Don’t worry about Brown or MSU
As news spread that Shannon Brown had hired an agent and wouldn’t be returning to Michigan State for his senior season, fans immediately began speculating on our forums about how well MSU could do next season. Most agreed that it would have been a rebuilding year with or without him in the lineup. Most also agreed that Brown had made the right decision and wished him well. Todd Schulz of the Lansing State Journal believes that we shouldn’t worry about Shannon Brown or MSU’s program.
OK, so there are no true no guarantees in life, let alone the NBA draft or big-time college basketball. But in this case, with these two fierce competitors, there are a couple of truths you can take to the bank (just don’t get in line behind Brown because counting all the zeroes on the check he’s about cash could take awhile):
1. Brown will make it in the NBA, regardless of where he’s selected in the June 28 draft.
2. Izzo will not - I repeat, will not - allow the Spartans to stink next season, regardless of the crater left by Brown’s premature departure.
That’s not speculation. That’s not a hope or a guess. It’s simply history.
Joe Rexrode of the Lansing State Journal spoke with several draft experts and most agree that Brown made the right decision.
“I’ve always thought he was a first-round pick,” said Chris Monter, a draft analyst who publishes Monter Draft News. “I expect him to go somewhere in the middish-type area of that first round.”
So do Monter contemporaries at ESPN, CBS Sportsline and NBAdraft.net, all of whom get their information from anonymously quoted scouts and execs. The problem is that some teams deliberately misinform at this time of year, to throw competitors off the scent of their true intentions.
Brown doesn’t seem to have any regrets about his decision to head to the NBA based on these quotes from the same LSJ story.
“There won’t be any regret because it’s my decision,” Brown said via teleconference, when asked about the possibility of not going in the first round. “There’s no regret at all. There’s a possibility I could get picked in the first round, there’s a possibility I could get picked in the second round, and there’s a possibility I won’t get picked at all. It’s something I have to deal with.”
Brown will hire Chicago-based agent Mark Bartelstein, CEO of Priority Sports and Entertainment, who acted as an adviser to Brown throughout the process. Bartelstein, MSU coach Tom Izzo and Brown’s father, Chris, worked closely in gathering information.