Our Honor Defend

BJ Mullens, or Jim Cordle... one of the two celebrates a dunk against Purdue.

Everyone knew this was coming, but now it just came from the horse’s mouth.  BJ Mullens has become the third freshmen center in the past three years to forgo his sophomore season and pursue a career in professional basketball.  He follows the lead of Greg Oden and Kosta Koufos, first round draft picks before him.

I naturally fall into the camp of just about everyone else who’s said anything about the issue, be it Thad Matta (in the aforementioned article), OSU basketball historian Lee Caryer, and even Rick Pitino: This probably isn’t the best decision BJ could make and he’d be wise to come back another year and polish his game as a Buckeye.  His first year as a Buckeye was uneventful and he didn’t do much to inspire confidence that he projects well to the next level.  He couldn’t surpass an offensively limited Dallas Lauderdale for a starting position.  He was soft on defense to where I don’t think anyone who played up against him was afraid of him.  He was outplayed at times by people who were so obviously inferior to him in terms of measurables (see: that pencilneck from Siena).  Knowing that one of the knocks against him at the high school level was his “inability to take over like he’s capable of doing”, I feared this would happen.  He had no moves on offense to speak of, and it was very obvious when he’d get a one-on-one matchup in the post only to get confused and throw it back to the perimeter.  Endurance is a major issue, which probably played a hand in confining him to 6th man status.  He created little for himself outside of some clever ball movement by Turner that got him some easy dunks.

Reading everything said about him suggests he’d invariably go the way of Kwame Brown in the NBA (though without getting that idiotic contract that Kwame Brown has now).  This is not the case.  His athleticism is apparent, but most people don’t know that he’s a basketball savant.  Rival fans jeered him as dumb or illiterate, but BJ learns very, very well.  He’s a bright kid and because of that, I think an extra year in Columbus would’ve been incredibly helpful for him.  He would be given an extra year where he would be focused on by Ohio State coaches, rather than consigned to the end of the bench as Pitino (above) warned.

As much as I think BJ should eschew the NBA for another year, it’s hard to begrudge his decision.  That is, it’s hard to do that when you read this.  BJ’s youth is a sad story, with a few quotes serving to underscore just that.

His father, Paul, wasn’t around much. His mother, Barbara, struggled to keep the family functioning, not always successfully.

Mullens has four half-brothers and a half-sister. The family was constantly on the move, looking for stability that always seemed to elude it.

“There were a few years we were living in a shelter, a few years where we were just struggling to make it,” Mullens said. “We had to move to different houses because we couldn’t pay the payments on the rent.”

Mullens has lost count of the number of houses he tried to call home in the Bottoms and Hilltop neighborhoods. “I’d say 12 or 13, probably more,” he said.

He runs out of fingers trying to calculate the number of schools, as well.

“I think it was 10 or 11,” he said.

The middle-class world he saw on sitcoms seemed to be from another planet.

“Man, that’s the life, living like that,” Mullens said. “You’ve got a father and mother living in the same house. Everyone’s good, everyone’s got money, everyone’s got clothes to wear.”

For Mullens’ family, clothes often came from the Salvation Army.

“They gave us a bag with a Kmart coat and two pairs of jeans that were so tight around your legs you couldn’t breathe,” Jabbour said. “That’s what our shopping was.”

As much as Mullens might have liked to use basketball to distance himself from his rough surroundings, he couldn’t entirely. Just as he was warming up to the sport, Mullens received a sweater with an AAU patch. It was one of the rare items of clothing that fit him, and it became a prized possession.

One night, Gabe borrowed the sweater, unbeknownst to Mullens. In the middle of a drug deal, Gabe got shot in the arm, putting a hole in the sweater.

“I wish I still had that sweater,” Mullens said.

Around the same time, Mullens was on the porch one night when a drive-by shooting took place four houses away.

“I didn’t know what it was,” he said. “I just got on the ground. It was scary. But that’s the lifestyle.”

An NBA paycheck, especially a guaranteed one that he’ll get if he’s taken in the first round, would be really, really helpful.  To that extent, I won’t throw stones at this decision.

Still, reading this and knowing part of his story suggests another benefit to BJ coming back to Ohio State for another year: stability.  Being a college athlete can be a bit of a circus.  I’ve met more than a few people in Tuscaloosa and in Columbus who were former players of an intercollegiate sport for the Crimson Tide or the Buckeyes, but dropped because of the pressure, the consumption of time, and the inability to live a normal life.  Still, coming back to the same coaches, the same teammates, and the same social circle in general would be a welcome change (I would think) to being in 10 or 11 different schools and living in 12 or 13 different homes.  Some of us get bored with a routinized life and try to shake things up.  Some other might benefit enormously from it.  I wonder if that could be said for BJ.  After all, it’s going to get a lot more hectic for BJ.  He’ll be shipped here, there and everywhere for tryouts, for summer league games and, if he’s on an NBA roster, he’ll be on the move for the better part of 6 or 7 months.

Ultimately, I wish BJ well.  I can’t fault his decision to try to get an immediate gratification by way of that NBA paycheck.  I hope he succeeds in the NBA, though I think the decision for an early exit increased the odds against him (to whatever margin, I can’t predict).  For BJ’s part, I can only hope there’s no ill will towards the basketball team, the athletic department or the university that we all hold dear.  Part of me gets upset/distraught when I read or hear of former Buckeyes who begrudge the experience they had at Ohio State because it was an experience I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.  If he succeeds, and he’s dancing and laughing and finally living, may he hear our voices in his head and think of us kindly.

In a somewhat related turn of events, Kosta Koufos just got shipped to the D-League.  Soo… yeah…