Everyone should be a lot more patient with Usman Garuba. He is the 9th youngest player in the entire NBA. I am confident we will still see him become a dominant, disruptive defensive force. I would much rather see us trade more vets (Wall, Gordon, Theis, maybe even Wood) and just let the kids play and make mistakes. One or two good vets to mentor them, fine, but these kids are our future.
That’s an interesting comparison. Stacey was a good player for a few years when he first came into the league, way better than Garuba is now, but he also managed to hang around the NBA for another decade even after that. I could see Garuba maybe evolving into that kind of a player one day. We’d be really lucky if he did. We also have to remember that Augmon had a ton of experience and was 4 years older than Garuba coming into the league. He was way more NBA ready. I like the comparison a lot though.
He is an excellent defender and every metric shows it, albeit in such a tiny sample of minutes. He has no offensive game. He can be an elite 3 and D if he learns to shoot the ball. The defense is already there. Smart, quick, and a hard worker.
