The Darryn Peterson inflection point is here
Bill Self's not really hiding his annoyance anymore
There is no avoiding it now. The time for taking Darryn Peterson’s bizarre freshman season at something like face value — the days of accepting the implausible explanations, vaguely worded quasi-injuries and sudden pregame illnesses with a mostly open mind — are over. Wednesday was it. The benefit of the doubt is officially gone.
What happened Wednesday? Peterson started at Oklahoma State. He had 23 points on 6-of-10 shooting from 3. Some of the shots were not guarded well. Some of them were barraged by multiple defenders. The distinction made no difference. The potential No. 1 overall pick didn’t so much play at Gallagher-Iba as float above it, an otherworldly being briefly deigning to reveal his true nature to the cowering, huddled mortals below. Other than one early open-floor sigh-I-guess-I-have-to drive, Peterson didn’t even bother with the thing he is arguably best at: gliding past helpless college defenders on his way to the rim.
He was somewhere between a former pro showing up to your church pickup run and Darth Vader at the end of Rogue One: immense power, casually wielded.
And then, two minutes and 20 seconds into the second half, this happened:
Peterson didn’t play in the game again.
This sequence of events, in and of itself, should no longer surprise anyone. Peterson has done versions of this all season — when he has been on the court in the first place. He missed eight of Kansas’s first 12 games entirely. He has appeared 15 times in Kansas’s 26 fixtures overall. He has played more than 23 minutes in just eight of those 15 appearances. He has played 38 percent of available minutes this season.
Peterson has, on multiple occasions, taken himself out of games he was dominating. He had 26 points in 23 minutes at UCF (a game Kansas eventually lost) before missing the second half with cramps. He had 18 points in the first half against BYU before shutting it down. And he has also suddenly and mysteriously withdrawn from lineups altogether: Despite practicing and getting out of bed and going to shootaround and arriving at Allen Fieldhouse hours before Feb. 9’s massive game against Arizona, Peterson didn’t play at all, telling Kansas’s staff a few minutes before tip he was still experiencing “flu-like symptoms.”
All this has fueled boundless online cynicism. Peterson has been criticized for abandoning his teammates, questioned about whether he actually likes basketball at all, and even pilloried by Kansas fans for turning a proud program in a resurgent season into his bespoke mechanism for professional advancement. Fans have openly guessed Peterson is doing all of this on purpose: Generate the bare minimum number of highlights, in the bare minimum possible minutes, to maintain your status as the No. 1 overall pick, and do nothing more. He already has a slander nickname: “DNP.” It’s pretty funny, to be fair.
But all along it has also been possible, for those so inclined, to take Peterson’s unreliability in good faith. Maybe he really is cramping! Maybe he’s just worried about his body! Maybe he was sick! Why does he play 35 minutes some nights, then, hmm? Why do his teammates all seem to like him?
Besides Peterson’s own inscrutability — he doesn’t give interviews, do posts, or ever even show the slightest emotion on the court — the main reason you could plausibly sustain such a generous interpretation was Bill Self. Self has stuck to the company line. This is a Hall of Fame coach with little to lose, with a long history of either directly or winkingly — in a language that local media especially can fluently understand — getting his message across about players. Self has not only allowed Peterson to come and go but explained the absences at every turn. Yep, he was cramping up. We knew he might be touch and go. Yep, just didn’t feel well. Nope, wasn’t right. Yep, we’ll see where he is at practice. Hopefully we can get him back soon, but I thought our guys did a great job adjusting, etc. Rinse, repeat.
Until Wednesday. Wednesday night was the first time all season Bill Self came remotely close to sounding as annoyed at his star player as the rest of the world assumes he must be.
A reporter asked Self how he has “navigated” the “couple of times” Kansas has had Peterson play well in a first half before excusing himself from the second. If you watch the clip — and you should, because vocal tone and facial expression matters here, too — you can actually see Self, in real time, measuring out the weight of his response:
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