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Look, you can get mad with Jim Boeheim for not agreeing with another Syracuse Orange freshman for going pro if you want. But to do so requires you to deny the truth: Jim Boeheim is Jim Boeheim. He's not trying to be a dick. He's just telling you what he thinks.
During the No Huddle Tour stops on Tuesday, Boeheim was asked about Malachi Richardson, who made it official that he's going to enter the NBA Draft this week. Boeheim might not have used the same rhetoric as when he chastised Tyler Ennis and Jerami Grant a few years back but he clearly hasn't changed his feelings on the issue.
Jim Boeheim on Malachi Richardson: "I don't think any freshman is really ready for the NBA."
— Stephen Bailey (@Stephen_Bailey1) May 17, 2016
Boeheim then leaned in on draft analysts and how good or bad they are at predicting where someone will get drafted.
"I don't think he's moved anywhere," Boeheim said at SU's no-huddle tour stop in Rochester. "That's just media nonsense. That's just the media and agents talking. Pro teams have not even had a thought about who they're going to draft. The top, maybe the top two or three prospective picks, are thinking about the two or three guys they might take.
"Everybody after that, they have no idea who they're going to pick. You can't tell anybody right now that they're going to go here because they haven't even thought about it."
"The guy that has moved him up is the same guy that had Tyler Ennis at 6-10, and we all know how that worked out," Boeheim said. "And he had Jerami Grant at 20, and we all know how that worked out. I guess when you have no track record, I guess that doesn't matter. I guess you still have credibility somehow."
"Of course, whenever I say these things, people say I'm too tough, too abrasive," Boeheim said. "It's like, media people can have their opinions and it's OK. But when a coach has his opinions, it's not good; he shouldn't do that. I've never followed that procedure exactly."
Of course, the flip side might be to say that Ennis and Grant are doing fine in the NBA and are probably doing as well as they would have done had they stayed in school another year.
Wow. Some people are so bitter.
— Tyler Ennis (@tdot_ennis) May 18, 2016
Shot at Boeheim? Can't say for sure (but Mali RT'd it).
Boeheim may be playing a semantics game and it's not the best thing in the world for a college basketball coach to constantly dig at his superstars leaving early in a sport where that's just going to keep happening. But still, it's Boeheim. This is what he does.