If you spend a significant amount of time on this website, you have likely watched more Rutgers basketball this past year than at any other point in your life.
Unless you’re a Rutgers alumnus, this team has been an object of fascination all season long due to the presence of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey – two surefire top-five draft picks and two of the most exciting individual basketball players under the age of 19 on planet Earth.
When Harper and Bailey announced they would be attending Rutgers together, recruiting experts and draft obsessives reacted like this was the second coming of Chris Webber and Jalen Rose assembling the Fab Five. Could Rutgers contend for a No. 1 seed? Would anyone be able to stop this dynamic duo?
I had no opinion on the matter at the time. I read all the Bailey/Harper stories and watched the highlights, but I had little idea what kind of program Rutgers had, what kind of game coach Steve Pikiell is (obviously a strong recruiter), or what this team would actually look like on the court.
At the time of this writing, the Scarlett Knights’ record sits at an uninspiring 10-10, with only three Big Ten Conference wins and a ghastly 0-4 record against ranked opponents. This squad has a narrow positive point differential thanks to some blowout wins against overmatched opponents, but clearly this squad has no intention of playing meaningful basketball games in March.
Anytime I tune in to watch Rutgers basketball, I see an AAU squad loosely assembled to highlight two stars. Bailey and Harper do whatever they want – no such thing as a bad shot or an ill-advised drive into a triple team. Both players are so talented that it often works out for them – each averages nearly 20 points per game – but any decent cohesive team with reasonable athleticism can overcome the individual efforts of two stars.
I’m not sure what the point of any of this is. Other than the Nike/NIL deal both secured, why are we going through this charade? Why are two potential NBA franchise cornerstones going through the motions on a .500 college team? Why doesn’t their individual brilliance lead to a winning brand of basketball? Does this one-year pit-stop in Rutgers have any positive impact on their development as basketball players, or are they both absorbing bad/losing habits that will follow them into their rookie contracts?
What is going on here?
Each year that passes with the silly one-and-done rule etched into the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement is another year where this pointless charade wastes everyone’s time. Is anyone really enjoying this Bailey/Harper experiment at Rutgers besides the social media aggregators?
I truly do not know the answer here. I’m genuinely asking. The Overtime Elites of the world aren’t the answer. These strange, disengaged one-year college stints aren’t either. The NBA is better when elite talent like Bailey and Harper are put in the best positions to succeed – which includes winning habits, cohesive team basketball, and meaningful reps in high-pressure situations with real stakes on the line.
Five years from now, this will all likely be forgotten. Harper and Bailey will likely be borderline All-Stars or perhaps even borderline All-NBA players. The few months at Rutgers will be a distant, foggy memory – just “something that happened” on the way toward nine-figure guaranteed contracts. But five years from now, elite players who are 14 now will be drifting through their own forgotten purgatory season, not maximizing their immense potential.
We need to do better. The game we love so much will suffer long-term if a solution isn’t proposed soon.
And 1’s:
• I finished reading “On Basketball and Ascension” last week. Perfect. A masterpiece. No notes. Five stars.
• Remember when Liam Neeson would show up in some generic action movie every winter after the success of “Taken”? The plots were all roughly the same. Each movie had a different title, but it might as well have just been called “Liam Neeson on a train” or “Liam Neeson on a boat” or “Liam Neeson fights wolves.” That’s where we’ve gotten to every February with Mac McClung and the Slam Dunk Contest. It incredible the first time, but the novelty wears off with each passing winter. You’ll capture my attention if this is the year we get “Mac McClung dunks on a wolf.”
• The Washington Wizards won their sixth game of the season on New Year’s Day, throttling the Chicago Bulls 125-107 behind 30 points from Jordan Poole and a double-double from Alex Sarr. The Wizards promptly stopped winning in 2025 – 14 consecutive losses, almost all of them uncompetitive. Washington’s -14.5 point differential is SIX POINTS worse than the next-worse margin. The seemingly untouchable -15.2 mark from the dreadful 1992-1993 Dallas Mavericks is within reach. Every team in the NBA would love to have the opportunity to draft Cooper Flagg, but the Wizards have shown their “appreciation” for Flagg in new, innovative ways.
