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Message: [QUOTE="CusefanATL, post: 3303743, member: 853"] The flip side In your Syracuse career, you averaged something like 17 points, 9 boards your junior season. I’m not sure how much you truly considered leaving college then, but now, the pressure for you to leave after your junior year with those kind of stats would be immense. What do you think about that kind of environment for good underclassmen in college basketball and what might you have missed had you gone after your junior year? Well, I wouldn’t be getting my number retired. I wouldn’t have had that magical run in ’96. I just couldn’t imagine missing my senior year. My life would be so much different. I probably wouldn’t have gotten drafted by the Knicks, which means I wouldn’t be working for the Knicks, now. You know, I wish I could have gone back to Syracuse for four more years. Are you kidding me? It was the greatest four years of my life and the greatest college campus on the planet. I loved every second of it. When I was contemplating leaving after my junior year, it was only because I had played so well and they didn’t expect what I did against Arkansas and Corliss Williamson. He was rated so high and I had like 27-9 on him. And I was just like, ‘If he’s a top 5 player, then what am I?’ So I had to enter the draft from that perspective. And then I realized I was going to be a second-round draft pick. But in workouts, I started moving up. I got confirmation from (Bernie) Bickerstaff, when he was in Denver, that if I was available, he was going to definitely take me at 15. So then I took that information and thought if I moved up that much – from second round to 15 – I might as well go back to school and really work my ass off all summer and see if I can be a top 5, top 10 pick. That’s what factored into my decision to go back to school. And it was the best decision I made. [/QUOTE]

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