Very Early Portal Thoughts

Even by my normal standards, this post is directionless and scattered. If you’re expecting a well-organized and flowing post, you, my friend, have stumbled upon the wrong blog.

Anyway, some general, birds-eye view stuff before I get into more team-specific matters in a few weeks.

The Money Doesn’t Matter
Much of the commentary on the Portal revolves around the obscene amounts of cash being flung around in this cycle. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. At one time, in a galaxy far, far away, $800K for Nijel Pack was considered blasphemous. Last year, the rumored $2M deals for Great Osobor and Coleman Hawkins resulted in much consternation, only for those previously-incomprehensible numbers to be smashed to pieces early in the current cycle. In general, I don’t care about the numbers, because the money isn’t “real.” I mean, it’s real for the players, but it’s not as if there’s a salary cap or a luxury tax threshold, so the difference between $2M or $4M or $6M (next offseason) is inconsequential. The people funding NIL (the big boys, not the suburban dad in Kansas with three kids and a mortgage who writes a $100 monthly check to the Collective because he bleeds purple and gray) don’t view the Portal from any sort of rational, ROI-centric perspective. They throw money around for ego and clout, and for some, such things are truly priceless. If you’re sitting around waiting for a market “correction” in the near future, allow me to save you the trouble. It ain’t happening.

Too Many Open High-Major Spots and Not Enough Players
A rudimentary, middle school-level supply and demand problem. The long-anticipated matriculation of many of the 5th/6th year geriatrics out of college basketball and into the workforce has predictably resulted in a de facto short squeeze. Developmentally maxed-out mid-major players who wouldn’t have sniffed a high-major rotation spot last year are now being signed to lucrative deals to be 3rd/4th options for Power 4 teams. The second-order effect here — and this is merely a working hypothesis — is that the Tier 1/Elite teams (say, the top 5-8) will be somewhat down from last season’s extraordinary heights, while the Tier 2/Tier 3 teams (10 through 40 ish) will be way down. While Louisville and Vanderbilt were able to build Tournament-level rosters last year strictly utilizing the Portal, such a task is significantly more difficult this season (as Baylor is likely to find out) due to the paucity of P4-caliber players available in the Portal. There’s no margin for error for these “build your roster from scratch” teams. Every “get” has to hit (or at least not completely flop).

Most Coaching Staffs Should Not Get the Benefit of the Doubt
Among Twitter accounts who regularly engage in Portal commentary, I recognize that I am on the extreme end of the pessimism spectrum. It greatly pains me to be the constant cold water guy routinely interrupting the unbridled Portal euphoria with a dose of reality. Just kidding. I fucking love being that guy. This sport is overrun with media fluffers who shower praise upon coaches for flat-out bad roster construction because they’re obsessed with maintaining access and goodwill. I have no such concerns, which allows me to be honest. The truth is that a majority of high-major coaches are bad at the Portal. The even more uncomfortable truth is that the revered “legendary” coaches are often especially bad at it. In the modern environment, Todd Golden and Grant McCasland are far superior rosters builders to Rick Pitino and Bill Self. Golden’s staff at Florida is a veritable analytics dream team. This is not an accident. Golden has invested significant resources into data and remains miles ahead of the curve in understanding roster construction. Self and Pitino are relics from a bygone era, wildly lurching from one roster-building philosophy to another from offseason to offseason. Pitino, recognizing that last year’s team couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean (a malady we all recognized as early as last May when he finalized his roster), has abruptly pivoted in the opposite direction, loading up on wing shooters to pair with a high-usage, mismatch 4 man. The issue is that he now doesn’t have anyone to get those guys the ball. Of the top 10 protected rotation players, not one had a double-digit assist rate last year. How? These wild, volatile roster construction swings don’t happen at Florida or Texas Tech.

The Invisibles
Teams with high continuity rates are (logically) relatively inactive in the Portal, which means they aren’t being discussed and evaluated. While teams like Indiana, Kansas State and Texas sucked up all of the media oxygen last offseason, few paid any heed to Michigan State, Wisconsin, Florida, and Auburn, all of whom ranked in the top quartile nationally in continuity (Florida and Auburn were around 40th; Wisconsin and MSU around 90th).

There is absolutely a certain threshold at which there is too much continuity. Marquette (12th) fell into this bucket last year. Shaka rather infamously does not believe in the Portal and opted to “run it back” with his same crew (minus Kolek and Oso). It wasn’t a bad season, per se, but solely relying upon internal development — while beneficial for maintaining a high floor — is clearly a ceiling-capper.

For the reasons discussed earlier (primarily the matriculation of 5th/6th year guys), continuity next season appears likely to reach an all-time low (just as it has for the upcoming college football season, per a recent Bill Connelly piece). Is this good news for teams like Northwestern? Probably? If the overall talent of your competition is down across the board, but your competition also needs time to coalesce its rosters, then you would (theoretically) have an advantage — at least early in the season.

Much more to come. This. Is. April.