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CHICAGO
North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough sounds sick of the game.
Not that game; he still loves basketball. It's this game of expectations, a month away from the NBA draft, and it's tiresome.
There's a rule of thumb in the NBA that your projected draft spot approximates how many auditions you should do. The presumed top pick – Oklahoma's Blake Griffin, in this case – might do a single workout. A player projected in the 20s will be asked to work out for two-thirds of the league.
Hansbrough isn't playing that game.
“I'm not going to work out for a lot of teams,'' Hansbrough asserted Thursday at the NBA combine. “Maybe eight. I did this (college basketball) for four years. They should know I can play.''
Hansbrough's tone wasn't petulant. More exasperated. He reminds me of former Wake Forest star Tim Duncan. Not that Hansbrough is in Duncan's class, but they had similarly complete resumes, transitioning from college to the NBA.
Hansbrough doesn't want credit for staying in college four years, but he doesn't deserve demerits, either. In these times, when the default move is to turn pro at the first sniff of a first-round selection, Hansbrough is an anomaly. Maybe a relic.
He stuck around Chapel Hill because he loved the place. He still laughs about the jump off that balcony into a pool, and how that fraternity house ended up with raised insurance rates for the stunt. He's certainly not the first North Carolina grad who delayed departure. But he's ready for the working world.
There's this assumption Hansbrough is flawed because he doesn't jump 2 feet above the rim, make NBA 3-pointers or have post moves so complex, he's Final Jeopardy and the category is “Famous Algorithms.''
It's much more elemental. Hansbrough has this knack for getting fouled while shooting in the post. You can watch him score or foul him. It's what every NBA team missed about Brad Miller, coming out of college, and that guy wasn't even drafted. Miller ended up an All-Star.
I'm not saying Hansbrough is an All-Star. I'm saying that in this mediocre draft, teams will come to accept, somewhere in the 20s, that a power forward who consistently goes to the foul line, and makes 84 percent of those attempts, is an asset. Perhaps not as a starter, but certainly as a rotation player.
Hansbrough said Thursday he sent his lucky, pinstripe suit – you know it, the one his teammates called the “mafia suit'' – to the Smith Center Museum. It's a fresh start, he explained; you don't wear something for two years, then show up in it on draft night.
But clothes don't make the man, acts do. And Hansbrough's act in the lane will continue to wear well.
