Building a Mystery.

The potential No. 1 NBA draft pick can't -- or won't -- stay in games

Thank you for reading The Dope.

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Think of the best person in your office, your organization, your building — even your friend group. They’re the person who winds up making big calls, leading others in a solid direction. Good to be around. They connect talent to talent, and even then, no talent shines as brightly as their own.

So they’re valuable, right? But they have this ongoing thing: They’re just sick a lot. A lot of missed days, a lot of half-days. You love it when they’re around, because things flow really smoothly when they are, but you have reached a point at which you no longer can count on their showing up.

Question: Are they really “best” if they’re only around some of the time? Are they really “valuable” if you’re not sure when they’ll show up?

While you ponder: Congratulations! You’ve just become Kansas basketball coach Bill Self.

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Self’s Jayhawks won again on Wednesday night, taking out Oklahoma State on the road in Stillwater to get to 20-6 on the season. After a slow start, KU has won nine of its last 10 games and appears primed to be a significant March Madness factor.

But Self has a problem — an actual problem, not an imagined one.

His problem is that his “best” player, freshman Darryn Peterson, either can’t or won’t turn in full minutes. Worse, Self can’t predict when a partial performance or complete no-show is going to occur. And worse worse, the coach clearly isn’t the one calling the shots.

Example: Wednesday’s game. Peterson, whom scouts have already identified as either the first or second pick in this year’s NBA draft based upon his talent, was already up to 23 points early in the second half, having just drained a long three-pointer to put Kansas ahead by 13.

And then Peterson motioned to the bench that he needed to come out. Leg cramps, he said.

This occurred with 17:22 remaining in the game.

Peterson returned…never.

"It's a concern," Self said later. "I thought we were past it, but obviously we're not. It's certainly a concern.”

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In the Jayhawks’ 26 games so far, Darryn Peterson has appeared in only 15. Among the 15 games he has played, he’s logged as many as 30 minutes only six times.

Leg cramps. Tight hamstring. Tight quad. Turned ankle. Flu-like symptoms, which was the reason provided after he was scratched right before tipoff of a game against then-No. 1-ranked Arizona.

This young man is a walking encyclopedia of hurts.

So why, you might ask, does the NBA hold the 6-foot-5 Peterson in such high regard? If a guy can’t make it through a college season without missing almost half his games, what chance does he have in the rugged pros — and how much would any team really pay for that?

To understand the answer is to realize what Bill Self is up against. The NBA rates Peterson so highly in part because the scouts don’t think he’s actually hurt all that often. The judgment, at least by several NBA teams, is that Peterson or the people handling him think the smart play is for the guard to manage his college minutes by skipping or coming out of games — ironically, so as to minimize his chance of sustaining an injury that would affect his draft status.

This isn’t said, mind you — only implied. No scout is going to say, “Yeah, he’s tanking.” And Self, at least in public, has appeared to accept each no-show or game withdrawal as merely part of a remarkably unfortunate series of events. I guess it’s either that or declare that KU has got the worst training staff on earth, a group incapable of dealing with basic leg cramps. It beggars belief.

But trust this: If NBA teams honestly thought Darryn Peterson was a perpetual malady waiting to happen, he’d come off that big board in a New York minute.

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Self doesn’t seem sure of what to do. I can’t recall him ever getting pushed around like this by a player he fervently recruited, and he has handled some elite talent. As things stand, Self finds himself needing to switch strategies and player sets every time Peterson either can’t go or suddenly comes out of a game. Self’s final obligation, after all, is to the guys who are playing, not the ones who aren’t.

“I thought he was good to go, but we only got 18 minutes out of him,” Self told reporters after Peterson’s abrupt exit against Oklahoma State. (Remember — Peterson took himself out.) “That’s disappointing, because he could have had a really big night.”

On the other hand, the coach said, “It’s happened often enough that our guys have learned to play without him, even though that’s not the way we normally play. That’s certainly not something we’re unaccustomed to right now.”

I’m sure Self would rather his team not have to grow accustomed to seeing a potential No. 1 draft pick be declared unavailable so regularly, but it is what it is.

"You get into the NCAA tournament, you're playing a team just as good as you and you need to have all your best players available,” he said. “All it takes is for one day like that to derail not only a game, but a season.”

In the 11 games this season in which Peterson has not played at all, the Kansas Jayhawks are 9-2. In a perfect world, that would be proof positive that KU can make a deep March run even if their draft darling can’t go. Since we live in this world here, Self already knows better than to believe that. He remains on injury watch.