Mike Celizic

A championship would be a nice addition to Tyler Hansbrough’s resume, a line in the capsule version of his life that would mark him as one of the best college basketball players ever to play the game.

I know I’ll get some disagreement on this point. There’s a lot of Hansbrough Fatigue going around, thanks mainly to the paroxysms of praise that erupt from the Billy Packers and Dick Vitales whenever the North Carolina forward’s name comes up.

And there’s no end of basketball experts who will quite correctly point out that there’s a passel of freshmen like Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, USC’s O.J. Mayo, Indiana’s Eric Gordon and UCLA’s Kevin Love who are far better athletes, a point that will be confirmed when they go high this year in the NBA draft.

Hansbrough’s too short, too small and too klutzy to be a great NBA player. Everybody knows that. He doesn’t dominate games because of his great athleticism but because of inability to do anything except work his fool tail off.

What they’re missing is that there isn’t anything wrong with that, and Hansbrough’s singular style of mayhem — er, play — does awfully well in the college game. It’s made him the likely winner of either the Wooden or Naismith award or both. And if he wins this year, he could win it again next year, when he is probably going to come back to UNC to become something you don’t see in the college game anymore — a great four-year player.

And that’s all we’re talking about. If this kid with the motor that never stops gets himself and the Tar Heels a title, he doesn’t need to validate his college career by becoming a great pro. Nor should he have to apologize for not having great pro prospects.

He’s like a great option quarterback in college who isn’t going to make it in the NFL. That may affect his earning potential, but no matter what Donald Trump says, how much money you have doesn’t define your value. All we should ever judge people on is the job they’re doing now, not the one next year they don’t even have yet.

All of those hot freshmen are probably going to be better pros than Hansbrough. They’re more gifted athletically — bigger or stronger or faster or more athletic or all of the above. But right now they’re not better college players than Hansbrough. Nobody is, not this year.

In life, it’s good to think about the future, but sports are about right now. It’s one of the reasons we are so consumed by the games we play — they take us out of the fog of work and family and bills and all the other bazillion things that occupy our minds and slam dunk us into right now. Nothing else matters while the game is on, not yesterday, not tomorrow, not last year. It’s living totally in the present.

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