Given people a new decision to question. "If Pike hadn't jumped the gun and kicked Mag of the team, he might have come back. That wasn't justified blah blah blah."
Quitting on your team at the end of season does not help your chances of landing elsewhere
- Thread starter knight82
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What do you think Izzo would have done? Pitino? Calipari? Coach K? Roy? Bill Self?
Pike had every reason to be upset
Mag nearly transferred out, then got his bag
Then sits out the first ~10-12 games - Caleb did the same thing so I'll give him a pass
Then goes full tilt in practice, but the team isn't very good and suddenly come game time, he gets "dinged"
That, my friends, is called "Bag Hunting"
Which, transparently, is within Mag's rights to do
And, candidly, may pay off for him if he's able to secure Bag # 2 from another school, while preserving his body this past season
The risk he runs, and others who have the same intentions, are that he and his handler overvalued his worth, along with getting a reputation for being a quitter (this stuff gets around, these guys all talk), and either gets a much smaller bag then he initially would have, or goes to a bigger school where he gets limited chances to play, thus hampering his ability to showcase his skills and eventually play overseas
I'll say it once, I'll say it a thousand times - get your Bag. You earned it
But once that happens, you have to perform.
What he did at the end of last season wasn't cool
I'll always appreciate his time here and what he gave for the team and school, but how he ended things will sour mine, amongst others, views of him moving forward
As much as I would like to think the OP is right, way too many individuals with questionable ethics still get rewarded by teams thinking there will be a difference in the player. He is the only player that left RU I am not rooting for.
I posted a few months ago questioning his motive to sit out and how it would hinder his recruitment and many people responded that it would help his cause as he would rest and ultimately get more offers.
Was Pike upset? And if so, why?
Nobody knows but Pike. Everybody else is assuming it based on inference, which is not the same as fact.
Haha I only chime in on stuff like this when I know 100 percent something is either true or false
And then after that, I decide if it somehow hurts the team by me saying something. Some things are better left alone.
I don’t know whether Mawot was faking an injury or not. As a competitor, I was frustrated to hear he was practicing and then not playing, but at the end of the day only Mawot will really ever know the truth.
Nobody knows but Mawat
But from what we've heard, Pike wasn't happy
When I was young, I often played through minor hamstring, calf or groin injuries, and through minor lower back injuries. When doing that, I could be good enough to go for several games and then suddenly tweak something and have to sit out for a while. Happened all the time.
I can't say for sure that's what happened with Mag. But I also can't say it isn't what happened, as some here appear to wish to do. As you point out, only Mag knows.
All I know, from personal experience as a player and coach, is that sports injuries can be very unpredictable in how they affect different people. Especially back injuries which can behave in ways that often follow no pattern at all.
Mawot Mag can barely dribble was just learning how to find his comfort zone scoring the ball at this level. Isn't a reliable catch and shoot guy or any type of shot. This is not a guy that d1 coaches would be throwing money at. His whole game relies on his athletic ability. He is a difference maker because of his defense, hustle and tenacity. He looked like his old self during the winning streak the team went on. Then he started playing terribly. I don't know his exact stats those last few games but they were bad. If anything I would think that he didn't trust his injury had fully recovered and didn't want to play the way he was playing and have that image of him as the one that defines him to potential recruiters. But no way he thought or anyone that understands basketball thought he would sit out and be a hot commodity in the off-season.
If he continued to look good defending and taking away half the court from other teams and dropping buckets like he was during the win streak no way he sits out even if the team was losing but he was still playing like his self no way he sits out. He looked bad and Gavin was actually a better option at that point if you ask me. I'm convinced he was hurt...this guys is not Armani Bates or Mikey Williams those are the type of guys that can get on a team as long as they are able to play basketball no matter what they do. Mawot Mag is not that...
If he continued to look good defending and taking away half the court from other teams and dropping buckets like he was during the win streak no way he sits out even if the team was losing but he was still playing like his self no way he sits out. He looked bad and Gavin was actually a better option at that point if you ask me. I'm convinced he was hurt...this guys is not Armani Bates or Mikey Williams those are the type of guys that can get on a team as long as they are able to play basketball no matter what they do. Mawot Mag is not that...
Totally agree Pike was unhappy. But we don't know the exact composition of his unhappiness, right? We don't know that he was specifically unhappy with Mag, versus just unhappy at the situation with Mag being unable to play. Or if the unhappiness was almost entirely about other stuff besides Mag.
All we can do is form an assumption and I usually prefer not to do that. If forced to form an assumption, it would normally be one in which Pike and Mag and the rest of the team come out looking better rather than worse. 'Cause, IMO, our assumptions about other people say far more about us than about those other people.
My philosophy is basically that we're all just BSing about stuff on the internet where it doesn't matter what we think. So, given a choice, why not choose to be kind with our assumptions?
Anyway, not telling you or anyone how to think. Just saying this is I view this sort of stuff, FWIW.
That's fair
I like the kid, and without wishing he was actually hurt, wish he was actually hurt and not milking the injury
But the optics didn't look good
It would have sent multiple messages. One message would go out to recruits and other programs to use against us in recruiting: that if you get hurt, and claim you are hurt, Pike might kick you off the team.
Again, that’s assuming he was legit hurt
The timeline on things plus pikes demeanor when asked about it would say otherwise
Nobody can prove it, but reading between the lines and seeing pikes demeanor, it was clear he was frustrated.
Whether that means Mag was not really injured or the timeline had him upset, I guess nobody will ever know, but the circumstances certainly seemed peculiar with the teams performance as well as him being healthy in practice by all accounts
I’m not debating that. I’m arguing that summarily dismissing him from the team is a little more complicated than people are making it seem.
I agree with you there, I don’t think you can just put automatically dismiss him, but you can certainly make his life more difficult in other ways
Moving forward, these NIL deals will be structured similar to NBA contracts, as it will be incentives for games played and stats, etc.
Also, was thinking basketball is so different from other sports. Basketball is non-stop on an unforgiving surface. And how many times do we hear about players going back under the knife to clean up something from a prior surgery.
And common sense, if he was always gonna hit the portal to cash in on the Covid year, playing only a handful of games in 2 years wouldn’t do much to help his stock.
Tell you what Geo is the man. He didn’t have to come here and say anything. Goats will be goats. Thanks Geo
Love that guy
A loyal son who had brass balls during crunch time !!
Wish we could find five Geo Bakers every season. Loyal sons, great players, great people, and clutch with the game on the line.
Yeah, unless he avoided playing enough to make a case for an extra year of eligibility, then skipping games as a means of upping his portal value seems counterproductive. Did he, in fact, skip enough games to get an extra season of eligibility? I have no idea.
That’s pretty rational thought - just looked, and he played in 17 which seems high to have much of a case for a RS.
I’m no expert on CBB eligibility rules, but just did a quick scan on the web and it seems that, yeah, 17 games will pretty likely burn the year of eligibility.
Given that, I can’t come up with any self-serving reason Mag would practice and then sit out games. So we’re left with either injury, mental health issues, or some kind of personality clash between coach(es) and/or players and Mag.
It’s none of my business, so I’m moving on.
Mag - the most unlucky guy I’ve ever seen. Great practice after great practice and unfortunately whenever it was game day his body let him down. On the positive side, when game days were over his body seemed to bounce right back so he could practice again. Poor guy was snake bitten I guess.
A lot of people in the Houston Astros organization thought JR Richard was exaggerating his injury.
Snake bitten? Lets not forget the medical staff had cleared Mag to play. Meaning he was physically good to go. Pike has to rely on the staff's evaluation. to me this created a darker cloud over Mag's motives!
How would Mag benefit by intentionally not playing?
$$$ . Instead of further poor performances he was banking on his past to supplement a payoff
In order for that to make sense, wouldn’t Mag have to have gotten worse between 2023 and 2024? The only way that happens for any player is due to injury or maybe some kind of mental health issue. If it’s because the team as a whole is worse, than coaches will understand and account for that.
And if he was so bad in 2024 that he had to hide it from other teams’ coaches, then why would you be upset that he didn’t play for us? Because if he’s no good anymore, he wouldn’t be helpful in our games either. His not playing wouldn’t have hurt us, if he was bad.
Conversely, if he was good enough to help us, he would be good enough to help other teams and would be playing so as to put all that goodness on video during games.
I mean, maybe someone gave him some really bad advice, as @RUChoppin said earlier. But in that case, if Mag wasn’t smart enough to understand how bad that advice was, then we probably ought not to be mad at him. Be like being mad at a blind person for stepping on your toes by accident. We should be mad at whomever advised him.
But I really think people are overcomplicating this. The simplest explanation is that he was plagued by injuries or having mental health issues. If it was the latter, it would be unethical for Pike to discuss it publicly. And it’s none of our business.
The bottom line is if Mag thought he was capable of playing to his full potential theres’s no way he would’ve sat because playing would’ve in that case improved his marketability. He clearly knew he couldn’t deliver his best and decided that it would hurt him more to play and put up bad / mediocre stats. To be fair, we don’t really know that this was “bad advice”. I’m not sure how marketable he would’ve been if he closed out the season with poor play down the stretch.
