A college player thinking of declaring for the NBA Draft has a number of people offering guidance: family, friends, coaches, informal advisers, agents and even fellow students. Duke's future pros, though, also have the luxury of consulting with the Student-Athlete Counseling Committee, which prepares them for postgraduate athletic careers and advises them in finding legal representation.
Every player's process for entering a career in professional sports is different. But most, if not all, have asked for advice from the president-appointed committee, which currently consists of Paul Haagen, a law professor and the committee's chair, and Chris Kennedy, deputy athletic director.
"I think it's been pretty unusual for someone not to talk to at least one of us," Kennedy said. "I really don't remember anyone who hasn't had some kind of contact."
That list of Blue Devils includes Gerald Henderson, who told The Chronicle Friday that he is still in the process of evaluating his options and will decide whether to return for his senior year "in the next few weeks."
Chorus of advisers
Henderson, in particular, has a stable of advisers, some more credible than others. His father, Gerald Henderson Sr., played in the NBA and still has strong ties to many professional teams. Duke's coaching staff, including Mike Krzyzewski, has become more involved in players' decisions in recent years, Kennedy said. Henderson is even the subject of a student-created Facebook group, which has more than 600 people asking him to stay for another year.
If history is any indicator, though, then Haagen and Kennedy's input could prove particularly valuable.
The two professors help student-athletes understand the landscape of professional athletics and assist them in picking agents and figuring out what agents can do for them, Haagen said. Haagen and Kennedy's roles as outsiders--neither coaches nor players-is especially useful. Scouts tell college coaches one thing about a player's draft stock, and they tell the player another. Haagen, who has his own contacts in professional basketball, tends to hear a more balanced perspective, he said.
"Biases cause people not to have good information," said Haagen, who added that his role is to help players evaluate information, not offer his own independent opinions. "If they think they don't have good information, they might actually put correctives on that are themselves wrong. For the program itself, it's an indication of their confidence. They don't feel they have to control the flow of information, and the player is confident in the support that they're getting."
That unbiased opinion helps players offset the range of opinions they can find on the Internet, where NBA Draft Web sites showcase mock drafts predicting when players will be selected. It has the potential to be the loudest voice of all if a player isn't careful, and it's a recent phenomenon that players like Grant Hill and Shane Battier didn't have to deal with.
Duke's last player selected in the NBA Draft, Josh McRoberts, was drafted 12 spots later than NBADraft.net projected, but the five Blue Devils drafted before McRoberts all went earlier or exactly when they were predicted to be drafted.
"I think it affects players," Haagen said of the Internet. "They're likely to hear the best story and assume that's the correct one. I think that's even more common than it was 15 years ago."
Following Hill's model
When he was a senior in 1994, Hill took full advantage of Haagen and Kennedy's counsel. His parents, Calvin and Janet Hill, insulated him from agents, and his mother even threatened to call the police on an agent hanging outside her son's room at the ACC Tournament. When Grant Hill hosted agents for meetings before the NBA Draft, Haagen and Kennedy joined Krzyzewski, former assistant coach Tommy Amaker, a Fuqua School of Business professor, Janet and Calvin Hill and two of their confidantes in the room.
The environment resembled a business meeting-everyone in the room wore suits. Before the meeting, Krzyzewski told Grant Hill to command the agents' attention, even if they seemed more interested in talking to Krzyzewski or Hill's father, said Janet Hill, who still asks Haagen for consultation on projects from time to time.
"'You are the client,'" Hill recalled Krzyzewski telling her son. "And you know what? K was right. Grant was the client."
Even though Haagen solicits input from everyone involved, he makes sure the players know that he won't make decisions for them. The committee is there to help players, and each Blue Devil has a different preference for engaging them, Kennedy said.
Henderson's situation shares a similarity with that of Grant Hill. Many have said that the two players have comparable games and skill sets, but they also have fathers with contacts in the NBA because they both were professional athletes.
"It's good to have that," Henderson said of his father. "He knows, he's been there. He's been around the league for a while. It's good to have his input on that side of it."
Haagen and Kennedy-who have served consecutive one-year terms on the NCAA-recognized committee since 1990-understand the consequences of every student-athlete's decision, including Henderson's. Many schools have emulated Duke's committee model, but few offer advice beyond securing representation. The committee, which is accessible to all of Duke's student-athletes, tries to guide players throughout the whole process because it understands how complicated the foray into professional athletics can be.
"We feel that we have a responsibility to our students to give them the best array of services or opportunities that we can," Kennedy said. "When you think about this one, if you make a mistake with an agent or with a contract, it could cost you a lot. That's one of the reasons we're so involved at all levels-because the stakes are so high."
Tim Britton contributed reporting.
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