By Hunt Palmer
(This story contains quotes from Ronald Dupree’s interview on After Further Review with Matt Moscona on Tuesday, April 8)
Mike the Tiger’s cage is a popular meeting spot on LSU’s campus.
It doesn’t often facilitate a job opportunity.
Three years ago, former Tiger great Ronald Dupree brought his family down to south Louisiana and made a stop outside Mike’s cage. Passing by at the same time was newly hired basketball coach Matt McMahon. The two met for the first time. Fast forward to present day, and Dupree is now general manager of McMahon’s program.
Dupree, who finished his playing days top 10 in both scoring and rebounding in LSU history, started his coaching career at LSU as a student assistant under Johnny Jones before a brief stint at Nevada which led to his job in the Milwaukee Bucks organization where he has spent the last seven years. After watching numerous NBA executives gravitating toward the college game, Dupree entertained the idea of returning to his alma mater to help restore the program.
“There are some notable names in (the NBA) that decided to go to college, and it kind of piqued my interest,” Dupree said. “The first thing I thought about was, does LSU have a GM yet? Watching the team this past season and how they ended at the SEC Tournament, it was just kind of on my heart. Can I come in here and improve the program?”
Dupree lasted parts of six season in the NBA before taking his career overseas. He played in Germany, Italy and Jerusalem among other places before getting into coaching. That experience overseas served him well as he rose the ranks in Milwaukee where he eventually became Director of Global Scouting.
Dupree believes the success the NBA has had scouting and developing players from foreign countries can translate to the college game.
“Going forward in college basketball, programs and universities that do it the right way, it will look like a pro model,” Dupree said. “Internationally, there’s a market there for players. Internationally, a lot of the young players that are on these Euro Cup teams, they don’t play a lot. They’re legitimate pro prospects for the NBA, but it’s hard to know whether they translate because they just don’t play. You’ve got to catch them at practice. You’ve got to catch them at U-19s or Basketball Without Borders events…and they don’t get paid a lot. So, a lot of them want to display their talents. They’re intrigued with college. They don’t have any restrictions for coming over with FIBA. So, there’s an untapped market. There’s a lot of possibilities there. So, knowing who the GMs are, knowing those in between people and agents internationally, me playing over there, going over there twice a year, that all helps me connecting those dots.”
Those dots don’t get connected if Dupree’s NBA career lasts longer and results in significantly more money. Instead. he chased that dream overseas and earned experience he never knew he would use.
“All that experience, sometimes I wonder why I didn’t play in the NBA longer, but it’s funny what my expectations were for playing longer in the NBA, but it led me to Germany, and it led me to Jerusalem,” Dupree said. “It led me to all these places, and now I guess I can see that God had a bigger plan. It’s been very valuable for the knowledge for what the landscape will look like going forward.”
Dupree feels like the talent coming in from Europe will be a bigger piece of the college game moving forward.
“These kids are eligible and able to play college sports.” Dupree said. “They’ve been playing against and training against pro players and grown men. Fundamentally they’re a little ahead of us now in the states. And that’s kind of been an issue the NBA has been trying to address as well.”
The question remains in Bayton Rouge, though, how good can LSU basketball be?
The SEC put 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament this year, seven in the Sweet 16, two in the Final Four, and Florida won the title. LSU was left at home, just 3-15 in league games. It’s been four years since the Tigers made the NCAA Tournament and six since LSU made the second weekend.
Since then, football, women’s basketball, baseball and gymnastics have won national titles. All of those sports command donor dollars and support.
Can that happen for men’s basketball?
“One of the reasons why I took this position is I did my homework. I did my research. I called around,” Dupree said. “I asked our supporters that main question. If the product is competitive, is the money there, are the resources there to sustain success and support? And from what I gather, it is there. There’s opportunity there for this community to galvanize and get behind this program. But we’ve got to put a product out there that people can get behind and be proud of. And that’s a big goal of mine, to help Coach McMahon and the administration and our staff.
“How can we put a product out there that people can support? I think the revenue sharing piece will cap a lot of the inflation right now with the NIL numbers for individual player which I think will also help. If the structure is there with the revenue share that can put some restriction on these ridiculous deals, I think it will help a lot of programs stay competitive, at least stay in the arena. Yeah, we’ll probably never year-in-and-year-out have the type of money the bluebloods like Kentucky have. But I don’t think we have to. I think there’s ways we can capitalize on the margins and find value. I think we can be competitive. I think we can be successful and sustain it.”
