Three Thoughts is a new feature GoldandBlack.com will run every Monday morning in-season.
ON THE BIG TEN'S NBA REP
Jaden Ivey's days impacting Purdue's program are not over, as he'll now carry the Boilermakers' banner into the NBA and potentially validate Matt Painter's program to some extent as a great option for aspiring pros.
But it's not just Ivey playing that role for Purdue, but also his Big Ten-wide class doing so for the conference.
The Big Ten has produced a lot of very good NBA players. Right now, there's Draymond Green, D'Angelo Russell, Duncan Robinson and Mike Conley, to name a few. Victor Oladipo and Evan Turner had good runs and Jordan Poole, Franz Wagner and maybe Ayo Dosunmo are on the verge of doing the same. Again, just to name a few.
But how many of the top 50 players in the NBA right now came from the Big Ten? Two? Three? The league has nothing even remotely close to a top-10 or top-20 player, and that stuff matters. Recruiting is about the NBA more than ever, and even though Ohio State and Michigan and Michigan State and Indiana have dabbled a bit in the one-and-done game, the Big Ten's NBA footprint is disproportionately small in relation to its basketball reputation.
Jaden Ivey and Johnny Davis and Keegan Murray can all help change that.
They're all probably going to be drafted in the lottery in June, and none of the three were loaners like the majority of the Kentucky-Duke crowd at the next level. The majority of those guys were pros who just had to go to college. This Big Ten trio were college players before they were pros.
