A KNOWN VALUE

Thursday night's NBA Draft should be short on ACC players and long on one-and-doners.

Nobody knows how this draft will unfold, but there's a good chance that the first five picks will be players who have left college after their freshman year.

It's almost a certainty that Memphis' Derrick Rose and Kansas State's Michael Beasley will be the first two players selected, in whatever order, and shortly after that should come Southern Cal's O.J. Mayo, UCLA's Kevin Love and Arizona's Jerryd Bayless -- all freshmen, too.

The only ACC player projected to go in the first round is another freshman, N.C. State's J.J. Hickson.

It gives credence to the adage that the longer a player stays in college, the further down the NBA Draft he slides.

For sure, there is only one college senior, Georgetown's Roy Hibbert, who is projected to have even a chance of being a lottery pick. There could be just two college seniors -- Hibbert and Rider's Jason Thompson -- drafted in the first round.

So is Tyler Hansbrough spending money by returning to North Carolina for his senior season?

It's as compelling a question as any predraft analysis, partly because the ACC's lack of presence in the draft makes it a dull one locally. Duke's DeMarcus Nelson might sneak into the late second round, but only because of his Duke pedigree. Hickson? Did he actually play at N.C. State or was that all a science-fiction horror movie filmed in Raleigh last winter that never really happened?

The short answer on Hansbrough is that it probably doesn't matter if he's losing money. You can't buy happiness, and if Hansbrough is happy in Chapel Hill playing ACC basketball and having a big senior year and enjoying college life and graduating on time, then that's reason enough to stay. If Hansbrough sets school records and wins a national championship and cements his legacy along with the all-time UNC and ACC greats, so what if he drops a few spots by the 2009 draft?

The longer answer, though, is that he WON'T drop.

The longer answer is that Hansbrough falls into a unique classification in NBA circles, one in which he'll never rise too high in the draft and he'll never fall too far. That's because his strengths are defined, his weaknesses are defined. In the words of John Fox, he is what he is.

NBA scouts can't go on record talking about underclass prospects before they enter the draft, but one scout pointed out recently that mock-draft projections on Hansbrough are particularly misleading. Why? Because impressions change after teams put potential draftees through individual workouts, and because there's always a spot in the NBA for a hard worker who is fundamentally sound.

"I thought he could have gone in the teens because I thought his value was going to go up when people really started studying him," one scout said. "He is a warrior, not afraid of anything. And that was going to help him in the workouts. But there are limits. I thought some teams really valued him because they saw him as a guy who was going to bring it every night and was going to give you something if he played 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes.

"In the long term, I don't know if he can be a 35-minute player. It'll probably depend on who he plays with. But you look at a guy like Ben Wallace, who's been in the league a long time, and he's got a lot more offense to bring to the table than Ben Wallace. He doesn't block shots like Ben Wallace, but he brings a lot more offense to the table."

One who can speak on the record, ESPN's Jay Bilas, also has the notion that when teams really scrutinize Hansbrough before next year's draft, his value will increase.

"To me, when you get closer and closer to the draft, it's kind of like the defendant walking up the courthouse steps," Bilas said. "Everybody talks big, and then you walk into the courtroom and reality hits them. And suddenly a guy like Hansbrough looks a lot more appealing.

"The thing about him is he's one of those players -- and I still don't know what this means -- they say he's not going to get any taller or any more athletic, so they know what his ceiling is. So there's no ‘potential' discussion on Hansbrough. It's not like people assume he's going to get better at the next level. But they know what they're going to get -- a guy who is really strong, really productive and is going to be a great team guy who is going to play his tail off every second he's out there."

Bilas also points out that Hansbrough and other ACC players should benefit in this particular setting because the 2009 draft pool doesn't shape up to be nearly as strong as this year's. Assuming they have solid seasons, Hansbrough's UNC teammates -- Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson and Danny Green, all of whom entered this draft and later withdrew -- should also see their draft stock rise with another season of college basketball.

"I think Hansbrough's going to go higher next year simply because next year's draft is nowhere as good a draft as this one," Bilas said. "So he's going to set every record imaginable and be a player that's going to roll off the tip of our tongues with some of the great ones that ever played at North Carolina, and he's probably going to make more money by staying in school."

That isn't the norm. That isn't the general rule of thumb.

"It's funny to me," Bilas said. "I think what people are saying about upperclassmen (dropping) is, ‘Well, if he would have come out last year, he would have fooled us.' That's what they're saying. People who are advocating kids coming out earlier and earlier are really advocating, ‘Get in there and defraud them while you can.' But some young kids turn out to be the real thing. So you never know."

The thing about Hansbrough is, you know what you're going to get.

John Delong can be reached at jdelong@wsjournal.com.