This is a vital time for the St. John’s basketball team. There was another defection on Thursday, shot-swatter Chris Obekpa announcing he was transferring out of Jamaica, leaving an odd salutation on Twitter — “I just want to be prosperous to help others … no other reason” — on his way out the door.
That leaves the Johnnies with seven players returning for next year and exactly zero recruits as yet signed to make up for any of the roster gaps. That’s a dangerous way to live for anyone, but especially for a program that only has flirted with prosperity for 15 years.
And it leaves the school with one burning question:
Is this program heading in the right direction?
There have been stolen moments in the Steve Lavin Era when it seemed that query was destined for a satisfying conclusion. He did well with Norm Roberts’ players in Year One, guiding the Johnnies back to the NCAA Tournament. He cobbled together what looked like a terrific first recruiting class, led by Maurice Harkless, D’Angelo Harrison and Sir’Dominic Pointer.
And there were moments this past year when it seemed the Johnnies might actually overcome an awful 0-5 start in the Big East, sneak their way into the NCAA Tournament … until they collapsed like a flimsy pyramid scam.
A taste here, a nibble there.
Dabbling with prosperity.
Intoxicated, St. John’s revealed it was trying to lock Lavin up to a six-year extension. It was a puzzling decision, even before the avalanche of awful news that has come cascading down Utopia Parkway the past few weeks. There was an inexplicably flat do-or-die game with Providence in the Big East Tournament, an inexcusable no-show in the NIT opener against Robert Morris and JaKarr Sampson defying just about every credible draft prognosticator by foregoing his final two years of eligibility.
It is an especially absurd decision now. Lavin still has two years on his initial deal. Nobody is clamoring for his exile — especially when you consider he was ill for almost all of his second year. But neither is he anybody’s idea of a hot commodity, either. Committing to Lavin for eight years is the sort of thing short-sighted baseball teams do during Hot Stove — bid against themselves, now, suffer buyer’s remorse for years to come.
Why the rush? Why the largesse?
Honestly, it’s still difficult to define what St. John’s has in Lavin, whose reputation at UCLA as an ace recruiter and less-than-dazzling coach remains intact, though St. John’s certainly would sign up tomorrow for Lavin’s UCLA dossier — six trips in seven years to the NCAA, four Sweet 16s, one Elite Eight.
He has delivered significantly less than that here. Now, he has seven players, and now he has to hustle on a spring circuit he had all but conceded before all the defections came, and he has somehow done the impossible: become an invisible man in his own city, his rosters barren of New York City kids who, at the least, might make Madison Square Garden sound like something other than study hall.
All coaches lose players, and if they were all like Harkless it would be easier to take. What’s happening at St. John’s smacks of abandoning a sinking ship.
Is that fair? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Lavin’s first four years certainly have earned him two more, to see if he has the goods to get this straightened out. But eight? Based on a smile and a promise? That’s absurd, and terrible business. Lavin has won the right to disassemble the disarray. Nothing else.