We don’t want you in Arkansas
Stinkbait… We finally agree! :lol:
He doesn’t give a hoot and why should he? He is a predicted top 7 to top 10 lottery pick and should earn $6 to $10 million in four years. He doesn’t need Arkansas, with that kind of money he can go anywhere he chooses.
He made a business decision. It’s his business. None of my grown kids live in Arkansas. That’s what adults do. They make their own decisions. Children, on the other hand, whine about others leaving a state they were born in. Who cares?
Amen! Kentucky made themselves a laughing stock as fans by continuing to wear I hate Christian Laettner tee shirts after all this time and many Hog fans are doing the same thing with the out rage over a decision made by a teenager to play out of state. Time to move on and be more absorbed in the players that choose to play for the Hogs than the ones that didn’t. WPS
I understand the majority of Hogs fans displeasure with Monk. There are some that are obnoxious and over-do the hate but for most part are reasonable in being upset with Malik.
It’s not that he left and went to UK or decided to take his career out of state, most AR fans don’t care about that. It’s that he was a state superstar. A 5-star McDonald’s All American that is going to be a Top 5-10 pick no matter where he went to school.
So why not stay in state and become a legend forever as a Razorback!! UK gets the Top 3-4 kids every single year. Monk was a big deal there this season but by next year will be forgotten when the new hotshot kid puts on the blue and white.
If we had Malik this year and had that one extra stud on the court for us, man, we might’ve beat UK in SEC championship, been a Top 15-20 team and maybe got to Elite 8 or further. All we needed was one extra stud and Monk would’ve been that for the Hogs and then some.
He could’ve been a star forever in this state but instead made a business decision. He’ll still get to where he wants to be, the NBA and a high draft pick. But he’ll never have the allure of a state that will always treat him like a favorite son. AR for most part doesn’t care about him anymore, in Kentucky he’s just another guy, they’ll forget about him by next year. He’s got all the potential to have an unreal career and I wish him the best. BUT if he has a serious injury and his NBA career is over before it begins, that business decision he made will have been a bad one.
Did anyone hear Fitz Hill on the radio yesterday talking about this very thing? He said, from ex-Kentucky players he’s talked to, that these one and doners are basically forgotten unless they can make a big career in the NBA and make Kentucky look good. If they have a mediocre or burn out career, then they are easily dismissed from the minds and support of Kentucky.
Your last sentence is one of the reasons I hate one and doners. If these players get hurt and their NBA career is over, what serviceable skills do they have? NOTHING!!! They have no degree or knowledge/training from a trade school. They are equipped to do nothing besides work a minimum wage job flipping burgers. My honest hope for all that go this route is that they save some money, so if this does happen, they have the means to finish their education or learn a trade. But we all know that this won’t happen with most, and they’ll just be another blip on the radar of “what could have been.”
It’s interesting to me that we seem to agree that we dislike one-and-done players, yet at the same time we can be quite vitriolic about the loss of one.
I know some of these one-and-dones and early departures eventually completed their degrees. I don’t know the percentage of that, but I do know if some followed through. It will be interesting to find out what Portis and Qualls plan to do.
We will see. I see lots of post like this. If he has a good career and manages his money right, you may be right. But most professional athletes have to do something when there career is over. Some don’t. If he does need to have a career after his NBA time, he won’t find a welcoming home here in Arkansas. Frankly, he won’t find much of that in Kentucky. Its not that they are or would be upset with him, they just won’t, for the most part, remember him. He played one year there. They didn’t win a NC. In 10 years how many average people in Kentucky are going to remember his name? Not many (in my opinion).
If he had gone to UofA he would be a local hero even leaving after one year. That has been my point about this type of situation.
I also don’t think his draft stock will be one spot higher because he went to UK instead of UofA. If that is the case, what did he gain by going to UK? He got an SEC ring. That is something, no question. He might have gotten that at UofA had he been here, but lets say that wouldn’t have happened. He got two more games in the NCAAT. Again, he may well have gotten those two games at UofA. We almost beat NC without him. Add him and we may well have gotten to the round of 8. But, lets say that wouldn’t have happened. So he got an SEC Title ring and played 2 more games in the NCAAT. Not small things. But not big things. He gave up (or at least made it very much harder) the ability to come back to his home state after his NBA career. To me, bad trade off.
By the way, while that kind of money is WAY WAY WAY more than I will ever sniff in my lifetime. lets be real. Lets say he makes $6,000,000 over the next few years and that is it (injury, whatever), half of it will be gone in income taxes, that leave $3,000,000. You know he is going to spend a significant amount of money living over that time. You are making that kind of money, playing in the NBA, you are going to have a pretty high lifestyle. Lets say he only spends $1,000,000 over that time (good chance it will be more, but also could be significantly less). That leave him $2,000,000. (And yes, I would LOVE to have $2,000,000 in the bank, don’t get me wrong!) You invest that conservatively and get a 4% return (maybe that number is too low, stock broker types can let me know), that is $80,000 a year, pretax. Not bad. But rolling in the money? Nope.
I still say he made a bad trade off.
I’m not going to hate on the kid for choosing Kentucky. Although, I do think that that there is a good chance that he will regret this decision later in life. Certainly, there are worse decisions made by seventeen-year-olds.
That being said, I DO actually think that his stock may have been hurt a little bit by his decision. Not a tremendous amount–We’re talking maybe the difference between a top 5 and top 10 pick. Monk often looked out of place at Kentucky. I realize he had some 30-40pt games, but he could have had those opportunities at Arkansas as well, possibly more opportunities. The problem is there were quite a few games where he was just lost. Fox overshadowed him quite a bit and made him look pretty bad at times. The overall talent at Kentucky made him look unprepared for the NBA.
Forgive me for the extra rant here, but I can’t remember a weaker class of lottery picks to date. I’m not sure there is a single kid out there who even looks remotely ready to ride the bench of an NBA team. These kids are not only terrible shooters but they’re terrible at shot selection. The only good news is that I’m a Knicks fan, so whomever they pick will fit right into their current scheme of taking a terrible shot.
Monk was disappointment to me this year. Not because he didn’t come to UA, FAYETTEVILLE AT NORTHWEST ARKANSAS NOT UCA OR UALR AT LITTLE ROCK, (sorry I’m still bugged by that), but that Monk is not a team guy, not a high character player and not someone you want leading your team to the finals. He’s a great talent, but not the leader of a basketball player I thought he was. I didn’t think he had the stuff to lead UK to the Final 4, although he made it one more game than I thought they would. He’s a punk. A very talented punk, but a punk nonetheless.
I think he was a leader or why else would the team have gone to him for their two most crucial baskets in the tourney? And like a leader, he delivered, with the second shot being extremely difficult to execute. Not sure how things like that make him a punk, other than you really hate that he didn’t stay in Arkansas.
Wish him an injury free career, but I have forgotten him already! GHG!
That makes Monk a clutch scorer and not a leader.
Nope. It makes him both. Ever heard of “go to guy”. That ain’t your fifth option on the floor. They were looking for the guy to lead them to victory. He almost did. Just because you aren’t always successful doesn’t mean you can’t lead. He’s a leader.
Nothing like butt-hurt Arkansas “fans”. As for me, I’m a basketball fan first. I can appreciate whatever any good/great player brings to the table, whoever he plays for.
Leaders win games not just score points. That team has too much talent not to make the Final 4. I’m not butt hurt about not landing Monk. I am disappointed when an Arkansas kid I had rather high hopes for doesn’t turn out to be the player I thought he could be. And again, it’s not all about scoring points.
Monk turned 19 less than 2 months ago. I’d say he isn’t done developing as a player. He may turn out to be the player you think he can be when he gets professional coaching. Seems most think he was coached by a bus driver over the last 8 months anyway. No telling how good he can be when he gets a basketball coach teaching him.
I’m a native Arkansan that has lived in Northern Kentucky for 18 years and I can tell you that the UK basketball fans are pathetic, they are only interested in the next recruiting class and whether or not a 5 star kid picks UK over Duke, North Carolina, Kansas or Arizona and to some point now UCLA. They live and die with the prospects of possibly winning another NCAA title or one of these other programs not winning a title. That’s the entire reason they finally hired Callipari even though he has had trouble at every program he has coached before with NCAA violations.
At the end of the day what type of bang are they getting for the 7.7million dollar man they decided to finally hire when they could’ve hired him earlier? I’d say really not that much, a few final fours and only the 1 Championship.
So, for those high profile recruits that sign up for this gig at UK and don’t hang a NCAA banner at Rupp Arena there season is considered a failure in the hearts and minds of most UK fans and never talked about again.
In Monks case, sure I would have initially preferred that he stayed at home and become a Razorback legend and helped our rebuilding process, but he decided to chose a different path where he knew he would be at a high profile program that regularly plays marquee games on the national stage every year and also plays before a packed Rupp Arena with extremely passionate fans.
However, having watched most of UK games while I saw a lot of raw natural talent by Monk on the court I also saw a player that has a lot of growing up to do personality wise and ultimately decided that he would not have been the type of high character young man that I would want in a Razorback uniform.
I would much rather have the two kids on the Florida roster, Allen and Leon as well as the freshman at Wichita State, Austin Reeves suit up for the Hogs than Monk any day of the week. I believe we should have pulled out all stops to get these kids.
Go Hogs!