Message Boar wrote:^First of all, love the footage from the draft party. Those moments are a lot more fun and less scripted than the big names at the draft. It feels a bit more spontaneous, more personal. Andrew Nicholson's draft moment is another one that has stuck with me.
Second, nice catch about that analytics angle, I forgot about the STATS partnership.That could very well have played a role.
Third, in addition to your comprehensive write-up, what excites me most after sleeping on the pick is his reported excellent basketball IQ. It's a trait that a lot of the best players have and a lot of busts lack. If a player is smart and has the necessary tools to stay on the floor, it's likely that that player at least has a decent career in the league. Chuma definitely has both.
I don't know that I'd describe him as a high IQ player. Rather, I would say that he understands his role at both ends.
On the offensive end, he plays within the scheme and generally takes the shots you want him to. He will make boneheaded passes though, which is why he had a relatively high turnover rate. He'll attack closeouts, but he doesn't have great explosion when he gets to the rim, so he got blocked frequently by help defenders. He is going to need to improve at passing out when the help defenders meet him. He sets good screens and pops out for shots, but I don't see potential as a roll man due to his physical limitations.
On defense, he really understands what the offense is trying to do. He is hyper anticipatory, which gets him into trouble sometimes when he expects the offense to do something that it doesn't. What I like is that he is always surveying the floor for potential threats and looking to close gaps. This is what makes him a great team defender. He isn't as good as an individual defender. Bigs could use their size to go over him at the rim with little resistance. He has really active hands (this is his exceptional skill), which he used to break up plays a lot, but he was disadvantaged against physically superior players when this failed. If he gives up deep position, the battle is lost. He switched a lot on the perimeter, but he let guards get the angle on him and get into the paint too easily. He doesn't look to be quick enough to recover when this happens. You can probably clean this up by taking some of the aggression away from his perimeter defense, but it is going to come at the expense of his steal rate.
He looks like a really well-coached kid, which speaks to his coachability. I expect that almost everyone will really like him when he gets onto the floor. There will be some exceptions. If you don't value what Isaac brings at the defensive end, then you won't value what Okeke does. Isaac has much more potential though due to his height and length.
My gripe with the pick is that it really neglects our lack of playmaking. You aren't drafting for immediate impact. You have to project skill sets and development. I don't see a lot of upside with Okeke's skill set. He'll be a nice player. If we never draft players that project to facilitate though, we are never going to produce facilitators. You can't necessarily expect to get such players at 16 and you shouldn't reach for them, but NAW was there and begging to be drafted, yet we still went with another frontcourt glue guy. I don't know how much longer Okeke would've lasted, but I do know that some of the picks behind ours were available.
"Xatticus has always been, in my humble opinion best poster here. Should write articles or something."
-pepe1991
