I think it’s part coolness and part ceiling quest. Kevin Durant is cool, he has the ball in his hands and picks his shots and runs cool offensive plays. There is nothing cooler in the league right now than the on-ball jumbo wing.
Durant, Giannis, Kawhi, Tatum are in one pile and total positional unicorns like Doncic and Jokic are in another but all are examples of players who may have been forced into a different, less creative role 15 years ago. So not only are these guys cool, they are unlocking different skills and abilities at their size and young guys like Kai Jones think they are next in line.
Makes sense. I have a background in software so my view skews towards first generation release compared to final, long term goal. Durant at Texas as a freshman averaged 26/11 and shot 40% from 3 on 6 attempts a game (82 made). Kai Jones as a sophomore averaged 9/5 on 38% from 3, but only taking 1 shot per game (13 made). Kai/Greg Brown have a real shot at the league, but need to find something they are really good at first that a team values, instead of convincing themselves they are the unicorn. Being tall and bombing 3s with a low shooting percentage and turning the ball over trying to dribble against quicker defenders is not valuable.
I also think that payday matters here. There are about 40 centers in the NBA that can play ok defense and finish at the rim respectably - it’s why centers don’t make money unless they are absolute outliers (Embiid, Jokic) or a GM has an inexplicable aneurysm (Drummond). All the others make like $10-$15 million.
Being a four “that can play small ball center” gets the income bracket up appreciably.
I think there is always a gap between what they say and what they genuinely believe. I think we need to assume some posturing here.
Guys with size that play down the spectrum get paid more - now the key part of that is that they need to actually play effectively there.
I’d also argue that Kai Jones’ and Greg Brown’s very presence in the draft (at any position) suggests a, shall we say, inability to grapple with and accept reality.
Peripherally - it’s pretty cool that Shaka continued Rick Barnes’ tradition of posting 55% win percentages with a dozen top 50 players on the roster. Texas are just the kings of turning chicken salad to chicken “poo”.
But why would they say out loud that they think they’re 3s when that would not be what nba teams want to hear? I can agree there can be postering because when push comes to shove they aren’t going to refuse to play unless they’re at the 3 or 4 but it doesn’t help them to say that in the pre draft process
Also with Jones and Brown, their games speak louder than their words. Both love to float at the perimeter, turn it over a ton, don’t pass, and in Jones case rebounds poorly
Well when you literally don’t give a moments thought to roster construction and have three 6’10”+ guys to play at once, someone’s gotta stand out there! (And you probably had to tell a few of them they weren’t fives).
I think that the only thing that irks me on these evaluations is when Barnes flawed shot comes up, everyone seems to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s going to be able to fix it.
But when people talk about Franz’s shot, he isn’t given that same benefit of the doubt, even though Franz’s FT % is light years ahead of Barnes, and this is often a good way of projecting shot mechanics…
I think Franz is going to go 9-14 and that is pretty reasonable…Barnes? I saw him as a top 10 pick, but certainly not beating out Suggs for the number 4 position. I’d be pretty furious if Toronto took Barnes ahead of Suggs frankly.
Fun fact is Franz is younger than Barnes by 4 weeks I believe… so if Barnes can fix his shot, no reason to think Franz can’t do the same…
Hollinger had Barnes at #3 with some foreigner at #2. He had Cade at #1 so I would give his takes with a grain of salt, but draft outcome for the player’s career is a crapshoot for the most part. Hollinger could be right or he could be wildly wrong about it.
I listened to Hollinger defend his take (more on Sengun below). He acknowledged that people’s opinion of Barnes swings on their opinion of whether you think he’ll be able to shoot adequately (and said that it’s your responsibility as a team to have the coaching and training to make it so).
He acknowledged that Barnes had significant downside risk (ie he just becomes a discount Ben Simmons), but his words were “if he works out, you basically have Kawhi Leonard and I don’t think any of these other guys have a ceiling that high”.
I personally agree with him about the height of the ceiling, I’d just disagree at the likelihood it’s atttained.
Sengun (the European center) has a case similar to what Doncic’s was. He just won MVP of the Turkish league (probably the second best European league) at 18, and posted true shooting around 70%. At the time, people felt Doncic was a very high floor but limited ceiling (due to questions about athleticism) who hacked it against older, stronger players with a VERY high skill level for his age.
Sengun is pretty much a paint scorer exclusively, with a massive back of spins and pivots, and can finish well with both hands. He draws a ton of fouls, and shot 78% at the line, and has enough pop to finish lobs. He also is a really nifty passer.
There is, however , ample film of him getting absolutely washed trying to defend pick and rolls, despite being a solid help defender.
I think Hollinger has a case of anchoring going on here because he (by his own admission) sees Marc Gasol here (identifying and acquiring Gasol is probably the peak of his executive career). He sees the future ability to shoot threes based on the FTs, and thinks Sengun’s IQ is high enough to become a good defender despite limited tools (again, Gasol).
Not just a poet, Pablo Neruda was a genius front-office consultant for Chilean basketball. He was responsible for the scouting and development of Rudi “El Tramo” Rojas, a youth volleyball washout who became the greatest power forward in Colo-Colo history.
Surrealistic Chilean poet / diplomat in the mid-20th century. Murdered by right wing dictator, Pinochet. Hero to romantics, leftists and Spanish lit majors (the Venn diagram of these three is a single circle) worldwide.
This is unfair to say that he was only a hero to that narrow a base. Neruda also had legendary game with the ladies that was probably unmatched on that side of Darien Gap. I mean we are talking like peak Wilt here.