Michael Beasley Launches an Assault on the Integrity of College Basketball

With guys like Kevin Durant and Greg Oden (in all likelihood) going to college for one year, and then bouncing to the NBA draft, there's been some talk about the effect that has on the integrity of college sports. Michael Beasley could not possibly care less about the integrity of high school sports.

Beasley's a high school basketball god, projected to be a Top 5 selection in the NBA draft the very second he's eligible. He's decided to attend Kansas State next year, and pretty much outright admits that if he didn't have to go, he'd really have no use for college basketball. ~~He describes his upcoming one-year stay at Kansas State as "killing time."~~

Fair enough. That's the system that exists, it's Beasley's right, he's perfectly within the rules, and there's no reason for anyone to have any problem with what he's doing. The money's out there; he wants to pick it up and put his name on it.

But I read this excellent piece from today's Washington Post, though, and I wonder about his maturity. He's been in six high schools, always bounced for behavioral reasons (and Bob Huggins recruited him? You don't say). None of it's criminal, just exceedingly immature.

He threw sticks at teachers' houses, he signed his name with a Sharpie all over the walls of his school ... and when he was suspended for that, brought back and told he had to behave, he responded by signing his name with a permanent marker on the principal's car.

They're silly things to do, and none of it makes him a bad guy. The fact that he doesn't see what's wrong with it, though, and chalks it up to "just having fun," makes him an extremely immature guy. He's a teenager, he should be. But these are things that, in the adult world, we call "vandalism" and "destruction of property." It occurs to me that a little time in college for some personal growth could do him some good.

I hate to just focus on the negative ... and really, it's not even so much negative as just an area where he needs to mature. His grades are good, and most people agree that he's a solid individual. I hope things work out for him the way he envisions them.

And his game, if you're curious about that ... appears to be beyond reproach: