Let Larry leave

Adam Stern
Sports Editor
Commonwealth Times Sports’ Twitter

Larry Sanders, VCU’s tall and talismanic junior forward, has 20 days to decide if he’s going enter the NBA Draft before the April 25 deadline.

Whenever that decision comes, I, along with everyone and their proverbial mother, expect the decision to be that he will enter the draft and bypass his senior season.

I’ve come to accept it, and although I don’t fully endorse it, I also don’t vehemently oppose it.

True, he did just begin playing the game of basketball his junior season in high school.

If he didn’t enter the draft, he would come back to a team that would be returning all five of the starters used throughout the CBI Tournament. He would probably earn First-Team All Conference again, and what would be stopping him from becoming the first player in CAA history to earn back-to-back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year award?

He could also brush up some of his few but at times notable deficiencies on the court. Even though he’s leaps and bounds ahead of where he was in the same department last season, his foul troubles still had tangible impacts on numerous games this season. He also went down in the blocks category all this year’s fouls notwithstanding.

There are also remote questions about if he’s guaranteed to be selected in the first round, a significant difference from the second round in that the latter’s contracts aren’t guaranteed, after a good but not stellar season.

Yet there are other signs that point to him entering the draft as a very respectable if not on-the-button decision.

First and foremost, the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement is set to run out after the 2010-2011 season, and as of now the league is heading toward its first lockout since the 1998-1999 lockout which reduced an 82-game season into one with only 50.

If the lockout happens, rookies picked in the 2011-2012 draft may be made to wait for the contract money, according to NBADraft.net’s President Aran Smith.

“There are some kids in the draft that maybe don’t belong and are told by various scouts that the lockouts coming and they should go, but that’s not to say the lockout isn’t coming,” said Smith.

He’s also being projected as a potential first rounder largely because of things he already has, not because of things he’s going to accomplish his senior season.

Namely, the notorious 7-foot-7-inch wingspan, which is widely touted as the largest in all the land.

He could, and in all probability would, continue improving his offensive game if he came back, but he’ll do the same just better with an NBA organization that has more specialized coaches then you could find in a mid-major program.

The CAA is certainly an ever-improving conference which has helped shed enough light onto VCU’s star, but if Sanders wants to go, it’s taken him as far as he needs to go.

“A lot of times players go to the big school to their own detriment; I think there’s something to be said about standing out in a small conference,” Smith said. “If he was at North Carolina, he may have never seen the light of day.”

I would love to see what would happen if Larry Sanders came back for a senior season off the back of a momentum-grabbing CBI Championship.

But equally if not more so, I’d love to see a fellow student fulfill his dreams and make something in the range of $2 million, which would be around the amount of money he’d earn if picked in the range he’s currently projected.

If you are to be on your way, Larry, then thanks for your services; you’re likely to go down as a VCU legend.