Let’s sit back and enjoy Kaminsky’s final days at Wisconsin

LOS ANGELES

Everyone is in a hurry.

A hurry to evaluate, to dissect, to compartmentalize.

Few remember to take a deep breath and appreciate, which is how we should view the final days of Frank Kaminsky’s college basketball career at Wisconsin.

That time again. March arrives and the airwaves are controlled by talk of how the top talents in college might translate to the NBA, of how a player who spent the past few years getting the best of his peers will ultimately fare against, well, the world’s best.

It happened with Jimmer Fredette.

So many people were concerned with what type of pro he might become when he left Brigham Young, they forgot to enjoy one of the greatest college players in history.

Here’s hoping that hasn’t occurred with Kaminsky.

He will soon receive the opportunity to prove his worth in the land of multimillionaires, but first he has every chance to depart school with the sort of exclamation point few envisioned when he was averaging just 8.9 minutes in his first two years at Wisconsin.

When his next-best scholarship offer out of high school came from Northwestern. When the likes of Bradley and Southern Illinois were once viable options.

Wisconsin is two wins from returning to the Final Four, but is hardly facing walk-over opponents as the top seed in the West Regional of the NCAA Tournament.

It first meets North Carolina in a Sweet 16 game at 4:47 p.m. today at Staples Center. The winner has a date Saturday with Arizona or Xavier, who meet in tonight’s second regional semifinal.

Nothing will come easy in the land of the incredibly rich and famous.

Kaminsky isn’t all that comfortable being the latter, and it’s not yet known if basketball will make him the former, but if you are one who champions the concept of players remaining in school and developing their games and not jumping at the first hint of dollar signs, his is the sort of story that makes the tournament so special.

“You know, we’re looking for guys who have more questions than answers,” Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan said. “People who are good in the locker room and will buy into a philosophy that if we do things together, we can be really good. But if you improve individually, you could make the team a whole lot better. Guys willing to be disciplined and who want to play on a competitive team but that understand and accept how we do things.

“Frank is one of those guys we knew right away was our kind of guy. He was never satisfied. He would get down at times because he knew he could be better, so he did something about it. Instead of moping, he worked harder, practiced harder. The day he announced he would return for his senior season, it set up what we’ve been able to do this year. That was the catalyst to all of this, him coming back.”

Kaminsky’s draft status — despite the fact he should win most national player of the year awards after averaging 18.4 points and 8.1 rebounds while leading the Badgers to a Big Ten Conference championship — probably won’t look much different than had he departed school after his junior season.

He was then and is now projected to go in the late lottery of the draft, somewhere from picks 10 to 13, a 7-footer with the type of fundamentals you would expect from a Ryan-coached player, a young man who will be lauded for his ability to shoot from distance and criticized for a lack of athleticism and subpar lateral movement.

“He’s a fantastic player,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. “(Freshman guard) Joel Berry didn’t grow 8 inches since our press conference Monday, but if he had, we would put him on (Kaminsky). We may end up just going small, but I also don’t want to say nobody can guard Frank. We have to deal with him. One of our big guys is going to have to get out there and guard him.”

The draft stuff can wait. There will be plenty of time for others to debate whether Kaminsky can produce at the NBA level or if he is even suited to be a rotational guy. You will get arguments on both sides.

This is what you need to know today: He sat behind Jared Berggren (last seen playing professionally in Belgium) at Wisconsin and never really basked under the national spotlight until an Elite Eight game against Arizona last season, when Kaminsky went for 28 points and 11 rebounds in a one-point overtime victory.

The tournament did to him what it has for so many players throughout the years, changing one’s career arc overnight. It can take a kid who barely saw time for two years and immediately turn him into a first-round draft pick.

Kaminsky, thankfully, didn’t bite. He loved his school too much, his teammates too much, his university too much.

“I always just wanted to go to a school where I knew I would fit in and play,” he said. “Wisconsin was the right choice from the start. It was always the best option. Not many schools had faith in me.”

In turn, he showed a huge amount of his own when returning this season.

It’s a story to be appreciated by those not in a hurry.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.