers. I feel like AJ Storr had quite a bit of dunks i don't really know about rylan griffin aj store had 27 so he would finish second on ku last year zeke mayo only had

Starting point is 00:23:52 one and then rylan griffin had eight so they had 36 total hunter dickinson had 17 kevin mcculler had nine el marco jackson had four so 30 total so yes the transfers had more why'd you include hunter dickinson or uh kevin mcculler he's gone well you just needed to hit your number you needed to hit your number wanted to make it close you know okay fair enough if i if i would have given you i don't know zach clemens like zero pretty easy yeah right giving you dewan harris you know same thing all right alright where can you find your work what do you have going on right now I can check out my podcast could be wrong wherever you get your podcast as well as YouTube

Starting point is 00:24:32 alright he's Nick Schwert I'm Derek Johnson that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks find the show anywhere you get your podcast including on our YouTube page we'll be back next time for another player deep dive on LOJ

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Impact on Kansas Jayhawks Basketball of Johnny Furphy's Looming NBA Draft Decision One Week Away

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