Greg Oden and Kevin Durant have huge basketball futures ahead of them.

Oden was so close to a national championship that he could smell it. Durant had a freshman year unlike anyone before him. Both were headed to great college basketball careers, sure to have their teams in contention for the national title for several years to come.

Apparently that wasn’t enough to make them come back to school, and that’s a crying shame.

Durant has already declared his intention to go pro and reports this weekend were that Oden had decided to go pro, though he has yet to make anything official.

Forget the fact that the money in the NBA will be beyond their wildest dreams and the fact that they may never again be treated like royalty the way they were this past year. We all know this already, so what they are doing can be summed up very simply.

They clearly don’t care about winning.

If these guys did care about winning the NCAA championship, this decision would be easy. You can’t come so close to something, especially in Oden’s case, and not feel determined to come back and show you can get it done.

Durant was only a freshman, too, but he came out of nowhere. His Texas Longhorns exited the tournament in the round of 32, and at season’s end, everyone was looking forward to seeing Oden and Durant face off for championships the next few years.

But they just don’t care that much.

There’s never been a better time to prove how clear this is. Florida won a second consecutive title this year because the players knew the NBA could wait. Joakim Noah and crew may not be as perfect on the court, but they will always have not one, but two national titles to their names.

Oden and Durant will have none.

For these two super talents to treat Ohio State and Texas as mere pit stops on their way to fame and fortune is atrocious. The days when players could go from high school straight to the NBA were done away with so that players could get experience in the college game and mature while at school. And now it is clear that it is not going to keep the best players in school, which is too bad.

Gone are the days when we would see great players like Michael Jordan hitting the tourney clinching shot for the Tar Heels before heading to the NBA. Now all we can see are good players winning titles and then fading off, but at least those kids will always have an NCAA title to brag about.

If players like Oden and Durant win that one year they spend in school, it’s OK. If they lose, it’s OK. Either way they’re already planning where to build their houses and which cars to fill their garages with. And that is not OK.

If getting within points of a national title and winning the player of the year award wasn’t enough to encourage these kids to come back to school, what do they want? Perhaps NBA-worthy money and perks to go with the worship they got from players, coaches, the media and other students over the course of the year would draw them back to school. And that is incredibly sad.

We’ll keep watching March Madness with buzzer beaters and heart pumping games. But so rarely will we see it with players who will have NBA highlight reels as well. As a result, we’ve seen the last of great college basketball.