Michigan head coach John Beilein didn’t try to convince D.J. Wilson or Moritz Wagner to stay in school, but he did give them advice and gather information. At the end of the day, he told The Huge Show’s Bill Simonson, he left the decisions up to them.
Wilson opted to give the NBA a shot despite most projecting him for the second round.
“He really feels he’s ready for the NBA. That was a thing he felt very confident he could do,” Beilein said. ”We gave him all the information, the probabilities in every area. Given those probabilities he said, ‘I’m going for it, Coach.’
“That’s all I can do is provide information, the best rationale I can for making a decision.”
It’s difficult, Beilein added, given there’s an apparent conflict of interest. Beilein wanted him back, of course, but he also didn’t want keep Wilson from chasing his dream.
“You feel sometimes a player feels, ‘you just want me back because you need us, and you’ll be better with that team.’ That’s not my intention,” Beilein said. “I’ll give him information he can really use. I don’t want a guy back who is not all in [either], who has one eye on the NBA players and one on the team.
“We were very diligent and intentional on this thing. We give him the probabilities and let him make a choice … anything else I tell him would be between D.J. and I.”
Wilson’s departure is indicative of a continually changing landscape, he continued.
“It used to be maybe motivating players to get better, coaching them up and getting them to buy into the team concept, because all high school players were starters,” he said. “The biggest thing now … to sustain. Retention is huge. Wisconsin has been a great example of that. Michigan State, keeping guys from going to the NBA or transferring. You get hit by both of those right now, so sustaining it … that’s the biggest challenge.”
It helps, though, when guys like sophomore Moritz Wagner choose to come back.
Wagner was a likely second round pick, too, but he went to the NBA Draft Combine more for the workout and the experience. There’s no guarantee he’ll leave after next year, even, given his goals.
“He really came to me, and I had a similar type of agenda for him to give him the probabilities so he could make an educated decision. He stopped me in the middle of it,” Beilein recalled. “He said, ‘Coach, this is something we don’t need to discuss anymore. I love Michigan, can’t wait to come back to Michigan. I need to improve my game. I want to get a Michigan degree. This is an easy thing for me.’
“Everyone’s different … that’s what you need to understand. You can’t line them up and say what’s good for this guy is also good for this guy. There are a lot of reasons guys go pro, and a lot of reasons guys do not. Everybody’s different.”
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