Post#91 » by Dr Positivity » Sat Jun 9, 2012 7:52 pm
Harkless would be exactly like the Demar and Ed picks. Has athleticism/length, but not really at a "enough to dominate competition level". Can finish some plays but isn't a go to player in offensive skill. He should be a solid player but I'm not seeing why I should be that excited about his upside, especially considering he clearly has a high risk level (in that he could be the 300th semi athletic SF who's skill level restricts him to 7th man). He's not a freak athletically. He's long and has some smoothness. Maybe he's one of the 25-30 most physically gifted SFs in the league. There's a lot of them. He's no PJIII type of potential freak. He's not more physically gifted than Julian Wright and Thaddeus Young where in the 2007 draft for example. Maybe this pick ending up the same way Young's did for Philly is what I could see as a best case scenario for us and Wright's as the worst case. He could be as good as MKG but that's because MKG in the top 5 could be a god awful pick if he's just Ronnie Brewer. Nothing against Brewer or good role players, but because they can be gotten in other players, using a top 5 pick on one is a disaster. Sometimes I wonder if teams mix up "undeveloped" with "upside". Harkless may be undeveloped to the point where he can add new dimensions to his game more than players like Lamb and Sullinger, but does that mean he has more upside? Upside from the perspective of a team is different than how far a prospect can move up. I hope we're not the team that thinks Harkless can be the next Paul George at #10 pick just because he's a semi unproven athletic guy. It's obviously not as simple as saying Harkless is young and athletic and George was young and athletic so Harkless can be George. Paul George in college played way way more like Jeremy Lamb than Moe Harkless. He was a miss because people thought ok college stats meant he was raw, which he wasn't. Paul George was a 91% FT shooter in college which indicates "shooting freak", even if 35% from 3 didn't stand out (it was on a small sample size and he did 45% his freshman year).
And Harkless doesn't even fit on our team. Just because he plays SF doesn't mean he fits a need. A Demar, JJ, Harkless SG/SF rotation is a mess. I would go as far to say that restricting it only to "fit", I think bringing Lamb off the bench at SG and then rolling with him and Demar at SG/SF "fits" better than Demar and Harkless
Harkless to me is a solid pick if you're the Boston Celtics with picks 21 and 22 and he's still there. They can bring in an athletic Pierce backup who can also log some PF minutes. If we like him we might as well trade down or see what it'd take to make that Houston 14/16 trade. At 8th I have no reason to be excited about this pick. We're the last type of team that should be concerned about taking an athletic role player top 10, if we're not trying to get any semblence of a star player in this draft, when will we?
Harkless and George are eerily similar all the way down to the jumpshots, he just never got to show it playing the PF spot at St. Johns. The biggest difference is that George had 4 inches more on his standing reach while Harkless has a larger wingspan (which makes no sense to me unless George had extra long fingernails). Also, don't sleep on Harkless' defense because St. Johns went zone a lot, he didn't really get to showcase that wingspan and athletic ability defensively.
