Mag to BYU
- Thread starter Zak57
- Start date
... or, ya know, get a degree and then get a job like everyone else who isn't an NBA caliber basketball player.
He can do both. He should do both. He’d be foolish to not maximize his earnings.
There is a modification of that word that may be used by RU hoops fans.
"Maglingerer" 😀
Umm what? He has a skill that you and almost everyone else doesn’t have.
That big bump was still less than $50k I believe. With rumors of Noah getting six figures, I'm sure Mag didn't feel like it was a big bump.
And if the company says “No” and you’re as good as you think you are, you look for another job. It’s a free market. In the interim you continue to work and earn the paycheck you’re getting.
Yeah, one of my kids was working for a company and found out that several of her coworkers made more than her. She felt she was way more. She asked for more $ and was told it wasn’t possible, she should have negotiated a better salary when she was hired. They were shocked a few months later when she gave notice.
The complicating factor in this scenario is that an athlete’s ability to get a higher paying “job” at the end of the season requires him to be as healthy and uninjured as possible. Otherwise, it’d be like a trial attorney seeking a new higher paying job while suffering from visible dementia.
And it’s a one-time chance to earn more money for one year only. Unlike most people who can job hop many times if they’re really good at what they do, eventually landing a decades long job.
I don't begrudge anyone from making as much money as possible, but sitting out the end of the season was bullshit.
Anyway, he wasn't the same player last year, which is a shame because he seemed to have stepped up his game another level right before the injury at MSG.
Will be interesting to see if another 6 months of rest gets him back to where he was, or if BYU is getting the much more limited version we saw this past season.
Anyway, he wasn't the same player last year, which is a shame because he seemed to have stepped up his game another level right before the injury at MSG.
Will be interesting to see if another 6 months of rest gets him back to where he was, or if BYU is getting the much more limited version we saw this past season.
We don't know the details, scope and scale of his injuries. We only know that Pike said, at some point, that Mag was medically cleared, presumably by the team docs. Medically cleared to play isn’t the same thing as not being a greater risk of reinjury. It’s also not the same thing as a player being mentally ready to play at 100%. And we don’t know what any docs outside of the team may have told him, if he sought additional opinions.
It’s easy to imagine a situation in which Mag understood that he was at a high risk of reinjury and that the team wasn’t going anywhere anyway. So the wise decision for his financial future was to get more rest and avoid the higher than typical risk of reinjury.
Fans can call that decision BS if they want. But, if the injury thing was indeed the driver, and it’s hard to see what else might have been a factor, then I think he made an intelligent decision. I also see it as an ethically correct decision given the context.
BYU will have asked him why he didn’t play so many games. And they were obviously okay with his answers. I doubt they would’ve taken him if he couldnt provide a reasonable explanation.
I don’t think the poster meant it quite the way you are putting it. Later in life, we’ve had many RU players across different sports work directly for the program as trainers, coaches and on RU radio. Maybe those roles would never interest him anyway but nobody ever knows where life will bring them down the road. But it’s still burnt bridges in terms of potential opportunities. It’s not “cruel” not to consider him for those types of roles
What if it went down this way? Following 2 lackluster output performances 2.4 ppg / 1.5 rpg following yet another minor injury his handlers said to him - look Mag - Clearly your not at 100% right now playing dinged up. If you heal up quickly by all means you should go out there and show what you can do, but if you think there’s a good chance that your play is going to be limited, you might want to think twice about bringing down your season stats even more. Your averaging 9.1 ppg which is up from last season at 7.8 but a few more games without production could bring that down and your rebounding is already down from last season. Optically - that might hurt you in the NIL market. Do you fault the kid then for worrying that his personal monetary value could decline ?
Of course - that’s all hypothetical but seems like the most probable way things actually went down. we’ll never know the whole story but there are a few things we do know. He didn’t sit out simply to “heal up” because we know for sure he was practicing. Pike said so. If he was looking simply to rest his body for his next stop, he wouldn’t have been practicing either. So why was he practicing with RU if he had no intent to play in the games? The logical answer is that he was only willing to play if he felt he could showcase his best so he went out every day in practice to assess where his body was and unfortunately, he knew whatever he could provide would be better than what RU had alternatively but not close to his best. It didn’t help that we didn’t exactly have a surrounding cast that would’ve allowed him to stand out in a positive way to begin with.
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What makes someone think that Pike would not bring Mag back to help the team in the future? I would, if I were Pike. Because I cannot fault a player who has otherwise been a great kid and teammate for doing what is best for himself.
For sure, coaches will get rid of a player if that’s best for the team, right? Loyalty has to work both ways and D1 basketball has always been a business.
All that has changed is that NIL has given players the freedom to act in their own best interest.
That could be it or part of it. No way to know for sure. But I cannot fault the player for doing that in the context of the season.
Pike made it pretty clear that he was disappointed with Mag’s decision. I don’t think he would deny Mag a reference letter or something like that but he’s not going to bend over backwards to directly find something affiliated with Rutgers for him either. This is a burnt bridge in that sense. If Geo or Caleb or even Cliff asked it would be different.
I understand why he did it - but I still dont like it one bit. We also don’t know what the other guys who were underperforming him on the team were making in relative NIL. If I was Mag, I’d be pissed if Noah was making more money for sure. But look - that’s how professional sports contracts work in NBA, MLB etc. He should’ve gutted out the season - but as Green said, the system is to blame. Professional athletes in the pros aren’t allowed to “sit” if they are cleared to play. There was a gap in the rules here.
Yeah, maybe. Depends on the sort of person Pike is and the details of the situation, to which we are not privy.
I have found that it's super common for people to read stuff into situations that isn't really there based on scant evidence. I know of only one comment Pike made that could be taken as expressing disappointment at Mag (rather than at the situation). And an awful lot was inferred from that statement.
Maybe you and others here are aware of other comments from Pike on Mag. But I am not.
We don't know that Mag was pissed off about anything. For all we know, Mag was simply and calmly being intelligent about his future. Might not have been happy with the situation he was in, but I'd guess it was more due to injuries and earning potential than anything else.
I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that Mag did anything unethical here. Also no evidence that he should have "gutted out the season". I only see fan speculation based on one Pike comment about being medically cleared.
No player should ever do anything because of what the fanbase thinks. No offense to us all, but screw the fanbase. 😀
Richie’s podcasts basically said it was confirmed from the horses mouth without giving details. Didn’t seem speculators to me. Those guys said it was fact that he let RU down.
He was cleared to play. He was practicing. Those are facts. It’s also fact that he chose not to play. What isn’t fact is why. The bottom line is he would’ve been out there if he was on an NBA or MLB roster because you are required to play when medically cleared. NIL contracts didn’t yet have that detail. So no - not unethical. But that doesn’t mean Pike should regard him in the same light as a kid like Caleb who played through pain to do what was best for the team and took less money than he would’ve gotten somewhere else because he wanted to play for Rutgers.
RU could have let Mag down. If Mag had a certain value and the staff took advantage of Mag not knowing he had value then RU took a risk.
I mean - that seems unlikely as Mag had 2 feet out the door and we negotiated him back. He knew what that other school was offering - no? That’s fair market value or at least a step towards it with 2 quotes (ours and the school we clawed him back from). Sure - maybe there was a third school out there who would’ve paid more if he continued to shop but I wouldn’t say we took advantage of anything. We beat out the market at the time when he recommitted.
The fact that we overpaid for Noah does not make it unfair to Mag. We overestimated his abilities. We were wrong. There are lots of people in the workforce who are busts in terms of not being worth their salaries after the fact. Not all of those people are fireable rather companies just come to realize that someone else could’ve done the same thing for cheaper. That doesn’t mean you raise everyone else’s salary though because one person is overpaid on a relative basis.
No offense to anybody, but I have repeatedly found the saying "those who know do not say, those who say do not know" is true in the vast majority of situations. People mean well, but when we apply naturally occuring miscommunications and misinterpretations, we all get stuff wrong all the time.
The fact that someone said "Mag let RU down" already implies subjective judgement somewhere along the line, rather than simple objective observation. Because MBB team wasn't going anywhere this season with or without Mag. Given that context, hard to claim RU was let down in any way.
Maybe he did something wrong, maybe not. I remain unpersuaded either way.
It’s not that he “did something wrong”. It’s really what he didn’t do. He has Cam’s mentality. Both made personal business decisions without concern for the negative impact they had directly on Rutgers. That’s certainly his right, but in my view, to think of his legacy in the same light as we do guys like Geo, Ron and Caleb would be spitting in the faces of the Scarlet faithful. He was never a candidate to make a life changing amount of money like Cliff where all parties understood up front that remaining at RU wasn’t really possible without passing up a life changing pay check. He decided for whatever reason he was out and decided right then and there the concept of trying to help our team didn’t matter to him anymore at all. Sure - maybe he thought somehow playing poorly would be a risk to his future value but that was always a marginal risk at best. Teams would be working him out in off season to assess his health. The bottom line was avoiding that small amount of risk was more important to him than trying to help our team, his team, win. There’s no escaping this piece of it because we know he was cleared to play and we know he was practicing. So it’s not in the cards that he was “too hurt” to check into the game to see if he could help.
because it was discussed ad nauseum on the premium board
I was the first one to call this guy a quitter on RU, and initially took a lot crap on this board for it, especially from costume guy, who said he was "integral to '24-25" and I didn't know what I was talking about. Many months later, turns out not only is he not "integral" to '24-25, he's playing out in Utah lol. Gotta be able to read the cards.
How does anybody there know? Was the NIL amount per player published somewhere? The RU NIL collective doesn’t publicize how much NIL it gives to the players, does it?
II would’ve thought a player’s NIL agreements were private between the player and whomever is giving the player NIL funds. No?
Here’s the thing - there are some possibilities that are “less bad” than other spins but at the end of the day, no matter what he chose not to try to help the team and program he had been with for 3 seasons. Whether it was a big dollar value or small - we know Mag thought about leaving and reached a negotiation with us for money. The amount isn’t important. If Mag was able to practice, he wasn’t “too hurt” to try to see if he could help the team on gameday. He didn’t want to do that. Despite the contract not having a requirement to play if medically cleared - we still paid him to come back to RU and for whatever reason he chose to to sit out of games he was eligible to play in. We don’t know everything but we at least know this much and it’s enough.
What’s wrong with playing in Utah in an historically better program than Rutgers, and as you put it, LOL ?
So is Georgetown. So what? Utah will be a joke this year compared to Rutgers. And anyway, my point was the guy sandbagged us for basically all of last year while collecting a paycheck. He needed to go, and I am surprised Utah picked him up, though I guarantee you that's not where he hoped he'd land.
Sad to say, most every school is "historically better" than RU, though times they are a changin'
