bwgood77 wrote:Jesus_H_Macy wrote:bigfoot wrote:We need a veteran behind Paul and Booker badly. I just don't think it would be smart to expect a rookie to come in and carry the team if we lost either of those two to injury. That's why a rookie bigman made more sense. Use our MLE and BAE on backup guards to compete with Payne and Carter.
This makes some sense. I definitely felt like the MLE money should go towards that 1/2 backup slot.
I just looked up Jalen Smith highlights and he looks good. Passes the eye test on O and looks like a good weakside shot blocker. Regular and advanced stats also look good for him. I couldn't find any clips of his defense though, aside from the blocks. I agree with what some others said that he looks like a 5, not a 4. I think we could still use him, and if Jones thought he was BPA then he probably did the right thing, but the parallel between picking Cam is very strong... I'm willing to give Jones the benefit of the doubt that it's a smarter pick than it looked, but we're picking a guy 10 spots earlier than he was projected again. If it turns out he can defend well out in space then I think he'll be really great for us. If not then it looks like he could still give us some nice bench minutes, but how many of those will we really need at 5 if Saric comes back and Ayton doesn't hit the juice again?
This guy is full of energy....he dunks hard and maybe that helps Ayton finish hard too...it also could help replace Oubre in some ways as the guy that gets people pumped up..he dunks hard. He blocks hard. He hits the 3. People liked Okongwu a lot but this guy is way more versatile.
He's not a bad player at all. Maryland was terrible whenever he was out. He can do most everything except dribble / playmake (which he is comically bad at, but that's okay). But I still won't defend the pick at the position he was selected with the guys on the table and the near 100% certainty that we could've traded back and still gotten him.
