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Ace Bailey Hype thread

And? Players move up and down the board all the time. Ace was not the clear 3rd best prospect at all. The biggest harm to Ace’s draft stock was his poor play at Rutgers.
Your right. It wasn’t the fact he didn’t work out for anyone and told everyone in the top five not to draft him.
 
Your right. It wasn’t the fact he didn’t work out for anyone and told everyone in the top five not to draft him.

If he was good enough, they would have drafted him anyways. Happens every year. The Jazz drafted him because they thought he was good enough, but the other teams did not. If it mattered so much the Jazz wouldn’t have drafted him either. Teams at the top of the draft do not care about this.

You act as if refusing to workout is the only thing that could possibly move a player in predraft. Ace top 3 wasn’t really even a hard consensus anyways. And if he didn’t disappoint at Rutgers maybe he’d be top 2 still.
 
And if Ace did workout for teams, it's not impossible to think that 2-4 would have been wowed by him in a workout setting. So I think both things are right, but I would say the Rutgers piece is the foundational piece of the doubt around Bailey.
 
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I think Ace doing the refusal stuff did hurt him because it reinforced the narrative around him of being selfish and maybe not coachable. But that doubt was cast because of the way he played at Rutgers.

Sure that’s fair. But if any team had him atop their board they would have done the same as the Jazz.

The decision to go to Rutgers and not go somewhere where he would actually get coached was the mistake.
 
Don't think Tatum comp is entirely unrealistic. Tatum also had more TOs than assists when he was on college and now he's one of the best playmaking SFs in the league. It's something Ace certainly could develop if Hardy allows him to run some plays on the pick n roll.
 
And if Ace did workout for teams, it's not impossible to think that 2-4 would have been wowed by him in a workout setting. So I think both things are right, but I would say the Rutgers piece is the foundational piece of the doubt around Bailey.
And yet if he works out for the 76ers hell even the Spurs who didn’t need a pg could’ve been wowed enough to take him. Teams are more informed than you think.

Team is wowed by the player and chalk up his bad year to playing with bad teammates and bad coaches that let him learn bad habits and believing their good coaches can un-teach those bad habits. Obviously he wasn’t helped by choosing a bad team, but doing what basically no prospect has ever done before telling teams not to draft him and not working out for anyone definitely was a bigger harm for his draft stock.
 
Everyone complained about his shot diet. I kind of like it. Midrange matters so much in the playoffs when teams are scheming to take away layups, dunks, and threes.
 
Hes kind of a weird scorer, really haven’t seen him score much out of the pick and roll. Seems like more of a pindown / flare screen type. Idk if he’ll ever be a primary ball handler but if he bulks up maybe he could be a good screener / roller one day.
 
I don't know if I really buy into the narrative that the mid range is more important in the playoffs. There's hardly a difference in shot distribution to begin with and the math doesn't change. It is true that defenses are better and try to force you into more mid range (bad) shots....but it doesn't follow that the ability to get good shots is less valuable. I consider getting quality shots a skill and not one that is less important once that gets tougher. I think there's a hint of truth to the original statement, but probably overblown.

Anyone can be efficient with any shot diet if they're shooting at elite levels as Ace has shown in two games. But in the bigger picture, I think it's really critical that Ace have a reasonable shot diet and especially critical that he gets more FT's.

Ace has shown more willingness to shoot the 3 ball which is excellent. Eventually I think a lot of these pin downs/flare screen type plays will be extended to the 3 point line. The other part that needs to happen is he needs to use the space he gets to put his head down and attack the hoop every once in a while. The hard drive where he went to the hoop (and didn't get the call) was great. Lauri is one of the best in the game at this, so maybe Ace can learn from him.
 
One of my favorite things about Ace in the Spurs game was the high efficiency. He didnt force shots because he is the guy. He let the game come to him. His shots were almost all really good. 7 of 9 at some point for 14 points.

I didnt love the end of the game, down four points and passing the ball off. That was a little odd. I want to see him shoot it and go for the steal, but pass it and have someone else shoot.

Nitpicking? Yeah, prolly. But Ace looks like a fantastic pick!
 
And? Players move up and down the board all the time. Ace was not the clear 3rd best prospect at all. The biggest harm to Ace’s draft stock was his poor play at Rutgers.
ace didn't play poorly at rutgers. the only people who think he played poorly are the ones who overthink it by getting too deep into the weeds. if one didn't like him as a prospect, this is probably the reason why - too much overthinking.

the fact is, he averaged 18 and 7 on 46% FGs, and was a plus defender as one of the youngest freshmen in cbb, in one of the best conferences in cbb. 18 and 7 for a frosh in a top conference is objectively good to very good.
 
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ace didn't play poorly at rutgers. the only people who think he played poorly are the ones who overthink it by getting too deep into the weeds. if one didn't like him as a prospect, this is probably the reason why - too much overthinking.

the fact is, he averaged 18 and 7 on 46% FGs, and was a plus defender as one of the youngest freshmen in cbb, in one of the best conferences in cbb. 18 and 7 for a frosh in a top conference is objectively good to very good.

I despise the "you're overthinking it" talk. It's completely arbitrary to determine what counts as "overthinking" and it's more or less saying "you don't think about it the way I do." People can have their own ways of evaluating things and that's fine, but I really don't understand the policing of how people evaluate. I could very easily say your argument is overthinking it. That phrase is meaningless.
 
I despise the "you're overthinking it" talk. It's completely arbitrary to determine what counts as "overthinking" and it's more or less saying "you don't think about it the way I do." People can have their own ways of evaluating things and that's fine, but I really don't understand the policing of how people evaluate. I could very easily say your argument is overthinking it. That phrase is meaningless.
the bolded. no it's literally not. 18 and 7 for a frosh in a top conference is objectively good. there has literally never been a freshman basketball player in the history of college basketball who put up at least 18 and 7 in a top 4 conference who didn't have a good freshman season.

THIS is important: that doesn't mean you have to love him or even like him as a nba prospect, but arguing that any freshman in a power conference who put up 18 and 7 played poorly is like arguing will hardy isn't the head coach of the utah jazz. in other words, i'm not policing how you or anybody evaluates a prospect - what i'm saying is that it makes zero sense and defies all logic to say that guy played poorly during that freshman season.
 
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