Romeo Langford will declare for the NBA draft, have surgery on hand

In one tweet, ESPN’s Jonathan Givony gave us some expected Romeo Langford news along with some new information.

It’s no surprise Romeo Langford is declaring for the draft, he’ll almost certainly be a lottery pick and be able to evolve and develop in the best basketball league in the world, all while getting paid millions to do so.

The second half of the tweet is a bit surprising but also serves as a good explanation for why Romeo struggled to shoot the ball in his lone season in Bloomington. While he was hardly the kind of deadeye shooter you almost expect any young guard to be these days coming out of high school— it was shocking to see him hit only 27% of his threes this year.

The story contains a couple quotes from Romeo explaining his rationale:

“I tried to keep going with the injury instead of shutting it down, just because I wanted to experience college basketball and I wanted to be there for my teammates and help them be all that they can be,” Langford said. “I think that shows NBA teams how tough I am.

Kudos to Romeo for playing through the injury when he could have easily and understandably sat out to let his hand heal and not risk devaluing his draft stock by playing at less than 100%. I’m sure the pain of the injury, along with the stabilizing wrap, made it difficult to repeat the shooting motion he has been practicing since he was a kid, which Romeo confirmed when speaking to Givony:

“I think it’s fair to say that we never got a chance to see me at my best at the college level, especially since I’ve been playing with basically a cast on my thumb the whole season,

“Obviously that throws off your shot. Even though I didn’t shoot as well as I’m capable of, I feel like I shot the ball pretty well in the second half of the season.”

Good luck to Romeo in his recovery and in the NBA. He could have gone anywhere to play this last season and he chose to play at Indiana. That kicks ass.