Syracuse Basketball: Darius Bazley screwed the Orange

The Syracuse basketball team got royally screwed by their No. 1 recruit Darius Bazley. ITLH breaks down how the Orange will try to recover.

Even with some time to digest the latest Syracuse basketball gut punch, it’s still hard to swallow. The headline reads: Darius Bazley decommits from the Orange for G-League.

But it’s worse than just that. It’s not just that SU lost a consensus top-10 recruit. It’s not just that the Orange lost their most highly touted recruit since Carmelo Anthony. They say timing is everything and that statement couldn’t be truer.

The 17-year old superstar chose late March as the optimal time to let SU know he had changed his mind. While the elder population often joke that youngsters change their mind like they change clothes, that wasn’t the case here.

Bazley knew he was making this decision for a while.

"“I’m aware that this might start a trend and that’s one of the reasons why I am doing this,” Bazley told Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports. “I’m outspoken and I like to speak on things. This is me speaking through my actions, speaking through my character. This is going to happen down the road and become more common. But someone has to start the fire — and I believe I’m going to do that, and it’s very important to me.”"

Bazley is a self-proclaimed trend setter. That kind of thought process doesn’t come lightly or in a night’s rest. When Bazley suggests ‘I put a lot of thought into this’, aka took a while to come to this decision. At the very least the inner circle of Syracuse basketball should’ve been made aware he was having second thoughts.

Obviously they weren’t privy to that information, because if they had, would they have been tweeting this stuff out the day before Bazley made his announcement public?

Hashtag blindside. I usually reserve that for the CBS Survivior TV show, but felt it was relevant here. SU was obviously blindsided by the announcement, which looks poorly on Darius. To make matters worse, Darius signed his National Letter of Intent in the Summer of 2017. Typically according to the NLI rulebook, players are penalized for signing and then reneging on their decision.

But of course Bazley found a loophole because the one-year suspension penalty only is effective if he would’ve switched to a different school. Currently there is no fine print on skipping your commitment for professional basketball.

Based on Bazley’s decision, SU goes from a potential National Championship contender to bubble team. Now don’t get me wrong, the kid is doing what’s in his own best interest. I’ve got no beef with a kid trying to get paid, but I have an issue with how he went about it.

SU is now in an impossible scenario. It’s not like Bazley was a projected bench player for the Orange. He was supposed to be the straw that stirs the drink for this team next season. Now the Orange are left scrambling through the grad-transfer market and hoping they can find a player who is half the player Bazley is, although we all know they won’t find a player of that magnitude.

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Long story short, Bazley you may have started an unprecedented movement where star players will skip college to focus on basketball at the G-League level. Good for you. Just remember that LeBron James originally thought ‘The Decision’ was a good idea at the time, but eventually regretted the decision. Once you mature, I’m sure you’ll have the same feeling of regret when you consider how you handled this situation. You may have made the right choice, but you chose the wrong way to handle it. Best of luck in the future.