By Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net

Utah Jazz point guard Deron Williams, the highest NBA draft pick in Illini history, is currently the best player running the point in the NBA. He’s also now the best pro player by far in recent Illini history. And Williams seems to be getting better every time spotlight grows brighter. He’s improved his game every year he’s been in the league and raises it another even level in the postseason.

In the first round of the 2007 playoffs, all three members of the legendary 2005 Illini backcourt re-united. The Houston Rockets’ main perimeter weapon in 2007 was former Illini Luther Head, who finished fourth in the NBA in 3 pt shooting that year. Since then his career has taken a huge step backward and today he finds himself buried on the bench of the lowly Indiana Pacers. He started ten games this past season, but shot just 35% from distance for the season.

-Dee Brown’s huge in Tel Aviv
Dee Brown’s NBA career makes him kind of like another Mateen Cleaves. Both were photogenic, charismatic players who eventually became poster children for a magnificent March Madness run. In the league, Brown is undersized, not a true point guard and way too streaky a shooter to hold down a job. The Brown/Williams situation (Brown was the third string pt. guard, Deron the starter on the 07 Conference finalist team) evokes my infamous “Brad Johnson/Casey Weldon rule.”

A situation where two college teammates find their roles in the professional ranks reversed from what they were in college. Johnson threw less than 30 passes during his entire Florida St. career. The starter was Weldon, a nationally acclaimed and media hyped QB who was relegated to literally playing flag football just a few years later.

In 1999, coincidentally the same year that the Washington Redskins adopted a rip off of the Seminoles logo for their helmet, Weldon was 3rd string and Johnson the starter. Remember it was Brown, not Williams, who got most of the publicity and hype at Illinois. Today, Brown is a star in Tel Aviv after having a cup of coffee with the Washington Wizards and Phoenix Suns following his stint as Deron’s teammate.

Other Illini with notable Pro Careers

-Eddie Johnson’s 19,202 points was the 22nd highest total in NBA history when he retired, but Johnson was never invited to the All-Star game nor a member of any All-NBA team. He did win the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award as a member of the Suns in 1989. This award typifies his career: not a star, but a good role player. Brian Cook and Kenny Norman, who once averaged about 19 points a game for the L.A. Clippers, are two more Illini who qualify for this category. With Cookie actually that might be a stretch. His skills never really translated to the pro game, and he accomplished little in the league.

-Kendall Gill was the fifth overall pick in the 1990 draft.
Gill averaged over 20 points per game twice in his career. First as a second-year player for the Hornets (joining Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson as part of a great young nucleus) in 1991-92. (20.5 ppg) and again for the Nets in 1996-97 (21.8 ppg). In the 1997-98 NBA season, Gill led the league in steals. On April 3, 1999, he recorded 11 steals in a game against Miami, tying Larry Kenon’s single-game record. Unfortunately, his skills were just ordinary and never caught up to his extraordinary athleticism. It’s not likely that an NBA team will sign him away from his cruiserweight boxing career nor his Chicago Bulls pre-game broadcasting gig. His NBA career is in the books.

-Nick Anderson was picked 11th in the 1989 NBA draft. The first pick in Orlando Magic history went on to become arguably the franchise’s greatest three-point shooter. He was the main outside scorer on the Eastern Conference finalist team of 1994-95. Unfortunately, he missed four crucial free throws in game one of the 1995 NBA Finals, and the Magic lost both the game and the series. Shortly thereafter, he developed both performance anxiety and a phobia of shooting free throws. With his head out of the game, his career was never the same. Many feel the Magic have not recognized the contributions Anderson made to the franchise, and hopefully one day that will be rectified. As for fellow 1989 “Flyin Illini” teammates Kenny Battle, Marcus Liberty and Stephen Bardo, their NBA careers can be encapsulated in mere footnotes.
-Derek Harper was the greatest of the bunch before Williams. He teamed with Rolando Blackman to give the Dallas Mavericks a dominating backcourt in the 1980s, and was an integral part of a conference champion New York Knicks team. According to his Wikipedia entry, “Harper played in 1,199 regular season games in his career, ranking him twenty-first in NBA history (as of the 2004-5 NBA season). He retired having the eleventh most steals and the seventeenth most assists in NBA history, and is widely regarded with the dubious distinction as being one of the best players to never make it to the All-Star game.”

Fitting that the two best players in recent Illini history are point guards.

No Kidding

A good point guard is like a socialist: they prioritize an effective distribution of resources, share the wealth and get everyone involved. The best NBA point guards of the future will accentuate the drive-and-kick game. Deron’s game is often compared to the legendary former California Golden Bear Jason Kidd. If we examine both players’ first two years in the league, we see that Kidd made similar statistical jumps from his first to second season. Williams compares favorably in every stat except rebounding. Williams is more powerful than Kidd with or without the ball, but Kidd is quicker. Without question, Williams’ scoring and shooting ability have now surpassed that of Kidd.

Kidd’s versatility has earned him the nickname “Mr. Triple-Double,” and he is third all-time in career triple-doubles with 87. Deron’s NBA career seems to become more impressive each season. But he still has plenty to do when it comes to matching Kidd’s impressive professional resume:

1995 NBA co-Rookie of the Year
8-time All-Star
6-time All-NBA Selection
9-time All-Defensive Selection
5-time NBA regular-season leader, assists per game: 1999 (10.8), 2000 (10.1), 2001 (9.8), 2003 (8.9), 2004 (9.2)
Member of the 2000 U.S.A. Dream Team which won gold at the Sydney Olympics.

However, I think we all know that D. Will can easily get there.

Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net, an Upper Midwest sports webzine. He’s also a member of the Football Writers Association of America, the United States Basketball Writers Association and a sports writer for the Washington Times.com Communities and Walter Football.com

By Paul M. Banks Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net,

The year 2008 truly solidified my theory: to be a fan of either the Chicago Cubs and University of Illinois football means you know a lot about soul-crushing defeats. You know more than losing, you know exactly what it’s like to have any shred of hope or optimism crushed into grains of dust. You’ve had your hopes and dreams imploded so many times that you can’t even feel optimism anymore. You’ve routinely endured the type of losing that makes you wonder to yourself why you keep returning, but in ’08 took that disappointment spiked to cataclysmic proportions. The fallout from that devastation will likely linger for generations.

I’m lucky enough to be in only one (UI football) of these subsets. If I was in the intersection of both these groups (don’t you love using ven diagram lingo?) I’d probably take a bath with an electrical appliance. If you happen to be both a Cubs and Illini football fan, I’d suggest taking the laces out of your shoes and avoiding any and all tall buildings before reading on. I’d also suggest reading this only on a bright, sunny day.

In 2008, the Cubs had their best team since, well since any of us have been alive. Unless you’re a 115 years old. They cruised through the regular season, and had they not taken their foot off the gas pedal a bit in August-September (though it’s easy to understand why they did) the Cubs easily could have won 100-105 games.

Coming off a first round playoff sweep at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks the year before, this season was about October: plain and simple. Actually, it should always be about October, but these are the Cubs- so it’s quite common for even August and September to be meaningless. Still there was no way the Cubs could blow this thing, right? It was also the centennial anniversary of the last title. It was almost too perfect.

It was too perfect; for the L.A. Dodgers, as every Cubs infielder somehow found a way to make an error in the same inning of game 1. The ’08 sweep, combined with the ’07 sweep, and the five outs from a World Series collapse in ’03, makes me wonder if Cub fans have any reason to look forward to April each year. Regarding Cub die-hards, I wonder if they have any reason to live.

As bad as’08 was for those who live in Wrigleyville (and I mean “Wrigleyville” as the state of mind, not a physical location, kind of like “Margaritaville”), it was equally bad or worse in Champaign. Ron Zook, who is most famous for inspiring Southern fried yahoos to create a website encouraging his dismissal, was coming off a banner season. His best laid plans had finally worked as Illinois made their first Rose Bowl since 1983. The Illini got their second BCS bowl bid this decade, tying Iowa. I know, I know that sentence is utterly unbelievable, but trust me it’s true. However, just like in ’01 when the Ron Turner led Illini qualified for the Sugar Bowl, Illinois got EMBARASSED on New Year’s Day. It was another dark day.

And how did Illinois build off the momentum of a 9-4 campaign? By going 5-7 the following season. ‘08 was low-lighted by an embarrassing loss to Western Michigan before a crowd of like 6,000 people in Detroit. In an era where ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY goes to a bowl game, Illinois hasn’t been to back-to-back bowl games since ‘91-’92.

How is that even remotely possible for a team that plays in a power conference?

The Zooker is back for another year even though he REALLY should have been canned after last year’s dismal 3-9 showing; a year in which numerous experts predicted Illinois to finish third or fourth in the Big Ten. I knew better, I picked them seventh, but that was STILL too optimistic.

How can you ever trust an optimistic pre-season forecast for an Illini football team ever again? The state doesn’t have enough money to buy Zook out of his contract, meaning our hope -what little of it that we have left- is years down the road.  Hopefully, his successor will do the right thing: schedule cupcakes, beat them down, and get the program’s confidence back up so they can actually squeak out a few 6+ win seasons in a row, and then we can stop referring to every good Illini campaign as “that fluke season a few years ago.”

Of course, I know that’s an extremely sunny forecast. Because I also thought Turner would use the boost of the ‘01 season, combined with the Chicago Bears playing in his home stadium during 2002, as the perfect springboard for the program recruiting onto itself. And everything would change for the better. But Turner recruited division III level talent on defense and everywhere on offense outside of the tailback position.

At least Cub fans have that whole solidarity, safety in numbers thing going for them. They have each other to lean on in during their hopeless existence from April-September.  You know who Cub fans are because they never stop telling you. They make stupid documentaries, write cheesy books, and record awful music that reminds you they’re Cub fans. Then they stumble around and puke on the sidewalks in your neighborhood. Seriously, Cub fans, shot the f— up! You’ve produced enough cultural crap already. Even your mother is sick of you talking about how much you love the Cubs.

As for Illini fans, I guess they have basketball season. And these days basketball season seems to start in October, or maybe even September.

But all is not lost, right? The Atlanta Braves won a World Series, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won a game when it was below 42 degrees, and the Denver Broncos won a Super Bowl. The Illini won two national titles in the 1920s (I’m sure national championships were a totally different animal and had a completely different name back then) and the Cubs have a date that we’re all sick of hearing for the kajillionth time.

Well, maybe it really is hopeless for both of them. I’ll start believing after the Buffalo Bills win a Super Bowl.

Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net, an Upper Midwest sports webzine. He’s also a member of the Football Writers Association of America, the United States Basketball Writers Association and a sports writer for the Washington Times.com Communities and Walter Football.com

By Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net

With the exception of his BFF Evan Turner, Illinois junior guard Demetri McCamey is perhaps the most written about individual athlete on The Sports Bank. Today “Baby Ben Gordon” announced his intentions to enter the NBA Draft sans agent.

So he will have a chance to return to college next season, and I think he will. Although this is a very weak point guard class, I don’t think he’ll end up a first round pick. So I’ll think he’ll back in Champaign next year. But I think he’s definitely doing the right thing by testing the waters.

Our good friends at Hail to the Orange found this exchange  on Illini HQ.com, it’s Bruce Weber discussing the reality of Cames’ possibly departure and how he’s preparing for it.

How concerned are you that he will leave?

I’m concerned. You know, if he’s a first-round pick, I’m happy for him. He’s got to go. Does it hurt us? Yeah, it hurts us. But a kid only has that window. If he’s not ready my concern is to make sure he does everything right, so he doesn’t get himself in trouble. Whether that’s the agents, taking care of his classroom stuff, so he doesn’t get himself in trouble. I don’t want him hurt for life because some guy on the street told him, “The NBA guys don’t know what they’re talking about, you’re a first-round pick.”

If you add another player in this (2010) class, what are you looking for?

One thing we’re looking for, obviously, is a backup point guard. Six weeks ago, or whenever it was that Demetri had that (good) stretch and his name popped up there, the first thing I said to the coaches was, “We better start looking ahead. Whether he’s a first-round pick or not, we have to look ahead.” We need to at least look around in case something happens. So a point guard. If we found somebody with a little toughness, I think we would look at that.

And here’s an interesting plea for him to stay on McCamey’s Facebook page. This was written on his wall

“1 more please 1 more we will have a chance at a championship richmond u griffey tisdale paul dj leonard bertrand please just 1 more year”

I’m sure Illini fans will agree. And just for s—ts and giggles, I felt it was time to re-publish my favorite Evan Turner quote ever. It’s about hit rivalry with McCamey and it’s from the first exclusive I ever had with Turner.

“We were just so competitive growing up, sometimes I’d be at the gym at night, leaving the gym and I say: ‘Yo fat boy I just put up 400 shots, I hope you’re doing the same thing, because when I see you I’m about to kill you.’ But you know he takes it all in fun. We take it all in fun. It’s about the need to push ourselves, back in high school it was like what did Evan do? What did Demetri do? How did he do? I’m gonna beat him. So it definitely helped us a lot,” Turner said about McCamey.

Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net, an Upper Midwest sports webzine. He’s also a member of the Football Writers Association of America, the United States Basketball Writers Association and a sports writer for the Washington Times.com Communities and Walter Football.com

By Paul M. Banks, President of The Sports Bank.net

Regarding college basketball in the state of Illinois, it is the worst of times. And it’s again the worst of times. We may get zero teams in the NCAA tournament. And it’s all over from the Wisconsin border to the edge of the state that neighbors Kentucky. SIU was on the national stage for much of the 2000s, today they’re irrelevant. DePaul has been a joke for decades. Chicago St. is quite possibly the worst team in all of Division I. Loyola and UIC bring nothing of significance to the table; ditto for all the remaining direction schools. But two schools, Illinois and Northwestern, spent a lot of time this season within field of 65 tournament bracket projections. Not so much anymore.

In February, both Illinois and Northwestern had a very clear map into the NCAA tournament. Both of Chicago’s Big 10 teams had a route that seemed very doable given what he already saw in their body of work. Both failed miserably, and now each will have to run the table in the big ten tournament to qualify for the big dance. Good luck with that. So whose collapse was a bigger overall letdown?

Prosecuting the Illini

Ok, so you beat Michigan State, a team that’s owned you the past three years, and win at the Kohl Center where nobody does…but then lose 5/6 down the stretch? You achieved the marquee wins needed to balance out your dreadful pre-conference losses, only to throw it all away by refusing to play offense in home losses to Minnesota and Wisconsin.

You get firmly into the tourney picture, then give up when it matters most. The home loss to Wisconsin where the inmates ran the asylum was embarrassing, but not quite as embarrassing as putting up 14 in the first half to a team that hasn’t beaten you in your building in like 30 years. Quite pathetic, but let’s not forget the Ohio St. heartbreak on Valentine’s Day. Yes, you can define a heart-breaker as a game that’s over within the first five minutes. It was the worst loss at Assembly Hall since the same year the venue hosted an Elvis Presley concert; quite heartbreaking.

Much of the blame goes on Bruce Weber, because his players folded faster than Superman on laundry day. Take the curious case of Mike Davis, who matured in reverse this season. After a breakout sophomore year, he took a giant step backwards this season. Bruce believed in mid-season that Davis didn’t practice hard enough. Take a look at Davis’ results in the biggest games the illini had to have: lots of 4-13, 3-9, 4-15 type FGM-FGA. And what makes those numbers even more pathetic is the fact those misses includes lots of bunnies, cheapies, and “high percentage shots.”

McCamey isn’t a perfect player, but he is second in the nation in assists. Maybe he’d be first if Davis could consistently finish. This team peaked on February 9th, when they were 17-8.

Prosecuting the Northwestern Wildcats

When you lose twice to Penn St. (a team that started 0-12 in Big Ten play), not to mention Indiana and Iowa, therefore completing your entire set of crunch time losses to the league’s three bottom feeders, it’s hard to imagine a collapse much worse than that. Northwestern had a scheduling quirk which might explain. A front-loaded conference schedule probably demoralized them. All the tough teams came near the start, and we reasonably believed they could fix everything down the stretch when the cakewalk portion kicked in.

Instead the results were devastating. Playing without their best player Kevin Coble, NU got off to a 13-1 start somehow. It looked like the Ewing Theory was at work again. The Cats achieved their first national ranking in 40 YEARS!!! And set a new school record for single season wins. Of course, that 19 win season, the new program benchmark, comes with a qualifier.

I’ll use an example from my own life. In high school I dated both co-captains of the pom pon squad. (my status as a 6th string DB/9th string RB had benefits) but all kidding aside, that is a fact. Just like NU setting a new school record for wins is a fact. Of course, I should also tell you that both relationships with the pom pon girls ended quickly, without getting past first base with either of them. And neither one was exactly scorching hot to begin with. Back to Northwestern basketball history, and its zero total NCAA appearances, two conference titles and one NIT tournament win. As Talking Heads once said, “facts all come with points of view. Facts are never what they seem to be.”

Of their 19 wins this season, only one was of the signature variety: Purdue ranked #6 at the time. The Cats peaked on February 8th when they were 16-7, before going 3-5 in their final eight. Despite just one of those last 8 coming against a ranked team.

The Verdict

This Illini team ended up about as likable as Al Qaeda; or the ‘04 Chicago Cubs. Following/liking this team is bad for your mental health, because they haven’t just been bipolar along the course of the season, they’re bipolar within every half of every game. Take a close look at the four meetings with their Hoosier state rivals. In the four games against Indiana and Purdue, you’ll see 8-10 minute stretches in which they looked like a Final Four team, immediately followed by 8-10 minute stretches where they would have trouble beating Chicago St.

Illinois had an advantage NU didn’t, their conference schedule was soft early on, letting them build momentum and confidence. In mid-February, it looked like they had done exactly that. Then again their signature wins came against teams missing their best player (MSU-Kalin Lucas) and second best player (Wisconsin-Jon Leuer) so maybe these wins weren’t so special.

RE: Northwestern, they lost to MUCH worse competition than Illinois, and what they let slip away is worse because it meant so much more. The first NCAA tourney berth in school history would have been a magical story, attracting national media attention like the 1995 football Wildcats’ Rose Bowl run. These Cats simply choked up a hairball under that pressure. A tourney berth at NU is history, at Illinois it’s just routine.

Usually. The Illini didn’t lose as much, but letting your RPI slip way down into the 70s and 80s during March is just plain unacceptable in Champaign. And Illinois was the only mediocre-or-better team in the conference that didn’t lose a key player for key stretches of the season. Wisconsin, Ohio State, Minnesota, Michigan State, Purdue: all lost their best player (or a key starter) for a few games. The Illini stayed healthy everywhere except inside their own heads. And squandered their talent, luck and resources.

The orange and blue should be used to winning in pressure games now. And Northwestern went this entire season without their best player in Kevin Coble, and still won more games than Illinois, even though NU went 2-8 on the road this season. So I have to go a bit easier on them.

Bigger collapse=Illinois!

Paul M. Banks is Founder/President of The Sports Bank.net, an Upper Midwest sports webzine. He’s also a member of the Football Writers Association of America, the United States Basketball Writers Association and a sports writer for the Washington Times.com Communities and Walter Football.com

Now that is all great, but what will it really mean come tournament time?  Can the Illini make noise?  The inconsistencies have been a problem all season, and they are a result of the team’s soft and inconsistent front court as well as a green backcourt.  So how could a team with two skinny forward/centers and diaper dandies on the perimeter go deep into the tourney?  Demetri McCamey is how.  Until this season, he has been a player who took terrible shots, had a bad assist/turnover ratio, and seemed more focused on his one-on-one moves than on helping the team win.  While he still takes awful shots (and I mean awful), somehow the shots are going in.  His ability is unquestionable, but can he lead?  Can he make his teammates believe in him?

McCamey is frustrating to watch at times, and Bruce Weber knows it better than anyone.  As Weber revealed in an interview early this season:

“If you study him over the course of time, he has very good games and a tendency not to be real consistent, this goes back way to high school and AAU and that’s where he’s got to mature. He has the big one and then average, average. He needs to be more consistent if we’re going to be a very good team because he can do things that other people can’t do.”

McCamey seems to have turned that corner though, eliminating the terrible games and minimizing his own mistakes.  Will it be enough to carry a team with 3 freshman getting big minutes and a starting frontcourt that can’t seem to get a rebound for long stretches?  It’s tough to tell at this point, but you can be damn sure that if he isn’t clicking, this team will be losing in the first round, no matter how high a seed they get.

Illinois lead the entire game in front of their hometown crowd, shooting an impressive 59.3% from the field.  I think Jeff Jordan has actually been a underratedly big part of the team – he has stepped in to play solid ball and a lot of minutes (averaging 18.4 mpg this year vs. 8.4 last year) for the inconsistent Demetri McCamey, who can score really well but makes stupid turnovers, sometimes gives up and gets into foul trouble way too quickly in many games.  Oh, and have I mentioned that DJ Richardson and Brandon Paul are awesome and freshmen?  And Tisdale, Davis and McCamey are juniors?  This year will be fun, but next year will be awesome.  I am predicting the Illini to sneak into the top 10 at some point this year.

PS – what’s with the photo you ask?  It’s the first thing that came up when I used google to search for images of “Bruce Weber”.  I found that to be funny.  I now must immediately delete this image from my hard drive.