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Eurobasket 2025

Ha....it was never me who called him French Scottie. If you look back, I said his most likely scenario is something like Jaden McDaniels but he had upside on top of that. The upside didn't hit, but I think that most of what I said about him stays true.
Look I never said he would suck... we both have to play to our extreme role here. Extreme is the culture these days. You thought he was a HOFer and I thought he was a G League scrub.

When he has a nice dunk and a couple steals in a meaningless Wiz game you can post the clips and say "can't believe we got Taylor instead of this".
 
Look I never said he would suck... we both have to play to our extreme role here. Extreme is the culture these days. You thought he was a HOFer and I thought he was a G League scrub.

When he has a nice dunk and a couple steals in a meaningless Wiz game you can post the clips and say "can't believe we got Taylor instead of this".

What seems to be the culture is people asking me to speak for things I never said. My thoughts are very easy to find and none of them have me saying I thought he was a HOF. Please speak to @Ferguson_Mellochill about the extremes instead.
 
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What is the culture is people asking me to speak for things I never said. My thoughts are very easy to find and none of them have me saying I thought he was a HOF. Please speak to @Ferguson_Mellochill about the extremes instead.
I'm just playing lol. In our fictitious fight we have to play the extreme roles for fun. I actually appreciate the degree of humility/reasonableness you displayed in your concern on Bilal.

I will say... these player types going to rat teams can really hurt them imo. Like yes they have room to develop stuff they suck at but also don't really get to develop the things they need the most in the winning situations. Like not to a huge degree. Being a lock down 3 and D guy on a tanking team has to be completely thankless and hard to stay focused.
 
I'm just playing lol. In our fictitious fight we have to play the extreme roles for fun. I actually appreciate the degree of humility/reasonableness you displayed in your concern on Bilal.

I will say... these player types going to rat teams can really hurt them imo. Like yes they have room to develop stuff they suck at but also don't really get to develop the things they need the most in the winning situations. Like not to a huge degree. Being a lock down 3 and D guy on a tanking team has to be completely thankless and hard to stay focused.

I'm a little scared of the Jazz being one of those rat teams. Ace will be a huge test for this staff's player development ability. On the surface, I don't think UTA is a great situation for Ace. He needs less freedom, not more.
 
I'm a little scared of the Jazz being one of those rat teams. Ace will be a huge test for this staff's player development ability. On the surface, I don't think UTA is a great situation for Ace. He needs less freedom, not more.
Agree. Will say I was encouraged by his brief stint in summer league. Only a couple forced bad shots and seemed willing to pass and did the extra stuff like out of area rebounding... that I like to see. Take all the grains of salt because summer league but as we have seen... some guys get more selfish in that setting not less selfish.
 
Agree. Will say I was encouraged by his brief stint in summer league. Only a couple forced bad shots and seemed willing to pass and did the extra stuff like out of area rebounding... that I like to see. Take all the grains of salt because summer league but as we have seen... some guys get more selfish in that setting not less selfish.

It's funny because even though we are a young team, we have enough ballhogs that he might be forced to doing the right thing anyways. That's what happened in SL, but I don't know if that holds up with the real team. Someone like Cody is a mouth to feed in SL, but he will probably go back to standing around at the NBA level.

I'm not even opposed to Ace sticking to his plan of being a big time scorer first, but he needs to learn which ways of scoring are more effective.
 
Issac Bonga can probably play in the NBA btw. He’s not some 6’9 PG like he was drafted to be, but he can really shoot it now.
 
Love Bilal, but have to say he's on that Okoro trajectory. If he was going to be a plus offensive player he'd be better than he is right now.
I guess we live in an era of I need results now. Dude was raw as could be when drafted at 19. He is 20 years old. We also thought Kessler was done after a bad sophomore year then exploded last year, and Bilal was less ready than Kessler coming in.
 
I guess we live in an era of I need results now. Dude was raw as could be when drafted at 19. He is 20 years old. We also thought Kessler was done after a bad sophomore year then exploded last year, and Bilal was less ready than Kessler coming in.

“We gave up on Kessler”. Who is we? Totally different situations regardless.

I live in a world where we can intake new information and adjust our expectations. It’s no secret I was a Bilal fan, but if he was going to hit on the higher outcomes we’d likely see more progress than he’s shown. He’s trending towards bad offense/great defense type wing.
 
“We gave up on Kessler”. Who is we? Totally different situations regardless.

I live in a world where we can intake new information and adjust our expectations. It’s no secret I was a Bilal fan, but if he was going to hit on the higher outcomes we’d likely see more progress than he’s shown. He’s trending towards bad offense/great defense type wing.
Agreed, but I also think Bilal is an example of development not being linear. He made a ton of progress pre draft and came in his rookie year and looked even better than I expected to start off, and now it's been a year and a half and hasn't made any real progress that a casual observer can see.

He could still put it together at some point, we'll see.
 
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Agreed, but I also think Bilal is an example of development not being linear. He made a ton of progress pre draft and came in his rookie year and looked even better than I expected to start off, and now it's been a year and a half and hasn't made any real progress that a casual observer can see.

Sure, that’s fair. I guess what I’m saying is that a high outcome is unlikely for him atm. While I thought this outcome was most likely, he had potential to be much more if that development took off and accelerated. He had just gone through a growth spurt and was a late bloomer so he had better odds than most of that happening. But it doesn’t seem like that has materialized. He didn’t just need a linear progression to become a star, he needed to go to the moon.

It really does come down to the jumper. He, like most bad shooting prospects, hasn’t developed into a good NBA shooter and that’s really limiting his offensive game.

I think his defensive/athletic talent is enough that he’ll stick around for awhile and have a long career. But offensively he’s probably going to struggle. I had him between McDaniels/Herb predraft and now I have him between Okoro/McDaniels. So not too much difference but the high outcome, star player dream is dying.






Or maybe it’s just and couple of weeks….Bilal island til I die!
 
I think @KqWIN made this point before they were drafted but if I look at Bilal and Ausar can I really say one is (or was) a better prospect than the other? Their pre-draft hype meters were on different levels but in hindsight that does not make a lot of sense. Right now they both look like their ceiling is to become high level role players who excel on defense/hustle but hurt you a bit on offense at least in terms of spacing.

The hindsight analysis should not be about Bilal it should be more about "how and why did Ausar fool us to think he was somehow clearly superior".
 
I think @KqWIN made this point before they were drafted but if I look at Bilal and Ausar can I really say one is (or was) a better prospect than the other? Their pre-draft hype meters were on different levels but in hindsight that does not make a lot of sense. Right now they both look like their ceiling is to become high level role players who excel on defense/hustle but hurt you a bit on offense at least in terms of spacing.

The hindsight analysis should not be about Bilal it should be more about "how and why did Ausar fool us to think he was somehow clearly superior".

Ausar is significantly better at the moment and it would take a lot for Bilal to get there.
 
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