KNOXVILLE – Admiral Schofield rehearsed his lines before he went to talk with Rick Barnes after Tennessee’s season ended in the second round of the NCAA basketball tournament in March.
As it turned out, the Volunteers’ coach needed little convincing. The two agreed that Schofield should go through the NBA’s pre-draft process for underclassmen.
“It was just like, ‘Ahh, I’m going to pitch this to Coach Barnes,'” Schofield recalled Thursday. “Just to come in and sit down, and he was like, ‘A.D., what do you think about the NBA?’ I was like, ‘Uh, I think it’s a good idea.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I think so, too.'”
That was the end of the conversation, according to Schofield.
“It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be,” he said.