Future considerations

The kid will play on, by all accounts. That's just who he is.

In a world of snark and general asshat-ery, Romeo Langford is that rarest of species: A genuine Nice Guy. He signs autographs. He works his tail off. He defers to his teammates, sometimes too much, and his swagger quotient is woefully deficient.

He'll also be on the floor tonight for Indiana in the NIT, even though he has nothing to gain and a whole lot potentially to lose.

He'll be playing St. Francis (Pa.) in a tournament whose acronym might as well stand for Nobody's Interested, Terribly, because, well, nobody's interested, terribly. This is especially true for Langford, who has a date with the NBA draft come June. So there is absolutely no earthly reason he needs to play in this deal, other than to fulfill the albeit fleeting commitment he made to Indiana and Archie Miller.

Lots of smart people think the smart business move would be to say, "Thanks, guys, but I'm out," and they're not wrong. Bloomington and those candy-stripe warmups are for all intents and purposes in his rearview  mirror; the future is what matters now. And a foot placed wrong tonight, or in subsequent nights, could jeopardize that future.

It probably won't, mind you. Injuries that wreck a man's career, or at least severely curtail his earning power, rarely happen in basketball. Just ask Paul George and Gordon Hayward, who suffered two of the most gruesome leg injuries you'll ever see, and yet now are back to being Paul George and Gordon Hayward.

So, yeah. Langford might as well play.

There are some who think he might as well stay, too, at least for another season. The Blob was one of those, until it realized: The Romeo Langford we're seeing now is not the Romeo Langford the draft gurus continue to say is a lottery pick.

The Romeo we're seeing now certainly is not that. He's an incomplete player whose offensive game is built almost entirely on explosion to the rim. Take that away from him, as teams intermittently have this season, and what's left is an inconsistent shooter who can rarely make you pay for overplaying him. He simply doesn't yet have an NBA mid-range or 3-point shot.

The key word being "yet."

It's the word the Gurus treasure above every other, especially when it comes to evaluating 19-year-olds. At 19, Romeo Langford was still good enough to average 16.5 ppg in the Big Ten, lead his team in scoring and finish second on the team in rebounds and third in assists. That's what the Gurus are looking at. They're looking at him at 19 and seeing him at 22 or 23. They're remembering what, say, Kawhi Leonard was coming out of college as a non-lottery pick, and what he is now.

Langford isn't Kawhi Leonard, but maybe he'll follow a similar trajectory. Maybe he won't. But he'll be paid like he will, so he might as well join the party now.

After, of course, he does what he promised Indiana he would do. And don't think that won't be a point in his favor, too.