This seems like a silly question for me to even bring up. I feel like Chatman showed a lot of skill in HS, but was pretty bad at Michigan. He was incredibly inefficient on offense and didn’t make up for it with good defense. I’ve heard a couple people say that “Chatman definitely had skills, but weren’t really taken advantage of here” and " His talents weren’t even touched at um and it sucks."
That just blows my mind. Chatman had a rotation spot served to him on a silver platter and was entirely ineffective.
Is this a a case of casual fans not realizing how much Chatman struggled or is a case of me not realizing how under utilized Chatman was?
Kam was always somewhat of a mystery to me, he obviously was not good here and part of that was definitely he just didn’t perform and his skill set didn’t totally translate against college competition.
That being said, I do think he ended up playing a role that utilized his strengths in the worst way possible. Most of the time he became a floor spacer standing in the corner or was used as a baseline finisher 4. I never completely gave up on what he would become with the ball in his hands a little more, but I don’t blame JB for never getting there when he had more reliable creators on the roster.
I remember he had a really solid game early in his freshman year against Syracuse- 10 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists, and if I recall correctly we used him in the middle of that zone quite a bit. Interesting stat on Kam too is his career high in minutes played (30) came in his first career game against Hillsdale. It’s almost like JB thought he had something special in Kam and almost immediately didn’t like what he saw and everything went downhill from there.
Anyone who can’t shoot or is best in transition is going to be underutilized. With Kam, he was really young and physically underdeveloped so it could be underutilization or it could be simply not being a power 5 talent…it happens. Can’t really answer this question until we see him under Bacari.
It was a mixture of both. I’m quite confident he’s gonna be a beast for Detroit. He will have a chance to have the ball in his hands and create/ break down guys off the dribble. I envision him as a serious problem for mid majors in this role.
I’m gonna add to my post. I just went back and watched his highlights. In retrospect it seems quite obvious it was a bad fit. Kams strengths are his handle for size, passing, and mid range/back to the basket type game. He’s the guy you want to feed on the elbow and then let him work/ go one on one, not exactly a fit for what we do.
I think he will get the chance to be the man at Detroit and get his iso elbow sets/point forward type role and against the weak competition I expect him to thrive in that situation
Was pretty clear from when Kam got here that he just wasn’t quite a high major athlete at that spot. Always loved his passing ability, but it was just two steps forward one step back kind of his whole career. Hopefully Horizon ball works out better for him – could be a really good fit.