Why I Believe Wiggins Appeared to Play to Only 2/3 of Potential at KU...
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@Crimsonorblue22 posted this picture of Joel Embiid getting the Cam Ridley treatment on another thread yesterday and it broke my heart to see it again.
OMG! OMG!
That image communicates, I believe, why Andrew Wiggins never appeared to play to more than 2/3s of his potential at KU.
If a superstar gives it everything in college today, unless he is assured of a favorable whistle that increasingly seems to depend on a lot of things that KU apparently lacks, said superstar is in grave physical danger IMHO.
Joel Embiid was one of two once-in-a-generation players on that same KU team.
It was the greatest pairing of talent since Olajuwon and Drexler, or Walton and Wilkes.
Coaches like Mike K and Rick Pitino both said more or less that Self had hit the mother lode.
Two potential NBA Hall of Famers, if both were allowed to develop over time without serious injury.
Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid.
IMHO, they were the two greatest raw talents ever to appear on the same college team. Period. Because Embiid did not grow up playing the game, Embiid was a year away from doing to college basketball what Big Clyde, Big Russ, Chamberlain, Jabbar, Walton, and Olajuwon had done before. Embiid in a sophomore season could easily have carried KU to 40-0 even without Wiggins.
And this lummox Cam Ridley was permitted without so much as a measly foul to imperil the career of one of the two greatest talents ever paired together: Joel Embiid.
THIS IS WHY THE GAME IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CALLED THE WAY IT IS TODAY.
The asymmetric foul calling is an underreported scandal. It encourages this kind of uncalled fouling.
Wilt Chamberlain, or Jabbar for sure, could easily have had this done to either. Wilt reputedly did leave the college game partly to avoid the risk of this sort of stuff, but the risk was so much less then.
There have been other great players lost to accidents and the game has suffered greatly from those losses, from what might have been but was not.
But those were accidents.
What happened to Embiid was only accidental in the sense that Ridley probably did not intend to injure Embiid as he did.
But it was no accident that Ridley played as he did then. The refereeing of the time permitted it, just as last season it permitted Perry Ellis to use his nose to attack Fred Van Vleet’s elbow without a foul being called.
If Joel Embiid does not fully recover his athleticism, those that run college basketball carry the stain of what happened to Joel Embiid on their souls to their graves, even though their denial mechanisms assure them they did nothing at all. If they and I go to hell, or heaven, and Joel Embiid has never recovered his athleticism, I will personally hound them for the rest of eternity for the shit that they did.
Please, basketball god, let Joel Embiid heal all the way. Even after his ankle resolves, if it resolves, there will be the underlying issue of the back from the Texas game. The game needs another great center now more than ever.
Go, Joel, go!!!
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@jaybate-1.0 Solid stuff again Mr Bate. I cant blame Wigs for avoiding injury. Kid just needs to elevate his game now that he is in the big leagues, raise his PER and become an All Star.
JoJo. Have you seen the most recent picture of him? He is ripped!!! Easily he has 20 more lbs of muscle and that is a conservative estimate. I have hope that he will be back on the court when his foot lets him. Then he will go beast mode and make us all proud. yet another All Star.
PS. if it doesnt happen, I’ll gladly help you in hounding said jackholes
