“If I ain’t starting, I ain’t departing.”
Those were the immortal words of former major league baseball player Garry Tempelton when he wasn’t picked to start the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in the early ’80s. Tempelton didn’t get to start, so he wasn’t going to attend the summer classic. Twenty years later, Lawrence Roberts might be heard using a similar line. Maybe something like, “Second round ain’t cool, so I’m going back to school.”
After failing to secure a guarantee of being a first-round in the 2004 NBA Draft, Roberts backed out of his original decision to enter the draft and declared his return to Mississippi State for the 2004-2005 basketball season.
“Basically I was doing what was best for me to position myself as the highest pick possible in the draft,” Roberts said. “The decision was to go back to school.”
The NBA draft is a two-round draft. The first-round picks are guaranteed a contract by the team that drafts them. The players picked in the second round are not guaranteed a contract by the team that drafts them and can be cut by that team after training camp. For that reason, Roberts badly coveted a first-round selection.
Roberts said that his parents and Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury both had roles in his decision, albeit differing ones.
“My parents had about half of the input in the decision,” Roberts said. “I turn to them for a lot of different things and I figured that they would have the best advice for me and look out for only me.”
“Coach Stansbury had more of a low-key role,” Roberts said. “He wasn’t in there trying to influence my decision but when needed, he was there for me. He asked me whether I wanted to show people what I could do and get my full value by coming back or stay (in the draft), knowing I would be a still be a first-round pick, but kind of chancing it.”
“I just laid out all the options for him and let him make his own decision,” Stansbury said. “You don’t want to get into a situation where you’re trying to force a decision out of him. It’s his own decision to make.”
According to NBA and NCAA rules, a college player who enters the draft and signs an agent to represent him is no longer eligible to play college basketball. However, if a player enters the draft and doesn’t sign an agent, he can change his mind and return to school as late as one week before the draft. Roberts waited until the last possible minute to make his decision, announcing his intentions on June 17, exactly a week before the draft.
“It came down to the last minute, what I wanted to do,” Roberts said. “It was kind of like a last second shot. It came down to the buzzer.”
Roberts had said in the weeks leading up to the draft that he expected to be picked anywhere between numbers 20 and 28. However, almost all mock drafts that were made by so-called NBA experts had the 2004 SEC Player of the Year going in the second round, between picks 30 and 38.
Mock drafts were not the deciding factor in Roberts’ decision, however. He didn’t even pay any attention to them.
“There’s certain people that you listen to,” Roberts said. “It only takes one team to like you. I only had one workout, so how can people say that I deserve to be in this slot or anything like that?”
Roberts’ single workout was a result of his lack of an agent. Since he couldn’t sign an agent, his parents acted in that role. It was their job to try and get Roberts to meet and greet NBA general managers and coaches and schedule workouts with NBA teams. Needless to say, the family was in over their heads.
“(It was hard) to set up the timing and what teams to work out for,” Roberts said. “We had the idea of having the teams come down and watch me work out, but the time was so short and the teams wanted to fly in and if they flew in we’d have to pay them back. There was a lot of miscommunication and ultimately that led to me getting only one workout.”
Roberts believes that is what cost him the guaranteed first-round selection.
“The whole situation wasn’t use of the full potential as far as
scheduling workouts and letting people see me work out,” Roberts said.
“It’s tough for my parents and myself, who have never experienced the situation, to go through it. There’s no doubt in my mind that I would have been a first-round pick if I had had an agent and had continued to have workouts.”
Even though Roberts flirted heavily with the idea of leaving school a year early to turn pro, he still thinks he has a lot to prove at the college level.
“Getting as far as possible in post-season is still the biggest goal,” Roberts said. “I’ve accomplished a lot during my college career, but a college career can still be empty without a (national) championship. That’s what makes a college career complete.”
Roberts seems to be content with his decision to stay in college, spurning the possible millions for one more year to try and capture that elusive national championship. He said in his press conference announcing his return to the Bulldogs that he “hoped he was making a lot of people happy.”
“It’s a plus, regardless of what happened,” Roberts said. “It’s just how you wanted to take it. Whether you want to make people happy going to school or whether you want to make people happy going to the NBA. It just depends on how you want to make people happy.”
Roberts can be sure in the next few years he will bring a smile to people’s faces in both leagues.