Don’t have ESPN+, could you say who and at what pick?
It’d be nice. Given our present roster, we will probably be using Livers at the 3 at least as much as at the 4.
Ayo late in the first. Jalen Smith (33) and Cassius (50) are only other Big Ten players listed.
The fact that Jordan Poole went 28 this year and Cassius Winston is all the way down at 50 next year just reaffirms I have no idea what NBA teams are looking for and why they draft the way they do. Mind boggling.
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Cassius Winston would be an undersized guard that plays 0 defense and is very underwhelming athletically. He is obviously a wizard on offense being the lead guy which he would never be in the NBA so he wouldn’t even be used the right way. Not sure what guards you see in his mold having success? @CoryR
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I didn’t feel like his defense was THAT bad this year. Big step up from the year before. Dude can run offense for himself or teammates, and he can hit shots. I expect Winston to last in the NBA as a second team
PG for a long time, if not as a starter.
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Fred Van Vleet maybe. He went undrafted after a great college career and is now a very solid NBA player.
Plays defense and is way stronger and more capable as a spot up shooter coming off of screens and such
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Yeah I agree. FVV is a WAY different player than Cassius is. Dude is super strong and his defense is brilliant. He really excels off the ball and, as seen in the postseason, can drill threes and doesn’t need the ball in his hands as a facilitator like Cassius does.
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JJ Barea comes to mind. Basically some team desperate for a 2nd unit point guard who can be fairly high usage as a scorer and creator, try to hide them on D against the worst perimeter scorer on the other team, normally doable since there’s a lot of 3 and D guys around.
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Jose Calderon? Good shooting percentages, good assist to to ratio. Bad at defense.
Trae Young I think was the worst defensive PG in the league last year… getting a franchise built around him.
I’m thinking Trae Young is a bit of a different monster on offense lol not comparable
6’3 and wasn’t a bad defender when he was younger
I’m not saying Winston won’t stick for a bit in the NBA (I think he will do very little though). My original reply was to a person who said it’s ridiculous that Poole got drafted 28th and Winston is projected in the 50s next year. Winston is already almost as good as he can possibly be while Poole arguably hasn’t even scratched the surface. I think NBA teams have a good idea about what they are doing and the notion that they, for whatever reason, don’t know what they are doing is largely overblown in my opinion.
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Michigan gets more respect than expected from NBC Sports.
- MICHIGAN : Things will be drastically different in Ann Arbor as only Zavier Simpson and Jon Teske are back in the starting lineup. The Wolverines still have decent upper class talent with Isaiah Livers and Eli Brooks while the four-man sophomore class needs to take a step up this season with the depleted recruiting class. Landing Franz Wagner, Mo’s little brother, would also be a monster move at this point in the offseason.
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Kind of a weird year in the B1G. MSU in a tier all by themselves, then OSU and Maryland in a tier of their own, but is it really unreasonable that Michigan, with a senior PG and C, would be better than all the teams listed below them?
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Depends on how you approach it. There’s a clear top 3, no doubt about that. Beyond that, Michigan brings back an elite PG/C combo on D and O, and a serious vet in Livers. I’m assuming no Franz at this point. Yes there are many question marks, but look at the next teams on the list and you have even more of them everywhere but the HC spot. To me I think the conclusion is that for Michigan to finish worse than, say, that baseline level of 8th in the conference, a lot of things have to go right for at least four programs in addition to a lot of things going wrong at Michigan.
Purdue and Wisconsin basically have to rebuild their offenses from scratch, and whilst each have some really nice players, there aren’t any one to three players who look like they can make up for the loss of huge usage guys like Happ and Edwards. Iowa is always a wildcard and this could be one of those rare years in which they max out their talent and go 12-6 in conference, or it could be like most years in which they’re somewhere between 10-8 and 8-10. There’s no doubt Illinois is going to take a leap forward, but they went 7-13 in conference last year, so it would be one heck of a leap for them to be a top-5 team.
Indiana, Penn State and Rutgers? With those rosters, you’d have to assume a tire-fire first year for Juwan in order to project them ahead of Michigan in the standings. I think it’s fair to assume plenty of growing pains, some of which lead directly to losses, but a disaster is a pretty big assumption.
My bet is that Wisconsin and Purdue just don’t have enough ingredients to roll out a whole new offense that can generate more wins in the conference than Michigan’s based on the Z/T P/R. I also think that of Illinois and Iowa, without consulting schedules, it’s fair to assume that one hits well enough to do better than Michigan and finishes fourth in the conference, pushing Michigan down to 5th.
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Calderon but with a significantly worse A/TO (Calderon’s is 2nd best after Chris Paul this century) would be a pretty average NBA backup, which seems right for Winston.
I’m intrigued by Happ as a bench type if he can remake his jump shot over the next 2-3 years in Europe or bouncing around the G-league. Feet and hands are good enough, plays hard, can rebound.
Poole has the size, shooting and passing skills and requisite athleticism to be a good starting 2 guard in the NBA. But I’d feel better about him as a prospect if I trusted Beilein less, he really has developed guards well and Poole could really have been the guy this past year on O if he was just killing guys one on one or as a pick and roll ballhandler.
Also Warriors might be pricing in heavily that Poole basically played with one very good shooter in Livers, one good shooter in Iggy and then Simpson, Teske and Matthews all well below average. Considering Livers and Poole probably played less than 10 minutes a game together (Livers only played 22 a game), that’s gotta be well below the spacing a guy like Culver got.
We’ll see. He might be the Warriors starting 2 guard next year if they use their money on keeping Looney and getting a small forward and still want Iggy and Cook to lead the bench. Tough to see him navigating NBA screens in his first year, though, Moretti and McQuaid cooked him at crucial times with clever off ball stuff.
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