An apparently cold, collected, profit-motivated process was revealed to be haphazard and not all that well thought out after all. Along the way, it started to feel like Dickinson was being used for clicks in a manner that wasn’t actually benefitting him in any meaningful way. Earlier this week, Dickinson’s fellow podcast host teased the show as the lone source of the decision, trying to goose downloads and YouTube views by promising an on-air reveal … only to release an episode that didn’t actually include Dickinson’s decision, a light troll that wasn’t remotely funny enough to pay off. Savvy, right? It works for Draymond Green, right? Why give the story away for free when you can make some money off it yourself?Įxcept the execution flailed massively. And he appeared to be holding out to announce his destination on his own Barstool podcast, which was itself an interesting wrinkle to an already big-time recruitment - a high-profile college athlete changing schools, undoubtedly being rewarded handsomely for doing so, and also using that process to further enhance his own media properties on the side. He kept things close to his chest neither coaches nor reporters knew where he would end up. Having missed last year’s tournament at Michigan, Dickinson surprisingly, ruthlessly, and totally reasonably decided that he didn’t want to try to carry a shaky Wolverines roster again next year, and then went about considering his destination. There was something almost charming about the amateurish way Dickinson’s transfer saga ended, something enjoyable about the low production quality of his announcement video, but it was a somewhat jarring contrast with his process to that point. And then the glass breaks again (?) and a low-res edit of Dickinson wearing a Kansas jersey serves as the final credits. It feels like the director could have wrung a bit more chemistry out of the actors here. Huzzah! Self, one of the more casually personally charming coaches in American sports, then shares with Hunter the most awkward hug the former has ever delivered on camera. … before the sound of glass breaks (?) and Dickinson walks into a nondescript hotel conference room (?) where he tells Kansas coach Bill Self that he will be coming to play for the Jayhawks next season. “This decision might even have been harder than the first one coming out of high school, you know, having all these coaches hit you up,” Dickinson says, before adding, helpfully, “then again, it was also sort of easier in a sense, going through it and stuff.” (So it was harder and easier? Damn, that’s actually crazy, bro.) Next, he is driving in his car, delivering to his selfie arm, where he gives us some deep insight into what making this decision was like for him … Dickinson starts out shooting in an empty gym, quite obviously talking to no one on his Airpods. Or, more precisely, with a video someone might have thrown together in the last five minutes before an Introduction to Video Editing course assignment was due. Now the only thing that’s amateur are the production values.Īnd so it was that the 2023 Hunter Dickinson Transfer Saga - the closest thing the post-NIL/portal college hoops landscape has come to a professionalized free agency pursuit and a semi-concerted self-published media push - ended Thursday … with a whimper. Players are being paid like professionals, and rightfully so. Do you really need to write that goodbye letter in the first place? How long does it really need to be? Is there a less corny way to go about this? Would a simpler, more professional note - thanks for the opportunity, let’s keep in touch - actually be more endearing than the overwrought word salad? Can we streamline this whole operation? Can we polish the process? We need people to shake up this time of the college basketball calendar year, to reconceptualize the very idea of what is standard behavior when a player enters and exits the portal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |