I disagree. I believe it sends the message true or not that he didn't want to be a part of what we're building.
Absurd. Mo Harkless is a kid who wants to play in the NBA. You're a grown up who roots for a basketball team. If you think you and he have the same goals and expectations or even worse that you and the remaining players on the team have the same goals and expectations, you're displaying the worst sort of demented fan boi thinking - which is odd for someone who works as hard as you do to present himself as a cynical New York tough guy. Only women bleed I guess.
Harkless didn't want to be "part of what we're building" - I put that in quotes because I was embarassed to type it otherwise, it made me want to put on a bra and panties. If Harkless wanted to be part of anything, it was what Uconn built - a college basketball dynasty and and NBA factory - and he only left because he didn't want to be dirtied by association, which might have stopped him from attaining his ultimate goal. He came to SJ not because of any idealistic vision of rebuilding a storied franchise back to its glory days or whatever absurd formulation you chatroom poets are using to characterize Saint John's past 50 years of futility, but because NY's team, Syracuse, was out of scholarships. So he put in his mandatory year, and now he's gone. If any of the other players thought they'd get drafted they'd be gone too and good for them. While winners celebrate, losers wax sentimental.
As for not being proud of having players who leave at the first opportunity, it doesn't hurt Kentucky or UNC or all the other basketball programs to which you evidently aspire. To the contrary, thinking that kids who come to SJ owe some sort of loyalty to the university or for godsake the fans is just the sort of mom and pop small time thinking that landed this program in the toilet in the first place.