Realistically it would probably be Barnes, as much as I'd like to say Sengun. Probably Barnes, Sengun, Cunningham, Wagner, Mobley in that order. Jalen would be outside the top 10 at this point, maybe even outside the lottery. Lakers fans would want you to believe Austin Reaves (about to turn age 26) would be in the top 10, but he probably wouldn't. Too old, only a roleplayer. He might sneak into the back end of the lottery.
Jalen Green in year 3 is averaging 18 ppg, is still very raw skill wise and is coming off of playing with the worst coach possibly in NBA history. What are the chances that Green is averaging less than 18 ppg in year 5 when The Rockets are probably finally eyeing a deep playoff run? There is a higher chance Green becomes a 24+ ppg player than him regressing into a 6th man or bench scorer. He is so far from being a bust that he could still be the best player in the 2021 draft, only 22 and coming out of the g league which is known for not exactly being the best place for development. Lets be honest, The Rockets are in year 3 of the rebuild. All of the players drafted are all still learning and the quickest to establish himself as a legitimate star is Sengun. But its still way too early to tell if Sengun will continue to grow or stay as a great 2nd or third option. Jalen on the other hand still has tons of potential to reach stardom and become a legitimate super star. I mean, if you told me our number 2 pick is averaging 18 ppg with insane upside three years ago I'd be ecstatic.
There's a higher chance he's a bench scrub averaging 15 minutes per game or less than a team being foolish enough to let him chuck enough to aberrant 24 points a game in his 5th season.... unless it's an intentional tanking strategy
Sengun and Barnes would be top 2. And then Wagner, Cunningham, and Mobley would be the second tier in the top 5. Interestingly, none of the pre draft consensus top 3 (Cunningham, Green, and Mobley) would be picked at the first two spots.
As of today, I would vehemently disagree with you. Based on what? All you're doing is making excuses for the kid, but what has he done to prove that he's improving as a player or making legitimate strides in his game? The jumper, the basketball IQ and the efficiency are just not there. Look, I want him to succeed. No Rockets fan should want a player on their team to fail (barring some kind of KPJ off-the-court type situation), and I would absolutely love for Green to prove me wrong. But it feels like he's been given a lot of runway and opportunity to improve, and he's actually regressed in a big way this year. At some point, you have to re-evaluate your long-term potential of an athlete when they're underperforming, and I'm definitely there with Jalen. If you're not there, that's fine. But I don't think there's much merit to the idea that he should be taken first in a redraft—none. I'll never understand logic like this. So Sengun has clearly outperformed Jalen in every conceivable way, but because you perceive Jalen's ceiling as higher and he's been so awful, somehow he has more superstar potential? Talk about mental gymnastics. Look man, I'm all for allowing a little flexibility with younger players, and these guys playing for an awful team the last 2-3 years have certainly deserved a little more runway. But at some point, you are what you are, and every game that goes by where Jalen plays like garbage, the more likely it is that he's not a good NBA player. I'll continue to hold out hope that something will click with him. But when you see other young guys come in and outperform him in less time, it gives me less and less hope he's going to pan out. Gun to my head, I don't think Jalen Green is the long-term starting SG on this basketball team. And I would be surprised if he keeps that role by the end of the season.
The chances are extremely low that he will ever average 18 or more again in the NBA unless he improves his FG % dramatically - because no team he will be on will allow him to continue to shoot that much as long as he continues to miss such a high percentage of his shots. IF he gets up to a somewhat respectable 44 % FG and 36 % + on threes, yeah, then he would average more points.
Kind of offhand Barnes Sengun Mobley Franz Kuminga Cade Suggs Jalen Johnson Trey Murphy Reaves Herb Jones Giddey Grimes Cam Thomas Kispert Dosunmu Jalen Green Moses Moody
Still think Cade goes number 1. If not then Barnes. There’s a lot of love for Sengun in the media and around the league, but drafting is always potential and limitations so defensively, athletically and size would come into play. Wagner might even still be considered a less risky pick. Sidenote: funniest thing is tho seeing fans still trying to be right by saying should’ve drafted Mobley instead of Green. Even with having Sengun and easily a few above him to take.
Oh, Mobley. So mid. I guess him and Sengun together wouldn't have been that bad of a frontcourt. But would we even have traded up for Sengun if we'd picked Mobley? Hmmmm.
Barnes and Sengun would have been the ideal draft. If they’d of drafted Mobley, and still drafted Sengun, I doubt Silas would have played Sengun any significant minutes. It was obvious that Silas had a bias against Sengun, even when he was playing elite level. I think Barnes and Sengun would have made a great duo.
Jalen has pretty much admitted that he can only succeed playing losing basketball. Absolutely needs to be traded this offseason.
Not sure I’m following this. Mobley’s value and reasonable career projection is drastically higher than Jalen’s right now. Just because in retrospect Barnes would’ve been the best option at 2 if everything else played out the same doesn’t make it any less of a miss to draft Jalen over Mobley. If we want to do the hindsight thing where we don’t draft Sengun if we take Mobley (and I think they could complement each other anyways) what if we still make the trade with OKC but instead take Trey Murphy or Jalen Johnson and since we don’t draft Jalen’s BFF without Jalen we go with Cam Thomas or Grimes at 24?
...that's a list of drafted players for sure but you aren't suggesting that's the order of a redraft are you? I know Sengun stans think Jalen is the worst NBA player of all time, but I would imagine the farthest Jalen would sink in a redraft is the 6-8 realm. Even an inefficient Jalen still has WAY more upside in a redraft today than virtually everyone after Barnes, Sengun, Mobley, Franz, and Cade. I mean Cade's efficiency is on par with Jalen's so what are you really saying about a redraft if you don't apply the same logic to all the rest of the guys. Guys like Herb Jones and Austin Reaves are nice, but they are also league average role players at best. You don't necessarily prioritize those in a draft because those types of players are available in some quantity virtually every offseason AND they will soon be replaced by the younger league average guys because it's a slippery slope for those average players.
In an alternate time line where Stone took Mobley we wouldn't be getting Sengun cuz Stone was using the 16th pick to hedge. So we took Sengun cuz Stone was afraid he might have missed on Mobley, if we took Mobley Stone would be afraid he missed out on Green and he'd take a guard or a forward. Moreover we still had CWood at this time and they had Garuba slipping to them at 23 so really doubt Rox would take 3 big men in the draft. I think you are right, if we took Mobley Stone would have traded up for Trey Murphy instead, then Garuba and maybe the last pick is indeed Cam Thomas. So we'd have a lot of good players, but then we'd have lower picks on everything else we wouldn't be getting Jabari and Amen cuz the combination of Wood, Mobley, Murphy and Cam would be better than Green and backup Sengun. Personally I like how things played out cuz I'd rather have Sengun, Jabari and Amen over Mobley, Murphy, Thomas plus 2 lower picks in 2022 and 2023.
Yes. That's how I'd redraft the class assuming every team drafting is sort of a median-ish NBA team. I didn't spend a ton of time and didn't factor need/development stage of the hypothetical drafting team in at all so like if you think Jalen would get drafted ahead of Kipsert or Dosunmu it's not a hill I'm going to die on arguing. I think the odds Jalen is going to reach all-star/all-NBA level are probably less than 1% so I'd take someone who looks like a legit role player/starter over him without question but I get the argument that the ~1% chance Jalen turns into a star could outweigh that he's probably more likely to be out of the league within 3 years than all those guys I listed above him. I absolutely do not see him in the 6-8 range but if you wanted to move him up and slide him at 13 on my list behind Giddey I wouldn't have a huge issue with it. If we called offering Jalen for Reaves, Kispert, Dosunmu, Herb Jones, Cam Thomas, Grimes, etc. I think all those teams say no.
