Goodnews: As RJ Davis is anticipated to make an announcement in 2024–2025 on his return to North Carolina for…..
Not too long ago, All-Americans in men’s collegiate basketball were virtually guaranteed spots in the NBA.
There’s only so much a college student can do, and whether or not their career chances were good, reaching the top of the sport’s mountain meant it was time to move on.
That has altered with the name, image, and likeness era.
RJ Davis of the North Carolina Tar Heels is about to become the most recent celebrity to prolong their career in collegiate basketball. Davis is anticipated to make an announcement in 2024–2025 on his return to North Carolina for a fifth and final season, as originally reported by Matt Norlander of CBS Sports. He will be the third unanimous first-team All-American in as many years to return to school the following season once it is formally announced. Just two first-team players from the previous ten years decided to stay on for another season, with Doug McDermott being an exception due to his status as the head coach’s son.
Without a doubt, NIL (or at the very least, the NCAA’s unsteady implementation of a free-for-all) has given sportsmen a great deal of troubles. It’s sparked a transfer site that’s already bustling with players looking for huge salaries and produced an awkward dynamic where coaches seem to be blaming supporters for not investing even more of their hard-earned money to construct championship teams. Though far from ideal, the current approach seems more and more like a band-aid solution rather than a long-term solution for actual pay-for-play in collegiate athletics.
If the NIL era has given college basketball one thing, though, it’s star retention—something that players have always yearned for. With a strong chance to win National Player of the Year and a reputation as one of the sport’s faces, Davis will start the following campaign. With 784 points remaining in his account, he stands a good chance of surpassing Tyler Hansbrough as UNC’s all-time best scorer—which is ironically the same amount of points Davis earned in 2023–2024. Few athletes could match Hansbrough’s ten+ years as the final defending NPOY to return to school. Oscar Tshiebwe and Zach Edey didn’t quite achieve Hansbrough’s degree of renown in the game, but their separate comebacks changed the game’s perception and ushered in a new age in which collegiate basketball players don’t have to leave the program quickly.
During his brief career, Davis has experienced some incredible highs and lows. Beginning his career with the Heels on Roy Williams’s penultimate squad in Chapel Hill, he came off the bench for a mediocre 18–11 Carolina team that was destroyed by the Wisconsin Badgers in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. Hubert Davis gave Davis the starting point guard job in his sophomore year, and Davis was a major contributor to UNC’s miraculous March comeback, which ended just a few points short of a national championship.
Then, Davis was a member of one of the worst teams in recent memory in college basketball—the 2022–23 Heels, who finished the season as the top team in the preseason before missing the Big Dance. And with everything on the line, Davis produced a brilliant final season that saw him emerge as the finest guard in the country and guide North Carolina to the top seed. With a national championship at stake and, if nothing else, the opportunity to write his name into Chapel Hill history, he has one more chance to become a part of North Carolina history thanks to his homecoming.
After an incredible season, Davis is almost definitely headed to the professionals in a pre-NIL world. If he had gone all in during the NBA draft process this spring and started trying to carve out a space for himself in the NBA, he probably would have gotten a two-way contract. Rather, he may remain in college for an additional year, become the undisputed star, and probably earn as much money as he would have making on the outskirts of the NBA the following season. You could try to convince me that it’s bad for the sport’s overall health, but I doubt you’d be able to win over many of the die-hard traditionalists in the sport with that argument.
Just picture the hype surrounding the rivalry games between Duke and North Carolina the following season. Following the retirements of Mike Krzyzewski and Williams, the previous few meetings have felt a little stale. But Davis as the team’s spokesperson against Cooper Flagg, the Blue Devils’ freshman sensation? That game has enough juice for the average college basketball fan to watch during the regular season. The NCAA tournament is a single-elimination theater that fans will never get tired of watching, but it is becoming more difficult for those who aren’t passionate fans to stick with the sport the rest of the year due to the constant roster churn that has affected almost every program in the nation.A portion of the enormous spike in viewership for the NCAA women’s tournament can be attributed to the Caitlin Clark phenomena, but it can also be attributed to the presence of recurring teams and narratives (such as the South Carolina Gamecocks’ revenge story and the LSU Tigers’ rematch attempt). In the men’s game, early NBA exits will always make it difficult, but the return of stars like Davis who have less certain professional futures has a significant impact.
When the greatest players on the team want to remain longer, college basketball is better. It’s something to celebrate that NIL is contributing to making a reality. It is best if other players take RJ Davis’s lead.
