UcanUwill wrote:Overall, very productive year for Isaiah in G-league. He played limited minutes, but his production was really there.
18 points, 12.7 rebounds (5.4 OFF), 2.1 block per 36 minutes.
And his scoring was very efficient, I like that he plays inside, very good shot selection, unlike X Donatas Motiejunas, who I always hated. 57.1 FG%, almost 1 FTA per 2 FGA.
Very promising. What you guys thought of him?
Saw a decent number of Vipers games this year and here's my take.
The overall theme is that it's weird because their two main prospects more or less play the same position, Zhou Qi and Hartenstein are both 4/5 type guys. This is made worse by that this team had way more playable bigs than wings in general, so they end up with a lot of two big lineups. This made it a bit hard to evaluate all of them because they're pretty obviously not playing the lineup their system wants to play. Also that most of the season they had a ball dominant wing in Troy Daniels and often didn't have much of a real point guard.
My general take on Hartenstein though.
His body is very well developed for his age, the opposite situation with Zhou Qi, it's clear he has good feel on the interior in terms of getting rebounds and put backs and general spacing. not an explosive athelete but certainly will punch right through smaller guys without problem. Ironically the DMO comp is silly but the actual comp I see is the OTHER Lithuanian big man in the NBA, Jonas Valanciunas, that's closer to the type of player he is (at least, on offense.). similar body type and game.
Although billed to be able to shoot 3s it's clear that if he's going to shoot 3s it's still quite a while away, although his percentage wasn't bad (35% ish) it was on an extremely low volume.
Experience is a real issue, it's hard to say if a guy's only getting less than 20 min in the G league hardly on a star studded team that he's ready. and they rarely started him and from watching the games he's usually running up against back ups in the G-League even more than likes of Zhou Qi.
My concern is that it's hard to see how his defense is right now in that setting. given age it's probably bad but it's hard to tell with the sample he has right now. at least he's a good rebounder. but what happens when he start going up against guys who's even faster and stronger is hard to known. The 3 is nowhere close to being an NBA weapon right now, he needs to work on that, at this point he's more of a old school rebound and putback guy.
But I think his built while doesn't have great ceiling does have a great floor, and I like the general motor and instinct I saw for him.
Zhou Qi is almost the opposite in every regard. his body is questionable, though he held up fine against G-League guys in general. I DON'T like his motor at all, he seem to be too passive to a fault. while sometimes not asking for the ball is a good thing in the NBA and it could be that guys just aren't passing him the ball enough, watching the games it doesn't seem like he's making enough moves to justify getting the ball that much more either.
Zhou Qi shot the 3 33%, but on a much higher volume. it's clear they're asking him to do that. and while not reliable he's taking them enough to make teams at least guard him out there. He didn't rebound well but as noted the team played 2 bigs most of the time and it's not obvious if he's just getting beasted out of boards or if it's because by default the team is asking the other big to go for the board more (a little bit of both. but it's clear he's not going to be a strong rebounder. though the question is can you live with it if he's asked to do that, we don't have much sample to see.)
Zhou Qi's PER was meh (around league average and probably slightly below for a big.) while Hartenstein was a bit better . but Zhou had a lot more flashes where you get why he could potentially be a weapon in the NBA. the level of blocks he get is clearly different than anyone else. and he's asked to defend on switches way more. IIRC he also had the best +/- among the bigs on the team. Of course that may also simply be due to him playing more with the starters.
Overall, Zhou Qi's floor seems worse, but it's easier to imagine a higher ceiling where he can play outside more, space the floor while really protect the rim. part of a really deadly small ball lineup. the role in an modern NBA is clear (see how the Bucks seem like a **** until they play Thon Maker at center then suddenly things look like it make sense.). the question is can he meet the floor of being able to rebound and hold up ok (and hit shots with a bit more reliability.)
But either way both of them are role players, we'll see if they can develop up to the point where they can fill those role.
