The college basketball transfer apocalypse is upon us, and it’s not the end of the world
Walker Kessler is just the first. He will not be the last. The transfer market Mike Krzyzewski predicted would become “the wild, wild west” is upon us. And everything’s going to be OK.
For many fans, it doesn’t feel like that right now. The impending possibility of a wave of players leaving their school feels like the end of the world. Nobody, least of all coaches, are used to the idea of free agency in college sports.
The combination of the NCAA’s expected adoption of a one-time transfer waiver this year, allowing any athlete to transfer without sitting out a year, and the extra year of eligibility for any seniors that want to return, is going to turn rosters upside down all over college basketball, and not just in Chapel Hill, where the rapidly churning rumor mill claims everyone short of Ramses is thinking about following Kessler out the door.
Throw in the unfortunate reality that none of this season’s freshmen had anything close to a normal college experience, locked in their dorm rooms and playing in empty buildings, and the ties that usually bind athletes to their campuses were never built. The grass is going to look greener just about everywhere.
Roy Williams has lost very few players to transfers in his time at North Carolina, but this year’s freshmen didn’t get the same indoctrination as their predecessors. There’s no sense of stardom on an empty campus. There’s no mingling with famous alumni. This was not the traditional Carolina basketball experience. That was true everywhere in college basketball.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a building-block year, and the Tar Heels would profit in the future from the lumps they took this winter. Williams’ best teams were built that way, older teams with something to prove and nothing left to learn. The 2009 champions were at the end of a long road. The 2012 team derailed by Kendall Marshall’s injury would have been the consensus favorites if the sophomores had returned. The 2016 and 2017 teams had been through it all.
This team may not get that chance. Williams clearly knew what was coming from the moment the season ended. Kessler certainly seemed like the kind of player who had grown and flourished at North Carolina in the past, but there’s no precedent for any of this.
“Times are different now and there will be a lot of different pulls to them or pulls at them, stresses and pressures that they and their families feel,” Williams said in the wake of the loss to Wisconsin. “So we’ll just have to wait and see.”
This offseason will be a massive market correction, with hundreds if not thousands of basketball players in the transfer portal — there were 573 Division I players already in the portal by mid-afternoon Tuesday, per a source with access to the portal — and given the previous restrictions on athlete movement and everything college athletes have been through in the past year, it’s probably good to hit the reset button and let everyone who wants to start fresh do that. Like Clemenza said about mob wars, “These things gotta happen every five years or so.”
It’s scary for everyone because it’s different. Transfers are already a big part of the college basketball landscape — this year’s all-ACC first team had two of them — but the waiver will throw gasoline on the flames. College fans are used to watching freshmen develop and emerge as stars over the course of their careers, whether that’s one more year or two or three. Smaller schools are worried about losing their best players to bigger programs. Bigger programs are worried about losing young players who didn’t play much, disrupting their talent pipelines. Everyone’s worried about how to recruit and develop talent for the long term amid the so-called “transfer epidemic,” especially if the one-time exemption the NCAA is expected to approve next month eventually becomes permanent.
There’s an easy answer to that: In a labor market for basketball players where they enjoy the same freedom of movement as coaches and assistant coaches and athletic directors and trainers and literally everyone else, it will be newly incumbent upon coaches to keep players from leaving, by making realistic promises during the recruiting process and keeping those promises.
That’s what happens in almost all Olympic sports, where athletes already don’t have to sit out a year. For too long, basketball coaches have been able to count on fear and the cumbersome transfer process to keep players in place. Now, they’ll have to actually keep them happy. Williams has been deliberate about this over the years, playing 11 or 12 guys regularly until the start of ACC season, maybe even losing a game or two in the process. Others will have to adapt.
This offseason, players will have a wide market for their services. Coaches — like Krzyzewski and Williams — who don’t often take transfers will have to consider them, just to fill holes. Fans may struggle to see some leave, but others will arrive to take their place.
It’s different and jarring for everyone, but it’s the right thing to do. College athletes aren’t indentured servants; they deserve the same freedom of movement as any other student. It’s going to be crazy this summer, an unprecedented offseason to follow an unprecedented season.
Then it’ll settle into a new normal, as it always does.
This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 6:30 AM with the headline "The college basketball transfer apocalypse is upon us, and it’s not the end of the world."
