Alex, Your Fans Are Legion. Or Legionnaires. Or Something Like That.

Tonight at Assembly Hall, Illini '08 Version 2.0 boots up for the first time.  Like a new version of Microsoft Windows with an excellent service pack, Version 2.0 features a bug fix named Alex Legion.  This five-star wing guard from Detroit by way of a semester at Kentucky is designed to increase scoring, reduce turnovers, and improve morale in your Illini operating system.  But how much can we really expect?  Cliches get tossed around -- he won't be a "savior."  Ok, fine.  But what will he be?  Let's step through what we know, and I'll offer my best guess as to what this new guard means for the year and the program.

1.  Alex Legion Will Improve the Fighting Illini Right Away, and the Only Question Is How Much.  Some have argued that coming in at midyear (the other players have ten games under their belts) and with a glut of guards, Legion will have little effect on the Illini in the short term.  Despite the guard glut, Legion changes the mix right away.  He was the 29th rated recruit in the high school class of 2007, per ESPN, the 39th, per Scout.com.  Ratings don't count for points on the floor, but Legion adds size (6'4", 195) and the ability to create his own shot at the non-Demetri McCamey guard slot, where right now, the smaller, heady, but less talented troika of Meacham, Frazier, and Jordan create theirs within Weber's motion offense, and sometimes stagnate, as in the throwback 48-44 win over Tulsa.  With Legion on the floor, those prehistoric scores from the chest-pass era will be no more.

2.  We Will Be Subjected To Bad Legion Jokes and Puns.  If he leaves his man on the defensive end?  He's Roamin' Legion.  If he puts up 30?  It's Alex and the Legionnaires.  When he rises to jam?  Legion Airs.  When he plays with heir Jordan?  Legion, heirs.  And of course, his fans are Legion.  And they pledge A-Legion-ce.  Get ready for the hundredth ESPN cutaway to signs like that.  But hey, at least there's some excitement, for people to create the inevitable and inane in-game signs.  No one's making up funny signs for the first guy off the Northwestern bench.  But back to the X's and O's...

3.  Legion Will Improve Illinois' Offensive Efficiency.  Illinois' shooting percentage is likely to decline as it heads into a harder stretch -- a neutral site game at Missouri, a tough early trip through Purdue and Michigan, after which 10-3 would be ok -- but the offense should improve.  How's that?  In the grind of the Big Ten, especially on the road, Weber's motion offense can break down without athletic players who can create in gaps.  Because the motion offense depends so much on guard quickness, and guards filling open spots quickly to create a clean look at a shot, it benefits principally from two qualities -- quickness, and overattention within the defense to one player, which tends naturally to create gaps.  Legion provides both of those elements.  The Illini '08 offense is already creating open shots, and lots of them (71.1% of made baskets are assisted, second nationally; 19.7 assists per game is eighth nationally).  It will do so better and more efficiently in Version 2.0, and with one more highly skilled shooter, the percentage made will rise in relation to what it would have been in Big Ten play.

4.  Legion and the Toni Kukoc Rule.  Legion's addition will improve the Illini consistent with what I would call the Toni Kukoc Rule.  Basketball players who are decent-to-solid as lead players are great every notch of support they slide down the totem pole.  Look at Toni Kukoc on the 1994 Bulls, during the first year post-Jordan.  He was the second offensive option after Scottie Pippen, and he was good.  Two years later, the Bulls brought back Jordan, and Kukoc was option number three.  My point isn't that the team improves from adding a new alpha scorer.  My point is that how good a player you are is a function of what option you are -- witness how much better Kukoc was as a third fiddle.  Demetri McCamey is a fine lead guard -- but as the new number two option, he will benefit from being open more, not only in open shots but in his passing, as defenses sag toward Legion.  When he plays with them, Trent Meacham will now be the third-most-guarded wing player, enabling his shooting, solid-but-limited playmaking and occasional penetration.  As everyone slides down one notch in the offense, they will each seem better, even if Legion is 5-11 for an unexceptional 12 points.  It's the Kukoc Rule.

5.  Legion Is Weber Turning the Corner.  This is a great twenty-four hours for Illini hoops.  On Friday, electric Mt. Carmel point guard Tracy Abrams (class of '11) committed to the Illini, adding to a gaudy list of '09 and '10 talent already bound for Champaign.  So much of college basketball is the psychology of a program -- its feel, and the desirability of playing in it, in the eyes of young talent.  Nothing lures top young talent like other top young talent, even where the presence of the other top young talent jeopardizes one's potential playing time -- look at North Carolina right now, and the excellence languishing toward the end of the Tar Heel bench.  After Illini '07 played to worse reviews than Microsoft's Vista operating system, nothing could be more essential to rebooting the program than the appearance of progression from there to here.  From slow to fast, from three star to five star, from touted to even more touted, from Alex Legion to Jereme Richmond.  Alex's presence gives the chattering classes a convenient narrative on which to hang the truth -- Illinois basketball is back, and is two or three years from approaching heights reached only in '89 and '05.

The bottom line is that Alex Legion will probably score about 12-14 points per game, drawing lots of attention from defenses and broadcasters while he does.  While he plays, Demetri McCamey will get better looks, as will Trent Meacham.  Just by playing, Legion makes them better.  As he does, the Illini move from a ten seed or so to a six or seven in a Big Ten crowded with teams of that caliber.  He sets the table for the more that is to come the next two years.  And while I liked Illini '08 Version 1.0, there's no question that with the coming of Legion and Version 2.0, this already fun season just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

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