Josh Selby is the poster boy for what's wrong with the one and done rule

Last week, Josh Selby announced that he would, in fact, be leaving Kansas after one mediocre season in Lawrence.

It was far from a surprising move, but it still drew some vicious reactions from fans and media members alike. For example, Seth Davis tweeted this. Selby came into college as one of the most highly touted recruits in the country -- he was No. 1 according to Rivals, above Harrison Barnes and Kyrie Irving -- but he never lived up to that billing as a Jayhawk. He was injured (a broken hand in the preseason, a stress fracture in his foot late in the season), suspended for nine games, and overwhelmingly forgettable after he hit a game-winning three against USC in his debut as a collegian.

The reason for the tw-itriol (see what I did there) that was spewed in reaction to Selby's announcement was that the general consensus seemed to be that Selby was the poster child for everything that is wrong with the one-and-done rule.

And he is.

Just not in the way that you think.


Brady McCollough is a writer for the Kansas City Star. Over the weekend, he penned a terrific piece on Selby's background and upbringing in Baltimore:

Josh Selby was 12, his mother just 29 and jobless. They were borderline homeless, moving from spot to spot. His father had never been involved in his life.

Selby would get in fights all the time, he says. Walking home from school one day, he saw a close friend pistol-whipped.

"One more time, he would have died," Selby said. "I was about 12. After that, I got crazy. To see that at that age, I was losing it. I'm not gonna lie. I was really losing it, being disrespectful to my mother, just doing anything I wanted, like a little thug."
[...]
He and his mom were staying with an acquaintance, thankful for every meal they got.

"I felt embarrassed," Witherspoon recalled. "I felt humiliated, less of a parent. This is really not how I want my kid to live."

Her breaking point came when Selby failed seventh grade. Witherspoon began to notice a change in her son. She decided to move in with her mother and take Josh away from the drug- and crime-infested neighborhood of Irvington they'd called home.

Selby's goal growing up wasn't to be a college basketball star. The work that he put in during his middle and high school days were an effort to become a pro. To make the NBA. To be able to afford to move his mother out of the hood. To repay her for everything she did for him to keep him from succumbing to the streets.

I am a fan of the one-and-done rule. Its great for college basketball, as we get to have stars of the Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, and Derrick Rose ilk on campus for at least one year. Its great for the NBA, as they are able to watch and scout the future stars of their league in order to get a better feel for who should be drafted where.

Sometimes, as is the case with Harrison Barnes, Perry Jones, and Jared Sullinger this season, forcing the kids to spend one year on campus will have enough of an effect on them that a second year becomes that much more appealing. Being a college student is awesome. Being a college student that also happens to star on a major college basketball team is a dream come true for a lot of these kids.

But for Selby it wasn't.

Selby never should have been on a college campus. He had no interest in being a college student. And I don't say that as a criticism; I know a lot of good people with steady jobs that are raising families that never attended college. And they didn't have to opportunity to become an NBA player in front of them when they decided against college.

Selby is an example of when the one-and-done rule fails.

In a perfect world, he would have been allowed to enter the draft after high school. He would have been allowed to start providing for his family without having to pretend to be a student for seven months.

But since he wasn't, maybe we should all just lay off criticizing a kid for doing what he wanted, and probably should have been able, to do a year ago -- enter the NBA Draft.