Nice read -- thanks for posting the article. I still have questions about the kid's skills, having only measured himself against Juco players. However, I was impressed with the story about his ACL tear. Basically, he played for a year with a torn ACL and won state tournament MVP his senior year of high school while it was torn. After they looked at the knee again and made him go under the knife, he had it back to 80% strength after six months of rehab. Having torn my ACL and worked it back into shape, I can tell you that his progress in rehab was pretty impressive and shows the kid has a pretty good work ethic. He's also got guts for playing on it for a year (your knee buckles frequently when it's torn; it's a scary sensation). So I feel better knowing that he might not be just some really talented player who's looking for the short cut to NBA millions. I think there might be more to this kid's makeup than that. But we'll see. I'm very curious to hear how his workouts go.
Yeah,He is the biggest mystery in the draft along with Ming. No one knows how good he can be yet. If he does well in the tryouts,he will shoot up in the draft,if he does poorly he might end up being out of the lottery.
I just read the whole article on Woods in Slam. The thing that stood out was that Slam predicts that he will be the Rookie of the Year. I just don't buy that. In the article,one of his best performances was when he scored 55 points in a game in which he shot 19/24 two pointers,3 out of 3 three pointers and 8 out of nine from the free throw line.It also goes on to say that the player that he really likes is McGrady and that he thinks of himself as a 2 in the pros. He is a developing player who in my opinion really needs to improve his 3 point shooting before he can start contributing in the NBA.
Saleem, are you serious? He needs to improve his 3pt shooting before he can contribute in the NBA? Surely, that is not what you meant!
DearRock,what I meant was that if he doesn't shoot consistently from the 3 point line,then the most that I expect him to score is around 10 points a game at best. If he was a strong 3 point shooter I would have expected him to take more than 3 shots in that game even though he made all 3 attempts.
Its hard to believe that Woods was able to play an entire year without his ACL. When rehabbing I tried to make a simple lay-up, it buckled and I got sent back about 6 months. With even the simplest wrong step, or a misplacement of the knee and he could have been out even longer, screwing up other tendons. This just goes to show that this Woods guy has a lot of guts. Usually 6 months is the least amount of time required for rehabilitation. This means that he worked his ass off in order to be 100%. Im really in between Woods and Butler. I know Butler will be pretty good, but Im unsure about Qyntel because of his competition level.
