I'm all down for lots of hot takes and controversial opinions. The sad thing about the homers and the haters is they present their opinion as fact and then act all high and mighty, questioning people's bball IQ and all that if they disagree with them. It gets annoying to see them take victory laps after every game or even quarter because they care more about being right than the success of the team.
Yeah, my problem with posts like the OP's are not that he had a different (and ultimately incorrect) opinion on Amen than I did, I just don't like when people are too overconfident in their takes on draft prospects. I think I've usually been pretty careful to couch my takes in terms of what I think the odds are because you never truly know, there are always surprising busts and surprising late gems in just about every draft. I am happy to take a small victory lap though in that I said multiple times before the draft that I thought Amen's "floor" was higher than people were giving him credit for. I remember saying that he was so athletic and was going to be such a good passer and defender and his combo of IQ, physical gifts, and motor would keep him on the floor with or without a jump shot. But I wasn't certain he would be a great basketball player and I'm happy to admit that. I just thought he would be an NBA rotation player and had star-level upside. In any case, I've been wrong about draft prospects before and I will be again.
It could be, it could be that Ausar isn't as ambitious as Amen whereas Amen literally thinks no one should score a single point on him. Maybe Ausar is content with just being a good NBA player where Amen thinks he can be a HOF player. It really gets undersold, having the wrong mindset is why Ben Simmons is a throwaway depth player and not the all-star he should be because he never wanted to work on his game. Popovic used to show a young Kawhi tapes of Jordan to show him what he 'could be'. I know it sounds corny and all but I do think it is a big thing and that's why smart teams sit down with a guy and meet him and try to pick his mind. Imagine if Jalen did fold under his doubts? He'd likely be coming off the bench right now content with averaging like 10ppg and being a spark off the bench. In the end, you don't work towards greatness, you strive for it, you work for it day and night and if a player doesn't believe they can be great then they won't magically become it.
I'm wrong so often, I learned to just be a little more patient and a lot more humble about it. The next one for me where I'll be against the grain is Maluach. People want to trade up for him and I just... I don't see it. If we got one of last year's bigs, okay, but I feel like Maluach has some major flaws that are getting overlooked because we don't have a tall center. Am I going to run around calling him a bust when he has low numbers (he's not going to be expected to score 15+ a night)? Absolutely not. If we draft him, I'll hope for the best and be patient, but I'll make it clear that I think we should take someone else.
I haven't watched Ausar enough. But Amen seems to be excelling much more than his brother. It could be a situational thing (Amen being in a better situation) or maybe health. But if it's a talent different, then we surely have picked the right twin.
