According to the Birmingham News, Ronald Steele has decided to become eligible for the NBA draft. This is far more surprising than Richard Hendrix’s no-brainer of a decision, but the biggest part of this is the crushing blow to Mark Gottfried. His season-long insistence that they were a healthy Steele away from actually being a better-than-terrible team was only belying the fact that he has no actual plan for Steele’s inevitable exit next season.
i see two problems for Gottfried if he sticks with the draft. First, he’s already not exactly a fan favorite these days, and now his excuse for failure last season has been removed without a resolution of the real issue. Second, when the howls of fans come calling for your head after Bama is summarily dismissed from the Maui Invitational this fall, they’ll have a pretty strong argument: what does it say about his ability to coach if a player was better off after a year of sitting out than he was playing for him?
.png)
Same deal as Hendrix, he’s just using his “test the waters” card in his last available year to do so. Steele, unlike Hendrix, is probably just using it to get some realistic feedback and input from the front office NBA people on what parts of his game he needs to improve. He won’t get drafted this year, not with Derrick Rose, etc. ahead of him. He’ll be back next year.
I agree paragon. There are too many PGs coming out that have an excellent tournament run backing them. All Steele will have is workouts and two-year old film on his side. But I imagine that rare possibility has got to scare Gottfried to death.