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Following Potential 2025 Draftees

SoberasHotRod said:
Are there many others?

Feels like it is way more likely that defensive impact is worse in the NBA than in the NCAA.
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Draymond is the most famous example. Was really overweight and carried a huge offensive burden that had him get toasted frequently.

Anthony Edwards was pretty abysmal at defense (and everything else honestly) in college.

Bam and Jarrett Allen were mediocre defenders in college.

Ben Simmons put forward no effort whatsoever on defense in college and sucked at it.

From what I can tell, it's mostly EXTREMELY raw guys with tools or guys who didn't put forward a lot of effort on defense in college.
 
Saint Cy of JFC said:
I feel like a week before the draft the Jazz should get all their scouts, coaches, and decision making executives together and do an ayahuasca retreat to create their big board.
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Maybe do a darkness retreat after the ayahuasca one for enhanced enlightenment.
 
stitches said:
The thing is... It's worth pointing out that he did some pretty special things offensively as a freshman. Getting started at a high profile program like Texas and being THE guy pretty much from the start must have some value on its own... and then him being very productive as a scorer probably shouldn't be underestimated. He was a freshman on a team whose rotation included 6 seniors, 2 juniors and 1 sophomore. He was the obvious top player for them from game 1 while being surrounded by players in their 4th and 5th year in college.

I was also looking at his international games. At the U19 World cup he was one of the youngest players at 16 at the time. He played 18 minutes a game on that US team and was 11/3/3 on 43/36/94. Interesting enough Cody Williams was on the same team... as was Dylan Harper... Harper had similar stats on worse efficiency.

My point is... he's been playing with and against older, more physically developed players throughout his whole career and every time he's produced. He doesn't shrink... yes, there are some inefficiencies... but he's so damn young... and so damn skilled. It's incredibly rare for a player this young to be this productive as freshman in college. I kind of want to bet on him...
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He does do some special things, but I guess my problem with that is it's restricted to a small set of things. And those things are valuable! But the other things matter as well.
 
Kon has some PnR ability and that can/will expand in the NBA, but I wouldn't compare him to point gods. Spot up shooting is still his bread and butter.

I believe in Kon's PnR ability, but it's also worth mentioning he was not great at scoring in PnR last year. Good playmaking though.
 
Saint Cy of JFC said:
At the end of the day, if I have an athlete with decent measurables I'm not overly concerned about the defense and probably believe I can coach it up given the right personality indicators.
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I think that's reasonable, but it just feels like there are lots of the players that should be good defenders based on size/athleticism, but they aren't.

One of the reasons I like to look at defense for NBA draft prospects is that I think a player that plays high level defense shows that he has BBIQ, hustle, and the attitude I would be looking for in a player. So it's an indicator as much as it is something I value.
 
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