Tonight is Brandon Miller's night, a night he's earned, a night he deserves because of who he really is and what he's actually done in his 20-plus years on this big blue marble. If that disturbs you, it probably says more about you than it does him.
Tonight, if the insider reports are correct, Miller is going to make history. He will be the second University of Alabama basketball player taken as the second overall pick in the NBA Draft, joining Antonio McDyess from 1995 in that rare air.
And he will be chosen by His Airness himself.
Michael Jordan may have agreed to sell his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets, but the team's general manager, Mitch Kupchak, has said that Jordan will have the final say on personnel matters through the draft and free agency. The Hornets own the No. 2 pick in the draft's first round.
So if NBA Commissioner Adam Silver steps to the microphone and says, with the second pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, the Charlotte Hornets select Brandon Miller from the University of Alabama, it will mean the greatest player in basketball history believes in one of the better players in SEC history.
Believes in him as a player. Believes in him as a person. Believes in him as a difference-maker worthy of an investment projected at upwards of $40 million total over four years, according to the NBA rookie pay scale.
Jordan is by no means perfect, as a judge or an example of character - or as a talent evaluator - but he is nothing if not a shrewd businessman. If he decides that Miller, rather than G League Ignite sensation Scoot Henderson, is the right fit for the Hornets, it will make a statement.
That statement will speak louder than all the chants, jokes and slurs hurled at Miller by all the merchants of doubt who have judged him for what they think he did or could've done or should've done after midnight on the evening of Jan. 14. ...
Read the rest of Kevin's column, which was published Thursday June 22, on Miller's special night. Only in the Lede.

Comments