It's definitely a red flag. Not working out for the teams with the top 2 picks when you consider yourself the best is weird. He has a bit of a rep for being passive at times. Is he willing to put himself out there and prove himself or not? Confidence issues have hurt elite prospects before.
The entire draft scouting community gonna look really smart or really dumb (with Mobley). They love this guy. (CF not so much) Evan Mobley Evan Mobley is my favorite prospect in the draft. I would pick him with the first overall pick without a care in the world. He plays like a right-handed Chris Bosh, which is high praise. When Bosh played for the Raptors I saw him as a future MVP candidate. Instead he went to the Heat and was a key player on four contending teams that won two titles. LeBron James got all of the attention, Dwyane Wade scooped up some crumbs, but Bosh was essential to those titles. As Henry Abbott recently pointed out on Monday’s BRING IT IN, he was a plus-minus monster who rated as the league's best pick-and-roll defender. At 19 years old, Evan Mobley: Has crazy length and eye-popping athleticism. Is already seven-feet tall with massive reach. Dribbles like a guy who could develop into a primary ball handler. Has a decent looking shot. It needs work, but shooting will likely be a skill. But that isn’t even the good part. It’s his projections on defense that excite me most. 3 stopping Last year the Jazz averaged 43 3-point shots a game. Eighteen teams took 34 or more, including the Suns at 34.6. In their last three games of the Finals, the Suns took 23, 19, and 25 of them. This wasn’t because the Suns didn’t want to shoot 3s; the Bucks used their size, length, and versatility to chase them off the line. Teams will continue to launch more 3s than ever until someone stops them. Not just any defender can do that. Mobley, like Bosh, has the speed and reach to be a leader in this key skill. Rim protection Every team needs a plan to protect the paint. Many have to play a large, slow player to get the job done. As a freshman, Mobley was sixth in the NCAA in blocked shots, and first among power schools. Interestingly, and importantly, he can block shots with his right or left hand, which—keep reading—matters. Pick-and-roll defense You know what NBA coaches think about when they can’t sleep at night? Defending the pick and roll. It’s the league’s core conundrum, and it’s constant. Our friends at ESPN Kevin Pelton and Kevin Arnovitz explain that this year Trae Young, Luka Doncic, and Damian Lillard each received more than 2,800 screens above the 3-point line this season. We’re talking about a defensive conundrum that starts far from the hoop, ends wherever the offense decides, and happens all the time. During the 2004-05 season, Nash's first with the Suns, 22% of their finished plays were generated by a pick-and-roll, by far a league-high. Just one other team, the Seattle SuperSonics, finished with more than 20%. Five years later, 20 teams ran pick-and-rolls at least 20% of the time, per Synergy Sports. Four years after that, it was all 30. Today, the innovative stylings of Nash, Stoudemire and D'Antoni—their 22%—would rank dead last in the league by a huge margin; not a single team relied on pick-and-rolls less than 25% of the time. Another day, I could write a novel about how to defend the pick-and-roll. But for now suffice it to say, you’d do well to start with Evan Mobley, who, like Bosh, has the pure speed and quickness in that long and tall frame to enable suffocating possessions in a variety of defensive strategies employed—hard hedging screens, blitzing them, drop coverage, or just pure switching. Offense You might remember Deandre Ayton’s playoff party, or Rudy Gobert’s season-long positive impact on the Jazz offense. See that as evidence that it matters that Mobley can jump and dunk lobs thrown to something around 13 feet in the air. He’s agile, nimble, and—like Bam Adebayo—is a good bet to develop the handles to dribble around heavy-footed centers. Rim racing in transition should be a feature too. Mobley can make solid offensive contributions without a reliable perimeter shot. There is no reason to think he won’t be able to make NBA 3s though as he ages and strengthens. His form on the 12 made 3s he had this season (in 40 attempts) looked great—good right arm, right hand extension, and follow through, left hand “quiet,” decent footwork. Over months of work and thousands of reps, year after year, this form can become what most shots of his look like. And then he’s likely to be a legit threat behind that line. Mobley is unlikely to set the league on fire offensively like Jokic does now, but what he looks like he can do has a very good chance at helping teams win more than anyone else in this draft.
F it just get this guy! Honestly if Cleveland would take Wood for their pick I would do it in a heart beat and grab both Green and Mobley.
https://www.truehoop.com/p/this-is-a-one-player-draft "My only concern in saying that is that he might not last to the second pick. But there’s zero chance Wiseman falls to the third pick. He’s perfect for Golden State. After a deep dig, learning a ton about the habits, temperament, and practice-gym skillsets of the 2020 draft’s top prospects, this is as clear to me as any NBA fact. 7-1 James Wiseman is the best prospect in the draft. The Warriors desperately need size—several European teams have taller rosters. Big men with guard skills—Anthony Davis, Bam Adebayo, Nikola Jokic—are the NBA’s newest must-have, and Wiseman is on that path." Starting to see a trend here.
Question, how many of those elite big men with guard skills were in the Finals? In the current NBA era, you build around elite wings and pair them up with a good big man. You do NOT build around an elite big man.
In the past 2 championship finals: Anthony Davis Bam Adebayo Giannis Antetokounmpo DeAndre Ayton Giannis was Finals MVP and AD should have been Finals MVP. Just curious, which elite wing is available this draft to build a championship contender? Reminder - Durant, Lebron, Middleton, Kawhi, Butler, Tatum, PG are all 2 way players. Even Giannis, if you consider him a wing.
The argument is being made that this last finals proved bigs are needed and are invaluable for reaching a chip, this includes Ayton. But I would actually say Ayton was one of the reasons the Suns did not overcome the Bucks game plan. He was no more effective at stopping Giannis then other teams found using smaller players that can shoot. Even Lopez had success against Ayton. Ayton lost the battle because he was not much of a scoring threat in the end. The blueprint to beating the Bucks is to create mismatches on their bigs and outscore them. Giannis is going to get his points and free throws.
First, Giannis is NOT a big man, he is a wing. In fact, you have to get through 3 big men to even get to Giannis at that position. Second, while you can make an argument about Bam (and even that is debatable), NONE of those players had a team built around them when they got to the finals. Lakers are built around LeBron. Suns are built around Booker. "Just curious, which elite wing is available this draft to build a championship contender?" is such a silly argument IMO. You can't project a championship contender around ANY draft prospect (outside of extremely rare transcendental talents), only who can you look to build a team around and then HOPE that team can collectively develop into a contender. Now, I am not saying that is Green or even Cade, but I would 100% take a gamble on a top wing (any top wing in fact) then bank on a big man to build a team around from ground up.
Big men are always needed, but that's not the point at all in terms of who the Rockets should pick. We should pick the best player we can actually build around as the alternative is to trade for one. Teams that build around big men in the modern NBA era typically do not win chips. Teams that pair a good to great big man with an elite wing player win chips much more consistently IMO.
Without AD, Lakers barely squeezed into playoffs, with healthy AD the Lakers dominated the playoffs season they won it all. It wasn't even close. We've seen the Lakers with just Lebron carrying them, not pretty. And Giannis is 7 footer who starts at 4 spot and also plays small ball 5. What is your half assed definition of a big? Middleton plays SG/SF for the Bucks which is the classic definition of wing.
So first, my definition of whether or not a player is a big versus a wing is where they typically initiate their offense from. Giannis initiates his offense from the perimeter or very near it typically. In recent years, he has added more and more big man elements to his game, but coming in from the perimeter is still his bread and butter. Also, Durant is a 7 footer as well. Are you going to call him a big man now too? Now going back to the Lakers, yes they struggled without AD. Any team would struggle without their 2nd best player, regardless of if they were a big or not. Without LBJ however, there is always a chance Davis doesn't even make the playoffs. We have all seen that song and dance before.
He is a big man with wing skills. That's like saying Lebron is point guard and not a forward. At this point positions are irrelevant. It's who has the most skilled players at all 5 positions. Bigs with guard skills are premium. This will never change, EVER! You can't teach height. Dynamic guards are a dime a dozen. OKC literally gave us Harden for free. There is a lot more to winning than having a flashy guard. WE built around Harden and it didn't work. I vote we go in the direction that help us win our first 2 titles. Morey is gone, let ISO ball die peacefully.
What?!? That's a false statement if there ever was one. He was a wing first and then as he muscled up, played more and more big.
Durant plays 3/4 so he can qualify for either wing or big. But modern NBA is trending positionless anyway. Until then stick with the traditional definitions, your voodoo definition of position dictated where they initiate offense is hilarious. We have seen Lakers record WITHOUT either AD and Lebron. Lakers WIN with AD or with AD + Lebron. Lakers do not win with only Lebron. 3 full seasons of proof. Your gymnastics to make your case is Olympics level but pathetic AF.
Signed - 21 Giannis 20 Davis & Bam 19-17 Durant 14-11 Bosh 08 Garnett 10 of the past 14 Finals would like to disagree with you on that And I'm not even counting more 'traditional' bigs that participated within the same window: Ayton, Dirk, Dwight, Pau
As I said, only a couple of those bigs had teams actually built around them. Also, Giannis is not a big; he is a wing who can play big.
Giannis is a wing that can’t shoot, but is able to dominate the paint Giannis started out as a SF, and remember when Jason Kidd wanted to put him as the starting PG?
