I am so glad we didn't trade up for him. I might be the minority on here when it comes to him, but I was never impressed with his game.
Hey Everyone... Lets Chill on Writing Hendricks Off... TIA
- Thread starter Handlogten's Heros
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underdog
Well-Known Member
lol incredible how much weight folks give here to a few preseason games and how rookies play in them. Even the best players in the league have bad, awful, disastrous, etc. games. At his point, any of these rookies can be a good player one day.
Incredible how people assume I was talking about preseason when I was talking about his tourney play last year. Why I said "glad we didn't trade up to get him".
This draft class has been disappointing so far this preseason, but I think it's important to remember the majority of this class was thought of as high level defenders and not necessarily prolific scorers. The majority of these guys were never going to show out on box scores, so you really have to watch them play.
I would also add many of the top picks this year are very young. That was part of their appeal, that they had a lot of upside, but weren't necessarily drafted on even their college production. If these guys weren't dominating at the college level, it's not likely they are going to come in right away and dominate in the NBA.
I think we all have to be patient, but we also have to be prepared for many of these guys to not reach their potential.
I would also add many of the top picks this year are very young. That was part of their appeal, that they had a lot of upside, but weren't necessarily drafted on even their college production. If these guys weren't dominating at the college level, it's not likely they are going to come in right away and dominate in the NBA.
I think we all have to be patient, but we also have to be prepared for many of these guys to not reach their potential.
I take the preseason performance with a grain of salt even with vets. If they play good/bad whatever, but I think that when coaches show their rotation they give insight on how guys are playing in camp. The surprise for me is that Hendricks doesn’t even seem to be in consideration for playing time. I thought his skillset would allow him to be in that conversation earlier on. It was a big selling point for me personally. Raise your hand if you thought differently….but I don’t think I was alone in that. He’s a bit behind on defense it appears, but here’s hoping he’s a quick learner.
I think I’m on record saying I thought this draft wasn’t as good as people were making it out to be. I thought a lot of players were slated a notch higher than they would be on a standard draft. It’s definitely a very young class with very few older players so we’ll have to give it time.
Handlogten's Heros
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I’m still a fan. Even in preseason where he’s struggling he does the things where he comes away with a loose ball or tips one that you can see he just does the extra stuff… reminded me of Ricky Rubio that way. On that team it will be a struggle though… they need shooting in the worst way.
I definitely bought into the Anthony Black hype by the end of the draft cycle. It seemed like he was the guy we would have moved up for and I was down for it. I was convinced he was going to come into that ORL team and take the starting job early. Got ahead of myself on him too.
underdog
Well-Known Member
Ok sure, we all had our favorites
framer
Well-Known Member
I never thought he was "NBA ready." He's 19, and big guys, with the exception of Kessler, take three years or so to start to show out. I also was not a fan of the coaching he was getting in college and I knew he was going to have to be rebuilt to match what the Jazz want out of him.
What we knew is that he was super athletic and could shoot. The shooting being a sure thing is a very nice luxury most of the other lottery picks don't have. I guess that might make others think he was NBA ready?
For me at least, there was an assumption that 1) he could defend and 2) he could shoot. I still think he can shoot, but if I had to bet his defense is not looking pretty in camp. If you can do those two things you have a really easy path to playing time especially in a smaller role. I don't know if it's correct to call him a big, but I don't actually think it's true that bigs take a longer time to contribute nowadays. Maybe in the past when they were posting up, but nowadays most C's have streamlined roles. In any case, I thought his role would be simple: stand in the corner, hit threes, and defend.
