Drake Basketball Can't Stop Winning
Is a true underdog possible in the NBA?
I’ve been cogitating recently about which college basketball team to root for. That probably sounds simple enough, but my fandom decision is more important to me than you may realize, dear reader, because I’m not searching for a team to root for casually; sure, I could be a Kansas fan because they’re on TV regularly and following the team would be easy, or a UCONN fan because it’s a near-guarantee they’ll be competitive in March.
But ease of access isn’t a necessity for my team. I’ll watch games on CBS Sports Network or ESPN+ if necessary. I’m looking for something committed, and I’m willing to work to make it happen. Love is work, after all — but work toward an end you know is worth it.
There are 358 D-I college basketball teams and I want to invest in one of those teams whether I’ve been anywhere near its campus or not. The search has been thorough; Iowa State had an early lead, Marquette and Dayton have piqued my interest, Rhode Island came out of nowhere, Rutgers was a dark horse.
Tuesday night, I realized the answer was right in front of me the whole time. Okay, not really in front of me. In Des Moines, Iowa. Which I haven’t been anywhere near, for the record. Jack Kerouac said the prettiest girls live there. But he was probably on mescaline when he said it. Not that pretty girls don’t live in Des Moines, Iowa, but you know what I mean.
The Drake Bulldogs are 10-0 after beating Kansas State in extraordinarily thrilling fashion. Bennett Stirz, starting point guard for Drake, sunk a game-winning pull-up three-pointer to beat KSU, the team he grew up rooting for just about 20 minutes away from the stadium.
That’s enough of a storybook in itself, but it’s not just this game that makes me willing to die for this team. The Bulldogs’ entire season has been tinged with magical realism.
Drake’s current head coach Ben McCollum spent 15 seasons as the head coach of DII Northwest Missouri State before landing at Drake this year — which is located in his home state, by the way.
Drake’s previous head coach, Darian DeVries, was scooped up by West Virginia because of his stellar resume at Drake. So, to be clear, McCollum didn’t show up at Drake to coach some desolate group of dopes; the Bulldogs have won at least 20 games each of the past six seasons. But McCollum did take over a program losing its beloved coach to the Big 12 and essentially its entire roster to the transfer portal. That’s a tall task for anyone.
To replace the departed, McCollum brought over pretty much his whole team from NW Missouri State. He had a damn good team at NWMSU, mind you (winning 30 games a season was the expectation) but DII basketball good and NCAA Tournament good exist on different planes.
Except, maybe they don’t. Because those DII good players have cooked teams from the SEC, Big 12 and ACC in the past month and currently exist as one of four remaining undefeated teams in CBB.
Anyway, I love the Bulldogs. These kids are legitimate underdogs — one of their players was going to fuckin’ retire until McCollum convinced him to transfer from NW Missouri, and he just hit eight threes against Kansas State on Tuesday.
I’m somewhat distrustful toward fairytales at large, by the way. Sleeping Beauty got assaulted while she was unconscious. I’m especially wary about them in the NCAA, where feel-good stories go to die.
Somewhere, though, deep below the corporate interests and labor exploitation of young adults and boosters pulling strings they shouldn’t be allowed to pull, I still (probably ignorantly) believe that true feel-good stories can rise. Guys who definitely didn’t think they’d be anything but DII basketball players shining against future NBA players? That feels good! Drake being 10-0 feels good!
I’m like 80% sure this is my college basketball team… but my research hasn’t yet concluded.
Could Drake Basketball happen in the NBA?
Nah.
Money plays no part in this, by the way. Employees making money for the work they do is good, and if Drake’s players were all making money it wouldn’t lessen their underdog status. NBA players making a lot of money doesn’t convince me they’re not underdogs.
When you make the NBA, you’ve become one of the roughly 500 best basketball players in the world. The worst NBA player stood out enough in college to warrant an NBA roster spot. All 15 players on all 30 rosters already defied the odds as basketball players — making it to the NBA often is an underdog story, and that player remains a great story forever, but once a player has made the NBA, I think he ceases to be an underdog as a basketball player.
A bad basketball team beating a good basketball team will always contain underdog components, but the “bad basketball team” in the NBA is still composed of 15 of the best basketball players in the world.
It doesn’t seem this way when you’re watching the Cavs stomp out the Jazz by 40, but the talent gap between players in the league is really, really thin.
Who’s the fifth-best player on the Cavs? Probably Isaac Okoro.
Who’s the fifth-best player on the Jazz? Probably Keyonte George, maybe Jordan Clarkson?
That’s not a huge difference!
Of course, the star power on the top teams is considerably better than the best players on the worst teams — that’s why teams like the Cavs beat teams like the Jazz by 40. But the chasm shrinks as you move down rosters. Every NBA player deserves to be in the NBA (except the, like, three who made it via nepotism) and with such a small league, even the “nobodies” have acheieved the sport’s highest level.
Plus, the best players on those bad teams could still contribute if they played on the good teams. Lauri Markkanen would still be the second or third-best player on a successful team.
There’s nothing adjacent in the NBA to what Drake is doing with a roster full of former NW Missouri State players — everyone is too damn good. And that’s fine. The NBA is great because of the quality of basketball played, so a massive disparity in talent within a 30-team league would ruin the intrigue.
In a sport with 358 teams, the gap in talent and expectations is kind of fun. Yeah, a lot of the time it leads to UConn beating Maryland Eastern Shore by 60. But sometimes it leads to Drake!
What I’m Listening to: Samara Cyn
Yes…. YES!!!