This is probably the most puzzling thing to me. It's the why behind us not getting a center. Was it because HD over shot on J Wash? Was it NIL? I mean everyone in the country felt that we needed a center and the player would get playing time from the start of the season. So what was it?
If it is poor talent evaluation, that's a hit on the coaching staff. If it was money, then we are in trouble no matter who the coach is.
I don't think anyone has a real answer for "why we didn't get a quality center" in this off-season.
Here's what we know about players in the transfer portal, they're looking to get (a) paid via NIL, (b) playing time, (c) featured for the NBA, and (d) a team that can have success. I won't say in what order most players are seeking these 4 things or that every player is even seeking all four. The most we can surmise is that none of the top-quality centers (or even inside-heavy PFs) chose Carolina and likely due to some combination of these reasons.
The reasons that players may have chosen other programs...
1) NIL deals elsewhere were better
2) Didn't like Hubert in off-the-court manner
3) Didn't believe Carolina was likely to have team success this season
4) Believe that Hubert's offense or defense doesn't feature bigs enough
5) Didn't believe that Hubert is a coach to help them improve for NBA
6) Didn't believe there was sufficient (guaranteed) playing time
7) Didn't believe they would get featured enough vis-a-vis other bigs
8) Afraid that a transfer big at Carolina would get placed in the post and not be able to show outside skills
9) Players entering the portal had already agreed to attend other schools and weren't really available.
I've heard nothing to suggest that 2 is the issue. Everything I've ever hard about Hubert as a person is that people love him. So we can likely exclude that one.
Given that we started the season as a ranked team without a inside-heavy big, it's also hard to imagine that 3 was the issue.
1 is certainly the perspective of the basketball program. We know that Hubert spoke about NIL in a meeting in October and we've certainly heard from former players that they believe NIL caused us not to get the players they wanted. IC has reported that we've been competitive in NIL in many recruitments, but no one really seems to know for sure the exact details here.
The last 6 are possibilities, but no one really knows across all potential transfers. 9 is likely true for some of the players, but unlikely true for all the guys we pursued. We don't know what kind of guarantees Hubert was willing to make regarding playing time, but we know that Roy wouldn't make guarantees and so we can perhaps surmise that Hubert doesn't? We also don't know how much of an impact Washington and Withers being on the roster might have made, perhaps players were concerned they'd wouldn't get as much playing time as they wanted or wouldn't be featured the way they wanted or would be given a role they didn't exactly want?
Unless you can get someone close to the players who didn't come to Carolina to speak candidly, I don't know if we'll ever know. And, sadly, not knowing leads to a lot of different opinions and different strategies to solve the problems going forward.
