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Undrafted, Scheyer Ponders Next Move

Will Jewish ex-Dukie play ball in Israel?

by
Marc Tracy
June 25, 2010
Scheyer (C) presents President Obama with a jersey in May.(Mandel Nga/AFP/Getty Images)
Scheyer (C) presents President Obama with a jersey in May.(Mandel Nga/AFP/Getty Images)

Freshman University of Kentucky point guard John Wall was, to no one’s surprise, the number one pick at last night’s NBA Draft. He will hopefully spend a long and illustrious career reviving the moribund Washington Wizards.

But Jon Scheyer, the Jewish baller who led the Duke Blue Devils to this year’s NCAA Championship, went undrafted last night. (This Marylander pauses to note that the Terps’ Greivis Vasquez was drafted, thereby vindicating Vasquez’s being named ACC Player of the Year over Scheyer.)

It is unfair to compare (as this post, via Kaplan’s Korner, does) Scheyer to Greg Paulus, Duke’s previous good-outside-shooter, less-good-athlete: Scheyer is a far more multi-dimensional player. But it also may be a stretch to compare him to J.J. Redick (another classic unathletic Duke shooter), who this past season especially turned himself into one of the Orlando Magic’s most valuable players: Redick, after all, was drafted eleventh.

So what’s next for Scheyer? There had been rumblings that, should the NBA not work out, he might try for Israel’s league (where he would surely get playing time). At which point, someone would pretty much have to organize a one-on-one exhibition between the American playing in Israel and the Israeli playing in America.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.