Somewhere in this, there’s irony. Somehow, it’s ironic a player who is so lauded and adored must endure the meat market nature of professional basketball.

Gerry McNamara had an illustrious career at Syracuse, etching his name into the Orange record books and, perhaps even more resonating, into the hearts of SU fans, with seemingly boundless heroics.

But now it’s his time to move on. Professional basketball is next. Where and what league still remains a mystery.

McNamara, along with about every other player whose eligibility expired, yearns for the NBA, the Camelot of basketball in prestige and compensation. But not every player deserves a story. Not every player hit six 3-pointers in a national championship game at 19 years old, started every game in perhaps the toughest conference in college basketball and played one of the most outstanding conference tournaments in the history of the sport.

The inherent problem, though, is legendary status on the SU campus and Big East courts do not beget automatic NBA interest. If league personnel scouts have proven anything, it’s potential trumps production, size tops smarts and the only certainty about the NBA is that no opinion is ever certain.

It makes it difficult to assess McNamara, at least this early in the process. If published mock drafts serve as any indication, McNamara is projected a mid-to-late second-round pick, if drafted at all. Nothing is definitive, much less accurately prospective. It’s still preliminary, based on opinions and trends.

The 2006 Draft will take place on June 28 in New York City. The NBA pre-draft camp is in Orlando from June 6 to 10, and assuming McNamara is invited, a lot will be determined there.

There’s much that can happen between now and then, with early applicants and foreign prospects either entering their names into the annual lottery or withdrawing their candidacy.

‘It’s hard to say where someone like Gerry might go,’ said Ryan Blake, assistant director of scouting for the NBA. ‘We get these questions quite a bit, and you can’t really answer them because you still don’t know who’s coming out. It all depends what he can do versus other guys, and that includes international players. That’s why we have individual workouts.’

NBADraft.net, a popular Web site that frequently updates a mock draft, pegs McNamara as the 58th overall pick to the Dallas Mavericks, which is the third-to-last pick in the draft.

Aran Smith, the creator of NBADraft.net, said he does not pay attention to the team as much for projected second-rounders this early in the process as he does closer to the draft. But he bases his projection of the range which a player will go based on speaking with various scouts, both from the NBA and from international basketball.

‘He’s a smart player, almost like a coach on the floor,’ Smith said. ‘His demeanor and the things he bring make him a good role player off the bench. Will he be drafted? It’s kind of up in the air, depends how he works out.

‘But there’s no guarantee he’ll be drafted. He’s in the boat with a lot of players in that second-round area. I don’t see him as a first-rounder.’

This season’s draft is the first to include an age limit for its players, which will be 20 years old. This could positively affect McNamara, because fewer talented players will theoretically be available; or it could hurt McNamara, because there will be more experienced players available, and experience is an area that attracts scouts to McNamara.

McNamara’s experience, toughness and savvy are the intangibles that work in his favor. But there are perceived physical weaknesses that McNamara must sure up if he hopes his stock rises.

McNamara must show he can play point guard consistently and must prove to be athletic enough to defend the NBA’s athletic guards. There is a school of thought that McNamara’s savvy can offset the physical limitations.

‘When you have as smart a player as he is, teams tend to overlook the athleticism,’ Blake said. ‘And he is athletic. The media says he’s not the most athletically gifted. I think he is and other people do. You see people who can play at a level where they don’t have to be running the 40 at 4.2.’

Blake refused to compare McNamara to another player or find a player with similar skill set, insisting it’s not fair to draw a comparison for a player who’s been seen by so many so often. The comparison game is better served for foreign players, whom general basketball fans seldom see before Draft day.

In Northeast Pennsylvania, though, which is McNamara’s home region, a U.S. Basketball League team thinks McNamara can qualm the NBA scouts’ criticism in their jersey. The minor-league USBL awarded an expansion team, the NEPA Breakers, to the region where McNamara has almost unparalleled popularity.

The Breakers used the league’s first overall draft selection on McNamara, whom the Breakers’ managing partner Bill Fleming hopes will play at least one game in his hometown. Fleming said the USBL will be more conducive to McNamara’s NBA Draft development because he’ll be in a team setting rather than the NBA’s every-man-for-themselves workouts.

‘When we talk to scouts on where Gerry is pre-draft, we thought it worked for what our team is building,’ Fleming said. ‘The three questions scouts wanted to see were one, man-to-man defense against an NBA point guard; two, can he run an NBA team? and three, can he get open when he’s on offense with another point guard with his size and everything covering him? Those were the three issues that they wanted to find out, and this is a great avenue for him to show it.’

McNamara has refused all interview requests since the end of the season, although published reports indicate the former SU star has no interest in playing for the Breakers.

Since SU’s season ended, McNamara has capitalized on his celebrity in Syracuse. He threw out the first pitch at the Syracuse SkyChiefs’ opening game, dropped the puck at a Syracuse Crunch game and appeared in a commercial for a local car dealership.

Unfortunately for McNamara, not every NBA general manager is from Syracuse. While his career at SU was prolific, college stars don’t always translate into professional players, much less Draft day options.

But there’s still a lot of time between today and decision day, and McNamara’s draft stock is still to be determined. And with 30 NBA teams, all it takes is one team to fall in love with him to please the SU fan base.

‘The media might think one guy is going to go to a place where seniors and other experienced players get that opportunity,’ Blake said. ‘It’s hard to say, because I may feel strong about a player, but you might have 29 teams that don’t. You might have 29 teams that think a guy’s not a first-round draft pick. But all it takes is one.’

Published on April 30, 2006 at 12:00 pm