Dudes and Guys
Some dudes are Dudes. Some are just Guys. With the Draft tonight, we separate wheat from chaff.
I love the NBA Draft, not because I have a team I live and die with (currently my attention is divided between Terry Taylor’s Bulls, the semi-local Hawks, the semi-er-local-er Griz and Nikola Jokic and Those Who Love Him), but because it’s a time to see our best boys off to the professional ranks. It’s like graduation, only I didn’t pay for Gradey Dick to go to school and he’s leaving several dozen credits short of a degree (even if he doesn’t particularly need one).
But while the work (ie, having a collegiate career and workout season worthy of getting drafted) has ended, the Work (ie, the job and everything that comes with staying an employable NBA player) starts now. Some guys are going to be better-equipped for this than others.
It’s time to separate the Guys from the Dudes. A Dude is someone you want to see (“Did you see that dude?” “That dude’s a monster!”); a Guy is just a Guy (otherwise JAG in some parlance). Some rules to consider before the exercise:
I’m only covering the college kids; while I believe Victor Wembenyama’s teammate Bilal Coulibaly has more than a whiff of Dude about him (to say nothing of Wemby himself), I can’t pretend I watched a bunch of Metropolitans 92 this year.
I’m not interested in discussing the Dude-dom of likely top-10 picks; if someone is going that high, a team anticipates him becoming a Dude. Even if I don’t think some of those Guys are going to become Dudes (and inevitably, some won’t), they’re not my focus.