It’s the day after and the loss still hurts but the guy I feel for the most is Andrew Wiggins. I’m not sure if people read his post game interview but it was kind of the saddest thing ever, to hear the way he shouldered the entirety of the blame for the loss. “I didn’t bring anything to the table.” He spoke with the kind of self awareness that only a 19 year old phenom living in an unprecedented digital age of critique and analysis could have. The only thing sadder is that you can average nearly 18 points a game, as a freshman on the undisputed best team, playing in arguably the best conference in the country, and walk away still being considered a borderline bust. 30 years ago freshmen were lucky to smell the court. Today, our hopes and dreams are placed squarely on their backs.

But true enough, this isn’t your father’s NCAA and things have changed. Players have learned to treat themselves as a business and, in my opinion, rightfully so. If money didn’t matter they’d print a thousand KU jerseys and none of them would be #22. If money didn’t matter then finding a Duke #1 wouldn’t be just a click away. But of course it does and of course it is. Enter: the real world. Which, in actuality, is rarely that real at all.

How can it be when expectations stand where they do? The question becomes then, how to reverse a culture of impossible LeBron James comparisons and inescapable title expectations. All of it stemming from this false premise that because he might go on to make a lot of money he owes us these things. We deserve them. We have to have them!

All a guy like Andrew Wiggins ever owed us was hard work and effort and in my opinion that’s exactly what we got. Coach K said it the best after Jabari Parker’s less than stellar end of the season performance — “When your best player is a freshman, sometimes they play like a freshman. The fact is, most of the year he didn’t. Which is the only reason we’re here in the first place.”

Damn you, Coach K, for always keeping it so real.

I know a lot of us remember the infamous Chris Weber Timeout in ’93 (if you don’t just look it up) and I think after watching the Fab 5 documentary it solidified what we already knew and that was that he was never the same person after that. Not “he wasn’t the same player“. He wasn’t the same person. Ever. He was 20 years old and he let the world down on the world’s biggest stage. And no amount of money could fill the hole that was left after that.

So here’s Andrew Wiggins, a nice kid, and by all indications a sensitive guy. That’s not a better-or-worse statement, it’s just who he is. A kid that, in 99 lives out of 100, would shy away from the spotlight. A kid who was born with gifts many of us covet, and who’s trying to use them the best way he knows how. He works hard. He’s soft spoken, and when he does talk, it’s always about the team. He’s everything we say we want our athletes to be yet when we have it, it always falls short. Now he’s a 19 year old, feeling like he let the world down. Walking around a city and wondering which pair of eyes read love and which read blame. And he’s going to feel that for the rest of his life and professional career. For most of us there exists no dollar figure that would make us feel good about taking that weight. Everyone wants it until they really have it. And the thing about Wiggins is that we should all be giving thanks that he still feels anything at all and hasn’t just turned everything off. As if that were even possible. But I’m as guilty as anyone for putting a price tag on emotions. “Why should he be sad? He’s gonna make millions!” Which is as disheartening a look into our society’s equation of success with “the big time” as one can get.

The truth is I don’t have the right answer for how we should change the way we look at athletes. Or if we should change it all. But it’s getting harder and harder to watch, I can tell you that. But I’ll be a voice on record as saying thank you to Andrew Wiggins. And to the whole team this year. I hope that wherever they go in their lives they remember their time in Lawrence fondly and that they never feel like they let anyone down. There’s no question that pressure, stress, and even disappointment, are a part of life, and I do believe that basketball is more than just a game. But then it also has to be more than what we’ve turned it into lately.

“It became more of a job than a sport to play….That’s why when somebody say, “when you get to the NBA, don’t forget about me”, and that stuff. Well, I should’ve said to them, “if I don’t make it, don’t you forget about me…” –Hoop Dreams