Pitarresi: SU basketball saga very strange

I don’t know what is going on with Jim Boeheim, Jonny Flynn, Eric Devendorf and Paul Harris, but it is very strange.

 

Flynn is gone from the Syracuse University basketball team, having signed with an agent in anticipation of the upcoming NBA draft. Devendorf and Harris are expected to do the same. Fine. It’s probably over for this brief era of Orange basketball.

 

What I don’t understand are the quotes attributed to Boeheim by ESPN’s Andy Katz in discussing how good next year’s team might be without those players. Katz has Boeheim saying that he’ll take transfer Wesley Johnson over Harris and Andy Rautins over Devendorf and added that recruit Brandon Triche will, in some ways, be better for the team than Flynn.

 

Well, you know, I can see Boeheim thinking all of those things. Really. He is a shrewd judge of talent. He might also be influenced by the fox and the grapes syndrome - if you know you’re going to lose a player, you might start to devalue him. It’s similar to the feeling you might get if you get dumped by your girlfriend – or boyfriend, as the case may be:

 

“Well, she wasn’t that great anyway.”

 

So maybe that’s what’s going on. However, while I give Boeheim credit for candidness, I don’t see any profit in that for him in this case. Why alienate these guys? Aren’t they part of the family you’ve developed over more 30 years as head coach?

 

Maybe Boeheim didn’t intend it this way, but he sounds bitter towards this trio. Maybe he has good reason, but it is, again, very strange.