AG's Regular Season Review: Still improving, how much more runway?

[pepe1991]

It's not uncommon that rebuilding teams change lot of coaches.
Booker will probably be coached by 5th coach in 5 years as well.
Lakers are hiring 6th coach in 7 years.

[Xatticus]

Spoiler:

I don't think the developmental system is really ideal for the vast majority of players. I absolutely believe that Bamba could've benefited from another year or two in college, but players can potentially increase their long-term earning potential by turning professional as early as possible and so they do. Teams will continue to draft players that aren't ready because the system essentially compels them to.

Nobody would make the argument that you are making in the world of professional baseball; where it is well-accepted that promoting prospects too quickly can damage the developmental process.

When you draft a project with a high ceiling, you have to commit to their development. There really isn't much point in drafting such players otherwise.

I also disagree that service time is more predictive than is age. Every player's developmental curve is unique and reflective of a myriad of different factors; including their role on the team that is developing them. You do your best to determine what a player's ceiling might be, where they are on their developmental curve, and how likely they are to reach their ceiling.

I can't say definitively where Gordon is on his developmental curve. Nor can I definitively state just how good he could potentially become. I do know that he is a pretty good player right now and that his physical tools aren't going to be the limiting factor in his development. You see stagnation this season. I see improvement.

Bamba would have benefited from another year in college in what ways?

The only thing I can definitively say is that he'd have gotten a little stronger and matured a little more physically.

I highly doubt Texas would have stopped feeding him 3-5 post ups a game in favor of 3-5 3PT attempts as a pick and pop or drive and kick threat.

I highly doubt Texas would have stopped using him defensively as the anchor of the legal zone defense that's allowed in college in favor of having him exclusively show and recover, switch screens, and tag roll men like all NBA teams ask their bigs to do literally every single game.

Bamba's not physically or mentally ready for major NBA minutes, no. But spending another year or even another two years in college isn't going to make him significantly more ready for the rigors of the NBA. It would have been marginal at best.

The bigger issue for most players when they come into the NBA is that they have no genuine understanding on exactly how difficult it is to be a professional basketball player.

It's a job. A well compensated job, but it's a full time, pressure packed job where a ton is being asked of you both on and off the court.

On the court, the challenges are easy to spot. Young guys come into the league and are thrust into playing against grown men who are more skilled and more physically and mentally developed than they are. Games are longer and more physically intense in the NBA. The NBA season is three times as long with three times as much travel. The NBA is a physical and mental grind. No question about it.

Off the court is even tougher. People guys haven't seen in years or barely know are all of a sudden hitting them for money or asking them to invest their money. There are a lot women out there who are absolutely trying to get pregnant from basketball players so they can hit the financial "have a baby by me, be a millionaire" lottery. Not to mention the fact that a lot of college prospects grow up poor and all of a sudden they're 19-20 years old with millions of dollars dropped into their laps after a life of barely having two nickels.

The transition is tremendously difficult, but that makes it all the most important to get it started as soon as possible.

I'm not going to dive into all of the tangents presented in this post. Every one of us is a target to somebody.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect

The short version of this is that the distributions of ages among professional athletes are clearly skewed towards arbitrarily designated cut off dates for youth athletes. This is because the advantages in physical development of youth athletes among their peers affords them additional opportunities. Those additional opportunities provide a demonstrable advantage in the long-term and an increase in the likelihood of any such young athlete becoming a professional athlete later on.

The advantaged like to preach of the merits of tossing someone into the deep and watching them sink or swim, but every individual benefits from being placed in a situation that is specifically conducive to learning for them as an individual.

More specifically, people benefit from being in a situation that suits their current abilities. You don't pluck someone that is struggling with high school algebra and throw them into a math program at Harvard and expect them to succeed simply because you are giving them access to better facilities. This is essentially what we do with prospects that are drafted on potential, but that haven't yet demonstrated mastery at the collegiate level. Outside of the occasional Bobby Fischer, this mastery doesn't manifest overnight. The NBA doesn't really have an intermediary to fill the gap for these raw talents.

This is all fine if we are going to commit to Bamba's development regardless of the inevitable struggles along the way, but it is absurd to me that we are discussing the possibility of trading him because Birch provides better minutes for a 42-win team.

[Knightro]

I'm not going to dive into all of the tangents presented in this post. Every one of us is a target to somebody.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect

The short version of this is that the distributions of ages among professional athletes are clearly skewed towards arbitrarily designated cut off dates for youth athletes. This is because the advantages in physical development of youth athletes among their peers affords them additional opportunities. Those additional opportunities provide a demonstrable advantage in the long-term and an increase in the likelihood of any such young athlete becoming a professional athlete later on.

The advantaged like to preach of the merits of tossing someone into the deep and watching them sink or swim, but every individual benefits from being placed in a situation that is specifically conducive to learning for them as an individual.

More specifically, people benefit from being in a situation that suits their current abilities. You don't pluck someone that is struggling with high school algebra and throw them into a math program at Harvard and expect them to succeed simply because you are giving them access to better facilities. This is essentially what we do with prospects that are drafted on potential, but that haven't yet demonstrated mastery at the collegiate level. Outside of the occasional Bobby Fischer, this mastery doesn't manifest overnight. The NBA doesn't really have an intermediary to fill the gap for these raw talents.

This is all fine if we are going to commit to Bamba's development regardless of the inevitable struggles along the way, but it is absurd to me that we are discussing the possibility of trading him because Birch provides better minutes for a 42-win team.

I would respond to this by saying that Bamba DID benefit from being placed into a situation that was actually conducive to him learning.

The Magic placed him firmly behind Vucevic in the pecking order for minutes and didn't ask him to do anything that they didn't deem him physically incapable of doing. He almost never posted up. Playing against backup centers, he was rarely posted up defensively. They kept his role limited and pretty clearly defined on both ends.

Now... Bamba struggled mightily because he had issues with motivation/motor, professionalism and adjusting to the mental side of the game, but the Magic babied him this year as much as they could.

As far as letting Bamba develop regardless of struggles v. trading him away, I don't think Birch has much to do with that. It's all Vucevic.

If the Magic are planning on committing 18-25M per season on Vucevic on a contract longer than two seasons, then they're setting up a situation where Bamba can only possibly play 15-18 minutes a night behind him for the foreseeable future.

It's extremely doubtful given their respective defensive abilities that Bamba/Vucevic will be able to effectively share the floor together, so it's very much an either/or situation.

Personally? I don't mind holding on to Bamba and letting him play backup minutes for now. He's got a lot of maturing to do from a physical, mental and effort standpoint and being a backup is probably the best thing for him. He could eventually replace Vucevic and that's fine by me.

That said...

Backup Cs are like backup PGs, they're very fungible because you really can't play two PG's or two C's at the same time. Birch has already shown he's more than capable of thriving in a 15 MPG role against backup players.

Bamba being just 20 years old and with his blend of measurables/skill set, could be the Magic's most expendable trade chip this summer that also has some value to bring back a less fungible piece than a backup C.