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2021 NBA Draft Safari

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That was a an article someone else was referencing. I just meant to say that I think everyone should get a little leeway this past year. I changed the entire trajectory of my life and moved 2k miles because of the pandemic to be closer to my family.
Totally agree!
 
Guys who do it in football generally have years of college games behind them to establish their credentials and value, and the vast majority finish out the season anyway. In college basketball, it's almost unheard of, which is why you had to point to college football in the first place. Who was the last college freshman who did that in basketball?

Johnson also didn't just quit at some logical stopping point - he quit in the mide of the season, and after two really shitty games and reduced playing time. That was long after he'd already recovered from his preseason injury.

In top of that, he'd quit his IMG team the previous year without any explanation at all, and ended up only playing 9 games for a high school team. Which means that solely by choice, he's played in only 22 games total in the last 2 years. By his choice, and without any explanation that's worth a crap.

Sure, Coach K said the right things...because that's the kind of thing he'll always say in those situations because he's not going to say anything publicly to hurt a kid's chances.

22 games in 2 years, by choice, is a giant red flag to me. Whether he gets anxiety, or jdoesn't react well to competition or adversity, or just gets homesick, no thanks.

Until he proves otherwise at a level that matters, he's a mentally soft quitter who needs to show he can wear big boy pants consistently.
That’s a little harsh, bro. The past 16 months has been a challenge for everyone. Guys have been hurt in college and, rather than rushing back, some decide to prep for the draft, instead. It has happened in football & basketball. Darius Bazley took a year off and was still a first round pick by OKC. Duke had a really down year, by Duke standards. Is that Jalen Johnson’s fault?
 
@Nathan S Out of curiosity, how common is it for guys who rate as well by your model as Sengun and Mobley to bust? Just to get an idea of what relative level of prospect each is historically.

I don't know the answer to this, but he did say before that Sengun is such an outlier, it is just him and Zion that have rated like this. That error seems quite large tho!
 
That’s a little harsh, bro. The past 16 months has been a challenge for everyone. Guys have been hurt in college and, rather than rushing back, some decide to prep for the draft, instead. It has happened in football & basketball. Darius Bazley took a year off and was still a first round pick by OKC. Duke had a really down year, by Duke standards. Is that Jalen Johnson’s fault?

Everyone went through Covid, and it is perfectly fair to judge everyone equally absent evidence that Covid impacted him differently from others. But there isn't the barest hint of that.

How many other guys in this draft quit the team after having their minutes reduced? Bazemore skipped college - he didn't quit on his team. How many other guys on Duke quit that team? How is he going to react if the Cavs have a "down year"? And there's still him quitting his IMG team long before Covid.

He may be fine. Maybe there is a great explanation for all that, and we just don't know it. But it is a major red flag with him that isn't there for other prospects.
 
Everyone went through Covid, and it is perfectly fair to judge everyone equally absent evidence that Covid impacted him differently from others. But there isn't the barest hint of that.

How many other guys in this draft quit the team after having their minutes reduced? Bazemore skipped college - he didn't quit on his team. How many other guys on Duke quit that team? And there's still him quitting his IMG team long before Covid.

I'm not comfortable saying everyone had the same experience. Like we all had the same experience as KAT who lost his mom and 5 of his Aunts and Unlces? No, it has been random and crazy.
 
I'm not comfortable saying everyone had the same experience. Like we all had the same experience as KAT who lost his mom and 5 of his Aunts and Unlces? No, it has been random and crazy.

I'll just say that you know an excuse is weak when someone else has to speculate that it is even your excuse in the first place. Nobody - not his agent, not Coach K, not Johnson himself, has even hinted that this has anything to do with Covid. That just you guys making up a possible excuse for him out of thin air

In contrast, you just mentioned KAT, and offered specifics about how Covid affected him more than others. That's exactly my point - we have nothing like that about Johnson. And given that concerns about his intangibles are hardly a secret during this draft process, don't you think someone on his team would have offered a good excuse if he actually had one, or that something at least would have leaked? But there is literally nothing. And again, there is him quitting his IMG team and playing only 9 games of basketball his senior year.

Honestly, does that really sound like a guy ready for the grind and emotional wear and tear of an 82 game NBA season?
 
I'll just say that you know an excuse is weak when someone else has to speculate that it is even your excuse in the first place. Nobody - not his agent, not Coach K, not Johnson himself, has even hinted that this has anything to do with Covid. That just you guys making up a possible excuse for him out of thin air

In contrast, you just mentioned KAT, and offered specifics about how Covid affected him more than others. That's exactly my point - we have nothing like that about Johnson. And given that concerns about his intangibles are hardly a secret during this draft process, don't you think someone on his team would have offered a good excuse if he actually had one, or that something at least would have leaked? But there is literally nothing. And again, there is him quitting his IMG team and playing only 9 games of basketball his senior year.

Honestly, does that really sound like a guy ready for the grind and emotional wear and tear of an 82 game NBA season?

Coach K and his staff made recruiting promises to land Jalen Johnson that they didn't have the patience to honor.

To throw him under the bus would have hurt his incoming recruiting class.

They did the same thing with RJ Barrett but Rowan is so involved and has so much clout with AAU pipeline in Canada, that they didn't go back on their recruitment promise with him and take the ball out of his hands, even though they probably should have.

Recruiting is a dirty game.

K has been compromising his program since he jumped head first in the one and done pool and has been dependent on landing them at all costs for the last decade.

Jalen Johnson is not Royce White.
 
I think the difference between Jalen Johnson and KPJ could be Rich Paul being Jalen Johnson's agent. If the Cavs take him Jalen Johnson, on top of the Cavs to help him, he will have his agent with local connections. It might be easier for an agent to get a person to help a player since they will see the agent as someone purely on their side.
 
Coach K and his staff made recruiting promises to land Jalen Johnson that they didn't have the patience to honor.

Such as what? If it was a question of starting or playing time, he did start and got a lot of playing time initially. And then...he kind of started to suck. So if he was upset because he wasn't starting , or because of minutes, that's on him as far as I'm concerned. Play better, and quit expecting things to be handed to you.

What would be scaring me about this from the perspective of a GM is that it all sounds like he has a very hard time dealing with adversity, and the NBA can be a very rough place in terms of reality checks and wake up calls. There are going to be rough patches where thongs will not go as you has hoped/envisioned, and how you respond to that mentally is critical.

Maybe he could have used another year or two in college just to help him mature.
 
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@Nathan S Out of curiosity, how common is it for guys who rate as well by your model as Sengun and Mobley to bust? Just to get an idea of what relative level of prospect each is historically.

To be clear, Mobley doesn't have an exceptionally strong rating on my model...but the fact that he rates reasonably well on my model and is also highly regarded by scouts is a pretty good sign.

As for Sengun, he's one of very few players with a 5+ rating on my model, though I should note that I obviously haven't run it on every single player ever, so the following list is incomplete. Some other players with 5+ ratings (Doncic, Irving, Harden, Paul) went on to be superstars, and LaMelo Ball's not looking half bad. The other guys with 5+ ratings either played unusually weak schedules (Pokusevski, Jalen Pickett), few minutes (Pokusevski, Darius Days), or tore their ACLs repeatedly (Jontay Porter), so they're not exactly comparable to Sengun. The next-highest-rated bigs with "normal" profiles were Zion, Love, and Jaren Jackson Jr, all of whom landed at +4.8.

 
Such as what? If it was a question of starting or playing time, he did start and got a lot of playing time initially. And then...he kind of started to suck. So if he was upset because he wasn't starting , or because of minutes, that's on him as far as I'm concerned. Play better.

He was promised to be the focal point of their offense, and he would be the top priority for the team for the season.

I read a direct quote from him about it last summer when he committed. He tried to take the Cade at OK State route by picking the team with the least amount of talent but highest profile of his top 3 schools. He didnt do his homework on Coach K being a Bobby Knight disciple.

I don't like what college basketball has turned into for these one and done kids. But the college coaches who are willing to compromise their programs for one season of them bringing in the nationally televised games and allowing them to compete with the Calipari freshman all star team, have to adjust their messaging and handle these kids with kiddie gloves once they land them. (shrugs) They both share blame in what happened this season.

Coach K decided to take the tough love, Bobby Knight approach to Jalen Johnson and he lost him. He almost left the program earlier in the year when K tough love benched him in the game against Illinois. Wasnt in foul trouble, didnt have turnovers, but he wasnt "as" physical as 7' 300lb Kofi Cockburn so he got pulled. I believe he got benched against Michigan State too.
 
Such as what? If it was a question of starting or playing time, he did start and got a lot of playing time initially. And then...he kind of started to suck. So if he was upset because he wasn't starting , or because of minutes, that's on him as far as I'm concerned. Play better, and quit expecting things to be handed to you.
Coach K is more interested in getting these 5 star recruits and shoehorning them in to his system to win titles whereas someone like John Calipari gets these guys and tries to maximize their draft value. I think Jalen Johnson quit because he wasn't a fit on an underperforming Duke team that shut it down midway through the season. When Duke decided to focus on giving more playing time to guys that would be returning next year, and eased him out of the picture, he did what he thought was best for him. He doesn't owe Duke anything much in the same way Duke doesn't owe him playing time. Ironically, the perception that he's a quitter is now hurting his draft stock somewhat, although I can't see him falling out of the lottery.
 
not as i hoped/envisioned

Nasty Nate!!! Where have you been?!?!

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