So you'd rather have lame duck prospects like Keegan Murray or Cam Johnson or Obi Toppin? These old "NBA ready" rookies are cool at first but then when 3 years past and they're mostly the same dude it's just disappointing. Unless you've got a generational Luka/LeBron type prospect, most of the time higher ceiling comes with higher risk especially since the most promising players will obviously want to go the the NBA as young as possible to start making money. If you've won a few championships, sure draft safe but rebuilding teams have to prioritise ceiling.
It sucks we didn't draft 1 or 2 but Jabari is likely the best player out of the 3-10 range of players that year. Jabari is too stiff with his movement but he can still be a really solid role player on a contending team. He needs to get more consistent with his shot, but I think he has the ability to develop as a high percentage 3pt shooter. Another 10 lbs of muscle would go a very long way also.
everybody wants to take big swings... heck most are willing to trash season after season just to draft some lottery kid based purely on potential... 9 times outta 10 i'd trade my pix for known commodities... I'd rather try to emulate the balance of the Championship Pistons - than coddle some teenage kid and hope he defies the odds and develops into some superstar... now that doesnt mean that if u discover some late frp we draft turns into lightning in a bottle that u dont pivot and try to maximize... but u dont hang yer hopes there before the kid has even played a minute in the bigs... (yes, there r the rare exceptions like Bron - but that aint the norm... most often u get a Kwame...) but most are just starstruck... (cue 'u gotta have superstars to win' rabble... then point out Kobe was taken at 13...kawhi at 15... nash at 15... giannis was 15... Jokic at 41... so yes, u need stars - but u dont necessarily need top draft picks... lol)
I don't disagree but couldn't most of what you said be applied to every player in the draft not from Europe (or the Asian part of Turkey)?
Definitely.. True story: I personally took my son off his AAU team because I saw how the coach was playing his team.. Took my L financially and bounced..
Big same. My kid was on the first (insert shoe brand here) team with an NBA players name behind it in Houston. Seemed great. Coaches were ass. My kid is a coach now…I volunteer to coach through a nonprofit but he left a CPA career to go coach for a living. That experience shaped a ton of what he preaches NOT to do now to his kids
It’s so much fun. Impact human beings using basketball. Help people become the best versions of themselves they can be…and translate that to other facets of life. Good stuff. GO ROCKETS!
This has been discussed an nauseum. There's 15 people in the lotto every year how often you get a Jokic come out thru the cracks?
Drafting such young players is the issue. We are developing players for other teams or overpaying to keep our talent by maxing them as they develop. If a kid is 22 years old in the draft he is red flagged. We are drafting teenagers that will be 23 at the end of their rookie contract. A rookie contract is 4 years; most hit their prime in their late mid to late 20’s. We will NEVER see the full development for years after the rookie contract has expired. => how does that help the team? Short or Long term?
We can’t pass judgment on Amen yet, so let’s just take him out of the debate. As for Jalen and Jabari, it’s clear to me that they are behind many of their draft peers and that there are some significant limitations to their games that weren’t identified during the scouting process. I do think they’d be better players if they had spent a year or two under Udoka instead of Silas, but that aside, they’re disappointing players relative to where they were drafted. With Jalen my biggest concern beyond the slow processing and IQ is his hands. Jalen is not a good dribbler. He’s got small hands and that’s not something that changes. Guards with bad handles have a very hard time becoming stars in this league. His finishing, shooting, defense all need work, but biggest concern is that I just don’t trust him putting the ball on the floor. And that’s bad news for a scoring guard. His lack of handles mitigates some of that explosive/speed advantage. All that athleticism, but lots of turnovers. If his handles don’t improve he’s gonna be relegated to a catch and shoot player. And that’s a straight up fail for the #2 pick. With Bari there are just athletic limitations that people didn’t see in the draft process. The defense is bad, the IQ is bad, the touch on his shot is bad, his handles aren’t good. Athletically though he’s slow. He’s slow and he’s soft. Laterally he can’t move quickly. Coming into the league there was talk of him being able to defend 4 positions but I see a slow lumbering player who can’t rotate or close out quickly. He will get stronger so perhaps his lack of physicality will change, but I don’t see his quickness and mobility changing. He may be able to mitigate that weakness by becoming a smarter defender, but let’s face it: we drafted for size, shooting and defense, and all we got was size. Yes he needs more time before we pass harsh judgment but i don’t think the issue was fundamentals. Shaden Sharpe is going to be a better player than Jabari and he was thought to be more raw coming in. The bottom line is that we just didn’t evaluate this players properly, and then we worsened the situation by putting them in a terrible development environment for their first year or two. Neither player is likely to be a top 5 player in their draft. There’s still time, and there’s still plenty of upside to work with, but there are some real physical limitations that they are going to have to augment their games around.
By fundamentals i assume you are talking about Europeans because they teach fundamentals. Problem with drafting players with fundamentals is that there are only 1 or 2 good Europeans in every draft class and they tend to be more of a Bogdan Bogdanovic than Doncic. If you have a top 5, 10 pick almost always go for the American one it's less risky. You don't wanna draf a Stauskas, Herzonja, Bender, Len etc. You gotta avoid Africans too they are usually bums.
Luka was a LeBron level prospect. A year before that draft I was saying his ceiling was GOAT. PHX was just stupid and Vlade was racist. Franz was still a young unpolished rookie coming off just 1 year in college. He was more polished than anyone drafted before him except Cade but even his biggest believers were surprised on his ball handling and playmaking as a rookie.
We were in tank mode, so drafting a player with higher ceilings and lesser fundamentals wasn't a bad idea. The problem was that we hired a rookie coach to do that job. We wasted a lot of valuable minutes on those journeymen like Fernando, Matthews, Nix, etc. We eventually waived Garuba and Tyty without giving them a fair chance to show what they could do.
