Everything Phil Martelli, Saddi Washington said on WTKA 1050 (Part 2)
On Hunter Dickinson's return
Washington: I think that Hunter is a very smart, calculated young man. He had the benefit of going through the draft process last year to kind of get an assessment of what he needed to work, and where he was in the draft. Obviously, ultimately came back last year. Being familiar with how that works, I'm sure he and his family did their due diligence again this year. He calculated the cost of, is this the time for me to come out? Is it more beneficial to go back to Michigan, and get another year closer to my degree? Continue to work on the skills and maybe try to improve my draft position for the following year. Let's be honest, NIL played a major part of his decision in being able to ultimately come back to Michigan. Again, for us, we want what they want. If Hunter decided it was time for him to go, we would've supported him. Coach would've drove him to the airport, gave him a hug and sent him on his way. Obviously, he stayed and we welcome him back with a chest bump, high five, crack some jokes is what Hunter would do in the office. We're excited for him. Again, our job, and I feel like our responsibility as coaches and teachers, is to put these young men into a position to be in positon to make these kinds of decisions for themselves. This year, again, it's Michigan. We're excited for him and we expect big things from him both on the court, in the locker room from a leadership perspective and all of the above. He's been a great ambassador for the University of Michigan. I'm excited for his future and still being part of that growth process.
On Hunter Dickinson's next level
Martelli: If I could just add on to Saddi, Hunter seems complicated but he's really not. He loves college. Factor in NIL, he loves college. He is, like most of our guys, he is an exceptional student. So that's all part of this. I don't know if I've been around a lot of relationships that are like Juwan and Hunter. I really believe, to piggyback on Saddi, I really believe he sees Juwan as like the zen master. Could Hunter go and would he end up in the G League? Was there a two-way? C'mon. He's 7-foot-2, passes out of the post, not that a lot of teams would wander into the post anymore. He'd also be on busses and some would say, you know what, we would give him a little bit. Here, he gets the whole pie. He gets the college experience, he gets to pursue this remarkable degree and he's with a zen master of frontcourt play. All that kind of adds. In this moment in time, it's beautiful that Hunter and Coach, they're formulating this plan. What's next? Look, there's no secret, he has to become a better athlete. What's Hunter doing right now? Most guys are home. Hunter is here, he's with Sandman. He has to become a better athlete. For our game, he has to be able to play better in crowds because, if Moussa's back, if Moussa's not back, who is playing alongside of Hunter? What does that do to the floor? I think that he has to become not a stat guy when he shoots. He has to become a legitimate, 'I'm raising up and this ball is going in.' As I've watched over time, when Embiid went to the 76ers, and I'm not saying Hunter is Embiid. When Embiid started to shoot the three after it was encouraged by Brett Brown, it was a stat. Hunter's ball is still a stat. So he's gotta dig his feet in, raise up and if that's the shot, then he's gotta take that shot. Last summer we talked, my thing was that he had to cut down his turnovers. His turnovers for a kid that skilled was way too high. Cut those down. Now, it's about athletic abilities, which will increase his ability to cover the ball screen which everybody has to do in today's game, college or professional. The (three-pointers) he takes, has to go in. I would say to the fan out there if you could get this picture, Hunter became, over Eli, he became our best foul shooter. Why not take that stroke to the three-point line? That would be my thing.
On NIL on the recruiting trail
Washington: There are no guardrails right now. That's the problem. Not NIL, NIL is not the problem. The problem is that there are no guardrails for the student-athletes, for administrators, for universities, for programs in general. That's a scary thing. It was no mystery that this was coming down the pipeline for a couple of years, right? You would have liked to have thought at the very top, the executive offices of the NCAA there would've been a better plan to help everybody, 1) be educated, but then 2) not let this thing become roughshod and the Wild, Wild West. Let's be honest, a lot of people won't sat this out loud, the people who have seem to have just gone rogue with this, they've been doing this for a while. They've been doing it a while. Now, it's legal. That's fine, we all embrace it. The concern is that there's gotta be some checks and balances in place to make sure that everyone is not taken advantage of. Not just the student-athlete, the universities. We just came off a pandemic, most of these universities and athletic department budgets have been hemorrhaging for a couple of years now. Coming out of that, we're just throwing all this money at these players. Even the most sane and rational people who want to do things the right way, if you get enough money thrown at them, their perspective changes a little bit.
On NIL impacting the recruiting scope
Martelli: There's another person at the table. Parents have gotten very engaged in recruiting, that's a good thing. There's the kid sitting there. In some cases, there's the high school coach sitting there. There's the AAU or the summer coach sitting there and the kid kind of indicates to you who is at the table. Now, there's another person. At 16 or 17-years-old, there's now an agent involved. The rule today is that there are no rules. In a way, I don't know the Michigan rules for driving, if you're 16-years-old and you need a parent in the car, well, the parent is making sure you're going 55 and that your seatbelt is on. In this NIL, people just pile into the car without seatbelts and no brakes. There's no brakes in the car. This thing is going in every different direction. Add in the social media, if you want to call it, fake news, the things that are out there. For instance, last Friday I got out of a plane in Philadelphia. I looked at my phone and there was a prominent, prominent national broadcaster saying, about Hunter, Hunter needs to since we're more into the morning, shut up. Right? Because everybody knows he's making a million dollars. Up until he made that statement, I was not going to react to the shut-up because Hunter had gone off the rails a little bit. I called the guy and said, listen, whatever the narrative that the guy is making a million dollars, that's not a fact. It's absolutely, positively, not a fact. Just like Oscar at Kentucky is not making two million dollars. If he was making two million dollars, he would be shipped out of the country. You have to stop with this false narrative that are out there. This is a rule and it's great. I think it's great. But it's a rule with no brakes. There's nothing there—we're now going to go after the collectives. Yeah, but, somebody should've thought of that. These agents aren't sitting around. The usual contract, mandated contract, for the NBA, a negotiated contract, you get 4%, people are slotted. On this, there are guys taking advantage of these kids and their families at the tune of 20 and 22 percent of the deals that they're cutting. When somebody says to you, which did happen to me in the last five days, 'I'm looking for a phone number on a kid'. I said, 'Great, what's the deal?' I don't know what you're talking about. Kids going to come into a program that will prepare him at Michigan and have him work with an elite staff, not an average staff, an elite staff. At your position, you'll be working with an NBA guru. And the guy goes, 'What's the deal?' It's an acquaintance, not a friend, and he gave me a figure. I said, alright, talk to you later. I can't do it and Michigan can't do it. Hunter left the rails, talked about his school, talked about the athletic department and here's what I would say: Michigan right now is going at the speed limit. Once everything gets in order, whether it's a state law or whether Congress reacts to these meetings they've had with commissioners, then Michigan is going to do what Michigan does and go to the top. We'll have the very best NIL program in the country. A lot of programs, in my opinion, are diving into this thing and they're mid-dive going into a swimming pool and they're going, 'Oh, my god, there's only three feet of water in there.' Because no one knows what the baseline is. No one knows what the rules are.
Washington: But, to your question, that's what they have always done. It's just legal now. I can speak for basketball and I'm sure it's consistent throughout all of the athletic programs here at Michigan. We have a reputation. Michigan has a reputation of doing things and trying to do things the right way. Where other schools or other people in basketball will just come out directly and ask these people, this is the deal, this is what you need to sit at the table and have this conversation. Those are the exceptions for us and not necessarily the rule. I find it funny and now we're at the point where people are like publicly posting the NIL deals they're getting to go to X school. Now, X school is benefitting from it, whether it's real or not. A lot of it is hearsay, and a lot of it is fake news. Some of it is real. If that's your only recruiting pitch to get a student-athlete to your school, I'm like, man, this is what we're coming to now?
On how Michigan competes in NIL
Martelli: I think that you have to be comfortable in your own skin. Gotta be able to sleep at night. If you're out there doing it in a way that is against your athletic department, if it's against your school's messaging, if it's against your staffs approach, then it's not worth it. You're going to stay the course. Fight the fight because there are kids out there, and I can think of a recent conversation we've had with a really terrific family and player, partway through the presentation they were like, 'That's not of interest to us.' When we got to the segment of our presentation that was NIL, 'If that happens, it happens.' You have to be lifted up, I go through this phone every day and be like that's a story, that's a story. What can we learn from this story? There's one today. A great, I assume he's great, wide receiver at Boston College came out publicly and said I turned down $600,000 from one school, $300,000 from another school and all they wanted me to do is enter the portal. They didn't want me to say that I'm coming there but that's what they wanted to talk about. The kid goes on in the article and says they thought that I valued that. I'm staying. I hope he's great, I hope that he's great. You're going to have, as much as you have poster children now for, 'Oh my god, look what they've got!' You're going to have poster children that say, you know what, I am going to do it this way.
On how they manage the NIL expectations from their own roster
Washington: I think we're all in that space where that's what we're figuring out now. If you look at what some of these young people made last year, just in general across the board, if they made what they actually made, some lived up to those expectations, others didn't and the scrutiny came to those young men. To your point, such and such got X amount of dollars, he's not doing anything! I had a great year and I'm only making this. Let's keep the main thing, the main thing. The main thing the main thing is you're a student-athlete at one of the greatest universities in the world. We, Michigan, is going to do everything in our power to maximize the student-athlete experience for you. Academically, athletically financially, socially, all of the above. If you're a young man who has that trajectory to where you can play at the next level, this is just a byproduct of what is going to happen for you in the future because, if you're not in the gym, if you're not working out, if you're not getting better at your trade, all of that is going to get cut off anyway. Same thing for us as coaches, as a staff. If you're not winning, all this money that's being pumped into programs and universities to stockpile their roster is going to go away. Somebody is going to say, why am I going to keep giving X amount of dollars for this transfer kid and you're not winning championships. You're not making it past the first weekend of the postseason, NCAA Tournament ... The main thing has to be the main thing. As coaches, we get paid X amount of dollars. We've had a tremendous amount of success. Neither one of us are the highest-paid assistant coaches in the country. So if we're like, why aren't we making the same amount or more as those guys over there? It's a distraction. It's an unnecessary distraction. That's why people have choices. Hunter loves Michigan. Hunter could've left. He loves Michigan. Whatever he gets in his deals and other players get in their deals, that's what we have for them here. You can't sugarcoat this thing because as soon as you start trying to be apples to apples and keep with the Jones', again, that's where it all falls off the rails. To Phil's point, you've got to be comfortable with who you are. He says this all the time, you gotta wake up and look at the man in the mirror. That's a Phil Martelli special right there. If you're OK with that and the guys are OK with that and you're winning, everything they want is going to come as a result of that.
On NIL
Martelli: I am not one of these guys that say the NCAA is the worst, I've seen them grow with their relationship with coaches. Yes, have there been some messes along the way? Yes. Is this a mess? Yes. Because you have to factor in this: They gave kids additional years. No one out there, as close as you follow this, wait a second, that kid still has time left? Now you have the COVID year, which was a great gesture. You throw in NIL and then you say one-time transfer. How about the one-time transfer, yesterday I was on a call, the grad transfer doesn't count towards the one-time transfer. Oh yeah, so a kid can go to three schools, or four schools. Doesn't that make anybody kid of uncomfortable? The NIL adding to that equation. This plus this, plus this, plus this equals confusion. And, really, chaos. For a young guy, he's going to transfer. It's announced by a lawyer where he's going in conjunction—Wait a second, what just happened here? It hurts the profession and it hurts the game. The one thing about the locker room, this is the one time I believe that young people today are not selfish. They're self-centered and I do believe they sit in the locker room and say, 'Me, I can do this.' But I don't think they sit in the locker room and say, 'He has a deal and he only got 11 points last night, I got 15.' I don't think their minds work like that. I do think it's a priority for the staff and the whole staff. Coaching staff, the support staff and the administrative staff within these wide, wide guardrails to make sure that these kids understand, you know what, we're trying to work for everybody. For all the offensive lineman. How about, if you're about a foreign student-athlete and you can't—how? Think about it. There's a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about John Calipari. He's a real friend of mine. I'm not at Michigan without him speaking to Juwan Howard. I have a whole different view of Cal. What did Cal do with Oscar? Oscar met with the two senators from Kentucky. McConnell and I don't know their other senator is. He met with them to start to draft this legislation for how are we going to help these foreign players? Saddi said earlier, it came out, yeah but you left a whole group of players out of this thing. The student-athletes, not just players. We're not just talking basketball players. Foreign student-athletes, you didn't go through immigration, you didn't go through visas. Look, Moussa and Caleb, and think of the hundreds of student-athletes here at Michigan. What are we going to do about that? How are we going to put all that together?
Washington: And how are we going to protect them? We talk about the financial part of this. Media, fans, alum, whatever alike, these kids get hit across the head daily on social media just based on their play. Based on their performance on the court, on the field. Now, the expectation that this kid is getting X amount of dollars has to live up to that, and if he doesn't in the eyes of some Twitter thug. That's a real thing. Now, do we not only have to mentor and protect our young people from just the scrutiny of their physical play. Now they're criticizing, 'You're not worth whatever.' They're not professionals yet. Let's go easy on the young people.
Martelli: That's a really great point because you're talking about 18-year-old kids, 19-year-old kids and, in some cases 15 and 16-year-old kids about the brand. It doesn't feel right.
On Kobe Bufkin
Martelli: I'll give you a quick answer. Kobe, come back and be Eli.
Washington: Young Bean has had a tremendous spring thus far. The kid works. He's not just working, he's being very specific and very intentional about the areas of his game that he has been working on. I expect that Kobe is going to be the best version of Kobe. I know he's hungry and excited because he did have a front-row seat of watching Eli. I think Kobe is going to put his spin on it and be the best version of Kobe. I think we're all excited about what that young man is going to bring to the table next season.
On Terrance Williams
Martelli: T-Will, leadership. That's where I'm looking for growth. Being really honest, he's heard me say this two days ago. He has to improve at the other end of the floor. I'm all for shooting the ball and playing on the bounce. I have some outtakes for him, so to speak, on the defensive end of the floor.
On Jaelin Llewellyn
Washington: That veteran presence. Another veteran guy in the locker room. Somebody that's been on the big stage and has performed well. He has a presence about him that is comforting. He just gets it. As Phil talked about earlier, fit. He fits Michigan. We expect him to bring all his greatness with him to Ann Arbor.
On Isaiah Barnes and Will Tschetter
Martelli: At the end of the year at the banquet and you say most improved, those guys were on the list even though they didn't play. Isaiah has a pretty jumper, he has an explosiveness at the rim. He has to continue to grow athletically, his athletic ability and his basketball IQ. You cannot grow in this program minus an IQ.
Washington: Will is the ultimate, ultimate worker. That kid lives in the gym, he probably has a blanket in his locker because that's how much time he spends in the gym. His energy is infectious. With Will, he brings all what he learned being a multi-positional guy, being on the scout team, learning different offenses, that's going to help speed up his learning curve. He's going to fight for time on the court next year. I think he could be one of those fan favorites when he checks into the game because of the energy that he brings to the court.
Martelli: If I could for a second, brag about Will. He went home to Minnesota. He and his mother drove back to a hospital here to visit a kid who lost his leg to cancer. Drove back. All this other banging your head and, oh my god, what has this game come to? Where's the essence of what college basketball should be about? It's not about NLI, it's not about transfer portals. It's about a kid going home and saying, you know what, I could make a difference and drive back here. That's wh everybody roots for Will Tschetter.