As the Illinois Fighting Illini play at the United Center this Saturday, it provides another opportunity for the team from Champaign-Urbana to renew it’s relationship with Chicago. Although they’re a 2.5 hour drive (without traffic that is) from Chicago, the Illini are the windy city’s hometown team. There is more interest in Illini basketball here than for the five local teams combined.
Whenever the narrative shifts to “how come local teams can’t keep the top tier talent to stay home?” what they really mean is “how come the Illini can’t keep the top tier talent within state borders?”
That’s true and not true at the same time. Although it disappeared during the Bruce Weber era, the Simeon to Illini pipeline has re-opened up again. Simeon product D.J. Williams, ranked #28 overall in this class, signed with Illinois officially in November.
He’ll play with former Simeon teammates Jaylon Tate (#13 prospect in the state of IL in his class) and Kendrick Nunn (#2 prospect in the state, #61 overall, ESPNU) in Champaign next year.
So while the bluest of the Simeon Wolverines blue chips, Derrick Rose and Jabari Parker, left the state to do their mandated one year of college basketball, plenty of other top prospects do stay in the Land of Lincoln. Senior Tracy Abrams will obviously not play in this contest at the U.C. versus Oregon, but you might recall he was a top 100 overall prospect. And he’s from Chicago Mt. Carmel.
The point is you can find examples of Illini everywhere who don’t conform to this narrative, but the media tends to ignore these specific players.
The local media has really beat a dead horse with the “why don’t local players stay home” story line, and it’s time for us to move us past it. (This link explains how) Re-hashing it gets us nowhere, and the only way it changes is if the Illini morph into a program on the level of Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, Michigan State, UCLA, North Carolina etc. The Illini are not a blue blood program, so for them to miss out on McDonald’s All-Americans is not something extraordinary. The blue bloods recruit nationally so they take the top 1% of talent from everyone’s base. Just like Hollywood takes the top 1% most attractive women from everyone’s base to work in show business.
It’s just the way the world works, and to think Chicago is exceptional is to be very short-sighted and provincial. It’s not an Illini problem, it’s a problem for everybody.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2