Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Should Gradey Dick Stay For Year Two with the Kansas Jayhawks or Go Pro to the NBA?

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Evaluating the upcoming decision for Gradey Dick on if he should go pro in the NBA or come back for his sophomore season with the Kansas Jayhawks. What will go into the decision, what's most likely, and how good could KU be with or without him?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked On Jayhawks, should Grady Dick return to Kansas for his sophomore season? 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 hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We're free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts.

And on today's edition of the show, we're going to be talking about the decision upcoming for Grady Dick. Should he come back? Should he go pro? What will he most likely do? We'll get to all that on today's show, which is kind of the, I guess, the clash episode. Clash is the band that should I stay or should I go now? Well, that's what we're doing for Grady Dick on this episode of the show.

I will not be singing for the rest of the episode. You can guarantee that. Today's episode, though, is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, the official sportsbook of Locked On. Make every moment more. Visit FanDuel.com slash Locked On today to get started. Let's start here. Evaluating the decision for Grady Dick. Let's look at reasons why he would stay in the draft. And just off the top here, if I'm being clear, I guess if I'm sticking to the number that I've kind of put since the offseason began about a week and a half ago, I put a number that 10% chance Grady Dick returns, 90% chance that he goes pro. Over the

course of the last week and a half, two weeks with Rock Chalk Sports Talk, we've talked to different guests, media people around KU, and I actually was on the lower end of things. Now, I did talk to one media person who, I don't know if this person wants to be saying their name on this or not, but they said it's 0% chance. I talked to, I think we had Matt Tate on, and he said 25% to 30% chance. Kevin Flaherty said around, I think it was like a 12.5% chance. My co-host Nick Springer said it was like 15% chance. I think Shreyas of the

Kansas City Stars said 17 and a half percent. So kind of all over the board but everyone you ask has been more on the idea that he does go pro and obviously this is kind of a yes or no. You know what I mean? So is there a difference between saying 0% versus 5% like either way he's going or

he's not. You know what I mean? It's not like a partial thing like he can't partially go pro and play five games for KU um but that's just kind of my read on it and honestly sometimes I feel like the 10% is too high to be completely honest and to be clear I'm normally the person who like last year with Christian Brown when there were some people being like oh he could come back he could be the star of the show next year and it was like he's not coming back he's going to be a first round oh, he could come back. He could be the star of the show next year. And it was like, he's not coming back. He's going to be a first round pick. He is not coming back.

I'm usually on the side of these guys are probably not coming back. So don't get your hopes up. And I'm not quite saying get your hopes up here for Grady Dick, but I do think there's a little bit more to the case of him coming back than there have been in a lot of those past guys, which again, I'm still 90%. He probably goes pro, but let's get into that decision. Here's the reasons that he stay. Let's look at his stock right now.

You look at a bunch of different websites, a bunch of different mock drafts, just to try to get some group think idea of where he's going to go. I know that's the be all end all, but there are certain mock drafts that I know they're talking to executives and GMs and stuff like that, where they're getting a good idea

of where these guys range is. Well, the athletic has a big board, top 100 big board. I really love and trust Sam Vassini's work. And he is number nine on the top 100. Now they just released a mock draft as well, which is obviously different than the top 100. And that had him going number 11. The Ringer big board had him going or had him as the ninth ranked player. ESPN's big board has him as the 11th ranked player. NBA DraftNet had him going number eight in their mock draft and NBC Sports has him going number nine in their latest mock draft. So pretty much everywhere you look that that means it's it's between eight to 11 but most consistently either nine or 11 are the two most common numbers there. Now, the development argument is the most interesting argument to me

as far as which way does it go in this, because you will hear certain people saying, well, you could come back to school and develop a little bit more with less pressure on you. You can turn into being the guy at Kansas, and there are certain developmental things that come with that, both from a physical and mental level of the game. Just learning to be the guy and having the pressure on you to perform night in,

night out, I think could be very beneficial. But also you could make the argument that any type of development you do in college, why can't you just do that in the NBA? You know, in college, you're dealing with classes and certain limitations to the hours of time that you have to play basketball. When you're in the NBA, when you're playing professional basketball, that is your job.

So now you have all the day in the world to work on all these different things. Maybe there are certain mental things you can't get to. Maybe there are certain things that your NBA team wants you to focus on that maybe you'd get a chance to be a little more well-rounded in certain areas that you'd have to focus on in college. It just kind of depends what team you go to and what they're asking you to do, which that you can't really know going into the draft because you don't know exactly who is going to draft you. But the development argument is interesting to me. And I tend to lean to the idea that, yeah, of course, you're going to be able to develop more and learn more in the nba but i think there are which we'll get to that in our next

segment um maybe certain things that you could question about here for would develop better with with grady dick and and ku again though i don't really have the right answer to that um and i'm i don't know you're almost like guessing on, on what exactly could be developed. Maybe next time we get to talk to KU head coach, then, uh, we'll kind of discuss that. Um, I, I think the big reason why he would go pro though, I mean, obviously he had a great season. It'd be unlikely he would go much higher.

You just heard me list off all of those different drafts spots. Number nine, number 11 and stuff like that. This year is not a super deep draft. It's really good at the top victor wembanyama is going to be this like possibly i don't know game changing player scoot henderson's really good brandon miller the thompson twins are really good but it's it's not a super deep draft at all you didn't have a ton of upperclassmen emerge kind of like what ochag baji did last season you don't have a ton of just crazy one and done talent this year so if it's not a

super deep draft or a great draft is it really going to be easier in a future draft for you to get drafted this high i don't know um there'd also be a risk of injury or you know dropping a bit what if you come back to school and your game doesn't get better you just look like the same guy then all of a sudden maybe you're just okay yeah this guy is just a spot-up shooter maybe there's not more to him and maybe he doesn't go that high maybe he does go around pick 20 25 just for the shot or what if you do have a bad injury that uh hurts your draft stock i will say um to this notion aaron knee smith went back to school to vanderbilt after solid freshman year went back to school and he did average like over 20 points per game but it was was a bad Vanderbilt team. He was a knockdown shooter, not much else.

I think Grady has probably more to his game than Aaron Neesmith does, and Aaron Neesmith got injured. He only played 14 games in his sophomore season, but he still went pro afterwards, and he was the 14th overall pick in the draft. So you could say, well, if Grady Dick gets injured, yeah, but because he is this good in the track records there, like he still would probably get drafted pretty high. But overall, the only way this is a different story to me about him staying versus going is if the draft stock falls a bit because it's hard to see him going much higher than, say, pick nine. You don't often see guys who are second third fourth year players in college go pick five six or seven right and so for him like if you're going to be pick nine this year and coming back next year is the difference of you become i mean picked

that really worth it to gain that one extra pick probably not but if there is the risk of where you could move up you know two three four five eight spots in the draft then they're probably you know maybe not for everyone it's worth it but it could be worth it for a guy that could come back and make a bunch of nil money um so let's say he has like bad workouts or something like that or teams study the tape more and they're like well i don't know maybe he's more of in the 14 to 20 range than he is in that 9 to 11 range and then if that's the case and you could convince yourself that yeah coming back maybe next year i could go in that 7 to 11 range then maybe that starts to make a little bit more sense but because we're not seeing that right now

where a lot of these places have him in that 9 to 11 range, it's hard to see that happening. Basically meaning he would have to almost have some sort of flub in a pre-draft workout to kind of drop the stock. Or you just have to really think him coming back helps the development, which again, I don't know the answer to that. That's that old age old question. Where are you going to develop more? Or you'd have to really think that by coming back, he could go in that five to seven range to make that worth it, which we don't normally see. But I'll talk about this in the next segment.

Next year's freshman class isn't supposed to be that special. So any of these are possible, but they're also seemingly unlikely, which is why I have a 90% tag on him probably going pro. And as I've been talking through this, I almost want to raise raise it up to 95 we're going to talk more about this decision and the case for him to possibly come back what would go into that of why i have a 10 tag on that in just a second but first this i looked on jayhawks is brought to you by fanduel sportsbook the tournament is heating up and there's no better place to get in on the action than fanduel america's number one sportsbook that's because right now fanduel is giving new customers a no sweat first bet up to $1,000.

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atlantic so check that out on fanduel don't miss your shot at a no sweat first bet up to one thousand dollars when you join fanduel today just go to fanduel.com locked on to sign up make every moment more with fan and well all right so here's the case i grady dick i have it at a 10 chance that he could return and maybe not zero percent a reason why i'm doing this when i wouldn't have done this with say like christian brown last season to begin with this was the original plan now now plans change you know things adjust and we know things are fluid like that but point being this wasn't a kid who came to school at Kansas and immediately thought yeah I'm gonna be out of here in six months sometimes kids come along and sometimes things work sometimes

things don't for them but if you have one foot out the door and then you have the season that you're expecting to have you're definitely out the door the original plan seemingly for great it comes probably two years at Kansas to take that other year. So your foot wasn't out the door to begin with. Also, next year's draft, because going back to why he would stay in the draft, how much can he really move up the draft boards? One positive for him, this incoming freshman class, the class of 2020, what would this be, 2023, is not supposed to be one of the better freshman classes. And unlike this year, like this past year wasn't a great freshman class when you look at a bunch of the guys who are going to be one of the better freshman classes and unlike this year like this past year

wasn't a great freshman class when you look at a bunch of the guys who are going to be one and done's going into the draft but there still were some pretty incredible talents at least from the college level like a lot of the guys were just not playing in college the thompson twin really uh scoot henderson been playing with g league ignite for two years victor wemenyama is you know he he could change the the game in the nba with a 7-4 center that can dribble shoot and all these things um you don't really have those two guys at the top this next year at least from what you're seeing right now and the freshman class isn't supposed to be great so would it be crazy like what if grady dick came back was a

first team all-american expanded on his offensive game and because the draft class actually is probably weaker next year, even though it's not a super deep draft class to begin with this year, maybe he could move up a few spots to make that a little bit more worth it. And you might be wondering, what is the difference between going pick 11 and pick 7? It doesn't sound like that much, but it really is if you think about it. So if you go pick seven in a draft, I'm just basing this off the rookie scale from this past year. The seventh pick in this past year's NBA draft got $5 million,

a little lower dollars in year one. The 11th pick in the draft got $3.8 million in year one. And then if you extrapolate that over the three years of the contract you're earning about four more million dollars over three years being the seventh pick versus the 11th pick now you might be saying well at the end of the day you're still making you know like 12 million versus like 16 million is that big of a difference um no not to like a normal joe schmo like me but yeah for somebody who is in the n NBA and is making millions of dollars. Yeah.

Ask anyone, would you rather 4 million more dollars or would you not? You know, would you rather make 1 million more per year or not? Right. You'd obviously rather have the money. And so then what the problem becomes is, okay, let's say you are pick 11, 3.8 million dollars. That's tough to turn down in one year. You're going to make a lot of money with NIL. And that's another piece of this. The Grady Dick is about as marketable as anyone in the country with nil money are you gonna make that much probably not the numbers i've heard

around him are around like a million dollars that he's made this year he comes back for another year you're probably adding to that a little more because you're gonna be one of the faces of college basketball maybe he could get up to two million dollars i guess would it be crazy wasn't there rumors floated around that oscar shibuya made like four or five million and if that's the case and he could make that then it becomes a lot more realistic and that number i'd put on grady dick would rise because then you'd be making equal if not at that point maybe even more but he's one of the few guys that can do that because for most people even if they are projected first round picks and they come back they might make a good chunk of change with NIL money, but they're not getting national brands.

Grady Dick's got national brands from car companies to Adidas to all these like tire companies. He's done so much that he is so marketable that I think that does increase it to maybe help me get to 10% there. So I think the money is part of it in that, you know, he's made a lot of money with nil he has that at least to kick back on in case there is any injury or anything weird like that that he has made you know more than most people will ever make in their basketball careers playing to begin with and because there is that difference if he could move up to pick seven verse pick 11 for instance um then maybe it gives you a little bit of something to work with the last part of this that you could add into is the development part back to that conversation my one worry and this depends on what team he goes to because again with the development you

have more time it is your job in the nba so why would you not develop more or at the same rate in the nba than you would in the college game sometimes it's it's dependent on the kid some kids are better in a lower pressure environment where they can be coddled a little bit more at the college game some guys are better when they're off on their own in the nba so part of that is just person to person and player dependent but another part of it is you know sometimes you go to a bad organization sometimes you go to a good organization you know you go to the spurs you're probably like okay i'm gonna develop well you go to the sacramento kings although kings have been really good this year but we've seen so many ku players um not be able to get off the mat from the lack of development there right so you

don't really know who you're going to get picked by going in the draft that's part of the risk but the other part of this is what if you go to an nba franchise that says we think you're going to be a star and then you're developing everything versus what if you go to an nba franchise who comes in they draft you and they say, this is your role. You are a spot up shooter. We don't really want you, you know, working on like we want you working on your defensive game so you can be a three and D wing. We don't really care if you handle the ball. We don't really care if you drive and increase your all around offensive game.

We just want you to be a three and D wing. And so from the development standpoint, the NBA team puts him in programs that are just centered on spot up shooting and defense. And if he wants to add to his complete game in that scenario, if that development track were set on, then he would be asked to do more from an all around game at Kansas this year or next year with Bill Self. So there's the argument over the development. Again, I tend to lean that you're probably going to learn more in the NBA, but I guess there is that little bit of a risk that you could convince yourself. You come back, you improve your all-around game, you win Big 12 Player of the Year on a good Kansas team, you're clearly the best shooter on a team that needs shooting. What if you're a first-team

All-American? And what if you do go sixth or seventh in the draft, kind of similar to, I think Ben McElmore went seventh to the Kings. It was his first year of playing, but it was his second year in college, and that's certainly been a name that I've seen and said myself. I think you could compare Grady Dick to. So I don't think it's crazy as crazy as maybe other guys that we've seen in the past about him coming back. That's why I do have a 10% tag on it, but clearly that means 90% of me

is still assuming that he does go pro all right let's finish up with uh the impact on he would have on ku if he goes or leaves here with locked on jayhawks let's start with him leaving because that is kind of the assumption here grady dick leaves you're basically left with a big hole in the shooting category ku is going to and seems like they already are targeting guys in the transfer portal who can add to their shooting and their scoring on the outside um it obviously leaves more wing minutes it leaves more wing bodies that you have to replace in the transfer portal without him um it's pretty clear that yeah leave big shoes to fail if he leaves if he comes back though if he comes back because right now if

he leaves like they're probably looking at being somewhere between like number eight and number 12 in the country and like preseason rankings right now dependent on who they add in the transfer portal if he comes back you're probably looking at a top five team and if you add some some good transfers in addition to him coming back you might be looking at the number three team top three team in the country and you would be looking at a team that i think legitimately would be one of those top tier elite national title contenders because right now my biggest question if you have a lineup sounds like kj adams gonna play more for next year if you have a lineup with dewan harris kj adams and then a big man ernest jude zubi edgifer leaves a lot to be desired from a shooting standpoint but now if you had a lineup with DeJuan Harris, KJ Adams, and then a big man, Ernest Uday, Zuby Edgeford,

leaves a lot to be desired from a shooting standpoint. But now if you had a transfer who can shoot, you have Grady Dick, who at that point would be the best shooter in college basketball coming back. All of a sudden, your shooting woes are figured out. Your scoring woes are figured out. You have more experience on the wing. You have a player who seems destined to break out in year two. That would completely change everything for this

team and when i look at grady dick he struggled at times defensively i think there were some good things that probably went underrated for grady dick i know sam bassini of the athletic talked about this that yeah there are certain things like maybe one-on-one or in uh switches on you know pick and roll like ball handlers or handoffs like sometimes he would struggle but overall he was a pretty good team defender he would read balls well he would get good steals for you and stuff um so he wasn't perfect there but it wasn't for a lack of trying which makes you think in another year because he tries so hard on that end he would be better as a defender so if he comes back it completely changes everything for this team and what they could possibly be next year and could be the difference between you being

kind of what you were this year which was like yeah they could win the difference between you being kind of what you were this year, which was like, yeah, they could win a title, but they're kind of probably on that second tier of teams on that list versus being on that top tier of teams. That could seriously be the difference of him coming back versus leaving. That's going to do it for this episode of locked on Jay Hawks. Give us a thumbs up. If you could help us out. You can hit me up on Twitter at D Johnson radio.

You can find us wherever you find any of your podcasts. It's also on YouTube. Good rest of your day. See you later on rock truck sports talk Monday through Friday, three to six on KLW and Lawrence. This has been locked on Jayhawks.