I also heard this part - supposedly Nova staff was proactively very open to NBA teams about work ethic / attitude concerns. Which seems crazy crazy to me, even if that stuff was true it doesn’t benefit Nova in any way for him to fall in the draft. He must have really burned some bridges there somehow. Or Kyle Neptune is just clueless in way more ways than I already suspected
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I mean what does “at best” mean to you?
I have a hard time thinking any college coach that ever wants to recruit someone again in their life would proactively talk sh*t about one of their departing players, no matter how much they loathed them
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On the other hand Nova killed it in the transfer portal. Maybe they all got the bag but if it was that bad would they all go there?
I’m not sure what NBA teams get by leaking bad intel about draft prospects either. They all have agents that represent other clients, and you’d think they’d not take kindly to that. Maybe the teams just felt disrespected? Idk. The Pistons and Utah were the main leaks, I believe. Utah even passed on Whitmore at # 16.
Indiana was trying to trade up to get him in the mid to late teens and Houston felt comfortable enough with him obviously at # 20. So, not every team he worked out with had as bad an experience as Detroit did.
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Well that’s kind of why I don’t think Villanova’s staff trashed him
Everything I’ve read suggests a confluence of the following:
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Concerning medical report regarding knee cartilage
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A somewhat laconic nature in interviews that teams read as disinterest, that…
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…Extended to his team workouts (several draft guys said that his workouts at the Nike Hoops Summit a year earlier were disastrous too, and then he played great in games so maybe he’s just bad in this setting
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An overall feeling he wasn’t that good at Villanova
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He’s got the IQ and passing that athlete picks often lack, but there’s concern about his ability to finish in the half court. He’s got a great first step, but that’s not worth much if you can’t do a ton once by that guy. Same goes for being a great cutter. Less useful if you can’t finish. He’s a great passer, but maybe not within 10 ft of the basket. These are some examples of gaps in his skill set. You’d like to see him pair these skills together rather than have one of a bunch of pairs of skills that go together. So that’s what I mean in calling it a fragmented skill set. You can also note the weird qualifications people often attach to statements about him. He’s an elite athlete like top 5% tile, and projects as an elite defender, but short of all defensive level. There us some weird hedging in the scouting reports.
It may be that the real story is that we just don’t know enough about the guy and there’s more projection and extrapolation than in the typical Scouting Report because of where he chose to play post high school basketball. Or it may be that he actually does have these gaps in his skill set. Maybe some of the same ones that set Killian Hayes back. I don’t know, no if he busts it’ll be for some of the same reasons Hayes is.
I do know that the lack of comparable data on this guy piqued people’s interests rather than made them more cautious. I think most scouts are primarily seeing the opportunity and noting the risks vis-a-vis seeing the risks and noting the opportunities. That’s how you get to really weird statements like that he’s got star upside, when he’s a 6-7 guy who possibly can’t shoot and isn’t considered a primary playmaker. Guys that size just aren’t stars in the league unless they do at least one of those things at an elite level. So I think we’re going to learn a lot fast.
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You forgot about Livers!
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I’ve said a few times but I think the disparity in position between him and Amen has more to do with the fact The Reapers called Amen a PG and Ausar a SF than a meaningful difference in skill set
I mean, he has a ton of physical ability, there is obviously risk with him as with any prospect
The Blazers just hit the jackpot last year picking a dude against similar scouting and competition level arguments
Obviously Sharpe and Thompson are different humans and not fated to similar success
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Counterpoint: He’s studied Zavier Simpson’s hook shot.
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They both seem like pretty ridiculous-level students of the game.
I forget which player podcast it was, maybe the Pat Bev one or the Arenas one but either way the player said he walked into some facility one morning before practice and they were watching film.
Then there’s a video going around of Amen choosing between two players from the last 10 years and instantly knowing which one was drafted earlier, often reciting the exact picks
All of Ausar’s press conference answers have been actual basketball-y. How he thinks they can play together, he’s been a fan of Cade for years, etc.
I can’t get enough of these kids
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Agreed. Room for some very rational optimism there.
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Completely convinced; discussion over.
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This all comes down to not being able to finish. If you’re THAT bad at ball in hoop stuff, there’s nothing else that can bail you out. My whole thing is that the shooting concern is overrated bc there are a lot of ways to get productivity out of hyper athletic second bigs. But not if they can’t score at the rim.
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This may be just wrong
But given these two’s character, apparent love for the sport generally, and reported work ethic combined with the physical profile I tend to think that they’re going to develop
Obviously some things will obviously be deficiencies and other strengths, but I tend to think they will work and grow enough to utilize their innate talent effectively.
There are some guys like Anthony Edwards (worked out fine) and Cam Reddish (didn’t) where you hear things like “yeah, he LIKES basketball, but…”, that doesn’t seem to apply here
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Hot take: I actually don’t like this as a measure of someone’s BB IQ or love of the game or stuff like that. Feel like you could be a genius on the court and the hardest worker and not care one bit about where guys were drafted and stuff like that.
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I agree with that - it just means they’re serious fans, not good. It’s just very endearing.
Someone at some point posted that they worried that the twins’ immense likeability was blinding people to their downside and I have to at least admit the possibility I’m captive to that.
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Getting flashbacks from when they drafted Brandon Knight. Who was obviously not a point guard and obviously never going to be one and obviously was a bad pick, but he did take calculus as a freshman at Kentucky, so therefore he’s a hard worker…
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Not all of it comes down to that, but quite a few of the skills he has are useful if you can finish and a dead end if you can’t. Then there’s just weird stuff like he’s a processor who sees the game so well but he also gets tunnel vision when he makes up his mind to shoot. Or that he sees the game so well but very often leaves his feet and has no good options for what to do.
Yeah, I’m not going to say it’s 100% irrelevant - I think loving the sport and eating and breathing it may make it more likely to maximize their range of potential outcomes, but, as with any prospect, their range of potential outcomes is somewhat unknown