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Johnny Jones, Mark Gottfried Prove Coaching Lottery Picks Without Results Can Have Dire Consequences

March 7, 2017

NEW YORK — Johnny Jones and Mark Gottfried are living proof that coaching NBA lottery picks without producing results can have dire consequences.

Jones coached the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft last season in Ben Simmons. Now he’s reportedly about to lose his job at LSU after failing to make the NCAA Tournament last year with Simmons — and this year with a solid, if unspectacular, roster.

On the same day the Jones news was reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mark Gottfried coached his final game at N.C. State, losing to Clemson in the first round of the ACC Tournament at Barclays Center.

Like Jones, Gottfried recruited and coached a projected Top-5 pick in point guard Dennis Smith Jr., who is headed to the NBA Draft after one non-NCAA Tournament season with the Wolfpack, as first reported on FanRagSports.com. (N.C. State has a second projected NBA pick in big man Omer Yurtseven, now projected in the 2018 Draft by DraftExpress.com.)

LSU

LSU Dismisses Forward Craig Victor II

December 29, 2016

author: Adam Zagoria

Just hours before opening SEC play against

NBA

Ben Simmons Calls NCAA ‘F—ed Up,’ Says He Didn’t Need to Attend Class at LSU

October 31, 2016

author: Adam Zagoria

In the upcoming Showtime documentary “One & Done,” Ben Simmons calls the NCAA “f—ed up” and explains why he stopped going to class after his first semester at LSU last year because he knew he was headed to the NBA as the likely No. 1 pick.

“The NCAA is really f—-ed up,” Simmons said in “One and Done,” according to ESPN. “Everybody’s making money except the players. We’re the ones waking up early as hell to be the best teams and do everything they want us to do and then the players get nothing. They say education, but if I’m there for a year, I can’t get much education.”

An Australian who grew up with NBA dreams, Simmons famously became ineligible for the Wooden Award last year because he didn’t meet the necessary academic standards. He got the minimum 1.8 GPA necessary to play in the second semester, but not the 2.0 that the Wooden Award required.

In the film, Simmons tells reporters who asked him why he stopped attending class after the first semester, “Well, I can’t get a degree in two semesters, so what’s the point?”