Indiana Pacers point guard Jalen Lecque has been seen all over social media with his uncanny ability to jump out of the gym on some ridiculous dunks.
Lecque, who was acquired by the Pacers in a trade before this season in exchange for T.J. Leaf, is currently playing in the G-League with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. Lecque’s athletic ability may challenge even some of the top stars in the NBA.
But Lecque is not currently and has never been a household name.
In his lone season with the Duke Blue Devils, now New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson was at the center of every sports conversation.
SportsCenter, PTI, Inside Edition, TMZ, your local news station; The guy was everywhere. And according to ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla, he was worth $150 million dollars before he even stepped foot in the NBA.
For the Pacers budding star Lecque, he skipped college. He did not play in an NCAA Tournament. The one time North Carolina State commit chose to skip all forms of collegiate hoops and jump straight into the G-League.
This is not to say that Lecque would have ever been as successful as Williamson at the college level, but it makes you think.
What kind of traction would he have gotten with the eyes of the country on him in a March Madness setting? The value of the big time college environments is unmeasurable.
“In our culture and society college football and basketball is like professional sports,” Fraschilla said on The Dan Dakich Show Monday. “There is rooting, people buy tickets and donate money; So yes we can do more for the kids that are out there. There’s a kid named Jalen Green in the G-League. If your listeners don’t know who he is, it’s because he’s not playing college basketball.”
Sure, the value of going to play for a blue blood like Duke is different than somewhere else.
But on the national stage, sometimes you get a team like the Butler Bulldogs. That same Butler team can have some ordinary looking Brownsburg kid on their roster named Gordon Hayward; And then in turn watch him become a multi-million dollar athlete and success story that stems from his March heroics.
That’s the significance of college basketball.
When 68 teams take their flights to Indianapolis in the next few weeks, we’re going to get a fresh batch of those stories. Eventually, the protagonists of those tales will go on to be like Williamson or Hayward.
Subscribe to The Dan Dakich Show Podcast
