The Darryn Peterson narratives could actually help him — and KU basketball
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Peterson’s game exits have fueled national doubts about his availability.
- Kansas wins without him, but team is stronger when he plays.
- External criticism could become motivation if Peterson chooses to use it.
The most intriguing talent in college basketball scored 23 points in 18 minutes his last outing, a typical night for one-too-many reasons, and maybe if he was capable of scoring about 21 fewer, nobody would give a rip about the rest of the story.
But Darryn Peterson isn’t only the most intriguing talent in college basketball. He is also its most mysterious. The question that has overwhelmed his freshman season in Lawrence is not whether he can play at a high level, but whether he will play at all.
Well, one of the many questions.
There are suddenly a lot of them, the noise growing loud and spreading far wider after Peterson casually but clearly signaled to Kansas coach Bill Self that he was ready to check out of the Jayhawks’ win against Oklahoma State this week.
Among those proposed this week:
Does Darryn Peterson lack toughness?
Does he lack the desire?
Has load management worked its way into the college game?
Can the NBA team with the No. 1 pick trust him to play, or should it look elsewhere?
“He hasn’t finished games,” Self said Friday. “The reasons why they say he hasn’t finished games is 100% false — or at least 70-80% of the reasons (are false).”
We can argue the legitimacy of the Peterson narratives. We can say they’ve lost the plot. But we cannot dispute the reasons they exist.
Him.
That’s not solely a reference to his inability to consistently finish games — or his body’s inability to allow him to finish games — but also his inability, even unwillingness, to erase the mystery.
A sprained ankle or cramping muscles do not prevent him from providing a clear, thorough and public explanation for the exact feeling in his body that triggers him to do what he did Wednesday in Stillwater: tap Self, ask for a sub and spend the final 16-plus minutes on the bench.
That’s why the noise has grown. It’s among the causes for the narrative.
But he can still twist the most relevant part of this story from the cause of the narrative into something else.
The effect.
The national and local talk hasn’t done Peterson’s image any favors. But could it provide a future favor?
What’s been a loud week could also be a motivational one — if he so chooses.
Or, well, if he’s even able.
It should tick Peterson off that some prominent college basketball minds are declaring the kid whose rear-end Peterson kicked (*for a half) earlier this month is the better NBA Draft prospect. It should tick Peterson off that some are calling him soft, or, in the case of Lubbock, Texas, a more vulgar form of soft. It should tick Peterson off that this is all some people are talking about when they mention his name.
It sure would tick off the all-time greats in his sport. That’s part of what makes them great. They feed off this kind of stuff.
They don’t let the outside world decide their value, their worth or their talent. They decide these things.
They thrive off the words of their enemies. And right now, the biggest enemy to Peterson is the narrative itself.
Is it enough to kickstart this all?
By all accounts to those with whom I’ve spoken, Peterson wants to be out there. He could and would be training on a coast if he’d rather do that. Nobody wants the reality of this situation, and that’s not except him, but especially him.
But two things can be true rather than just one: What he’s dealt with this season is real, and what he’s dealt with this season are some things that some other guys might go ahead and try to play through.
It’s not load management. KU has not been instructed to restrict his minutes. It’s not an agent sending mid-game texts to a coaching staff. The clip of Peterson removing himself from the Oklahoma State game provided definitive proof of that.
And when you watch a player score 20 points in a half — on a night where it looked like he could go for 50 — it’s hard to equate that’s the player who isn’t healthy enough to finish. His own success, in that way, is prompting people to suggest the question isn’t whether he’s ready to go, but whether he’s raring to go.
It’s complicated. It’s bizarre. We like simple. This is precisely the opposite. At this point, it’s not only fair but logical to wonder how much breaking this vicious cycle now requires clearing a mental hurdle in addition to a physical one — that there is a fear of the injury and cramping that preempts the cramping itself.
Peterson is 19 years old. He probably hasn’t experienced much of anything like the noise he’s experiencing now, because the tone of that noise is new.
Doubt.
It can be a hell of motivator.
He was the top high school prospect and is still the best NBA prospect in the country, even if the latter now comes with questions.
We haven’t seen a player like him in Lawrence since Self arrived, and we might not have seen a better team in the country this month than the one that blitzed BYU and its own soon-to-be lottery pick, AJ Dybantsa. The Jayhawks are good without Peterson — and have won nine of 10 heading into Saturday’s game against Cincinnati — but they have everything they need with him.
He didn’t achieve his success and stature by accident.
But now the world is offering him a different type of fuel.
Will it matter?