Texas Tech basketball: What Nimari Burnett’s departure means for remainder of season

Now that freshman guard Nimari Burnett has entered the transfer portal, let’s look at the ramifications for the Texas Tech basketball team.

Playing for Chris Beard isn’t for everyone.  And apparently, it wasn’t for freshman guard Nimari Burnett who has entered the transfer portal.

That development brings an abrupt end to the Texas Texas basketball career of the first-ever McDonald’s All-American to ever sign with the program.  And it is a reminder that Chris Beard’s ultra-intense and no-nonsense approach to the game may not be what blue-chip recruits are equipped to handle.

This is the second top-end high school recruit of the Beard era to leave the program prematurely.  The first was Khavon Moore, who was the no. 54 player in the nation back in the class of 2018.

Of course, his career was derailed before it ever got a chance to leave the station.  In his senior year of high school, the Georgia native suffered a nasty broken leg, an injury which required surgery and which kept him from participating in the offseason program as well as keeping him sidelined for the first half of the 2018-19 season.

But on the one-year anniversary of his injury, Beard inserted the 6-foot-8 forward into a game against Iowa State in Lubbock for what amounted to a cameo appearance.  Though we didn’t know it at the time, that two-minute stint would be the only action Moore would have as a Red Raider.

While the fan base clambered for more action for the prized recruit, it never came and Moore grew upset to the point that he took to Twitter to passive-aggressively express his displeasure without directly calling out his coach.  That seemed to be the end of the line for Moore in Lubbock and by the end of the year, he would be in the transfer portal thus ending the Red Raider career of a player who, at the time, was the highest-rated signee in program history.

The truth is that there is a sub-culture in the world of blue-chip high school recruiting and it stands in direct conflict with the culture Beard has built in Lubbock.  These high-end players almost always have a group of adults who serve as advisers or pseudo agents and they carry a ton of weight with the players.

They expect the players they have invested their time and money in to be treated a certain way and to play significant minutes regardless of whether they have earned it or not.  If their expectations are not met, they begin to chirp in the player’s ear sowing the seeds of discontent.

I don’t know if that’s exactly what happened with Nimari Burnett but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case.  But what I do know is that this year’s team won’t really miss Burnett’s meager contributions.

While we wish the kid the best, the truth is that his productivity did not match the hype surrounding his signing.  He averaged only 5.3 points and 1.8 rebounds per game and was one of the last players in Beard’s eight-man rotation.

His greatest weakness is that he simply couldn’t shoot…a rather important trait for a guard.  He was just a 28% shooter from the field and he was just 4-23 (17.4%) from 3-point range.  In other words, he was an absolute liability on offense, especially when you factor in his 1.4 turnovers per game.  What’s more, per 40 minutes of action, he was averaging a team-high 3.2 turnovers.

The fact is that Burnett got his chance to play and to earn minutes.  He was here all summer and unlike players such as Moore or current Red Raider guard Kevin McCullar, he was healthy for the full offseason program in his first summer in the program.

However, he couldn’t earn what he felt entitled to and now he’s off to what he believes will be greener pastures.  So be it.  He may eventually develop into a fine player but this year’s team won’t be all that impacted by his defection.  Still, every move makes ripples on the pond.  So let’s look at how Burnett’s departure could impact this year’s Texas Tech basketball team.