RealGM Consensus Mock - #5

[GreatWhiteStiff]

As a pseudoknicks fan I'm not really liking the implication Obi Toppin is a bust. If you ignore three point shooting, there aren't many more efficient players in the league. Zion Williams has lower 2pt% and FT% for example.

[babyjax13]

Crazy how hype in the NBA draft works. Now everyone is talking about Daniels despite not many people talking about him when he actually played basketball games. Not saying anyone is wrong here (at least not those who don't follow the draft professionally and necessarily get their cues in part from the media) or that I'm an exception, but it's still incredible to see every time something like this happens (which is to say, every year).

Isn't the hype based on recent individual workouts that reportedly went very well? I think teams can be reactive towards good individual workouts because they can get them in there and test for specific things, whereas in games have a lot more context and reasons why a player might or might not show certain skills so its harder to gauge potential development without those individual workouts to lend additional insight.

Yeah, but we're not privy to these workouts. Hype can be created by players having great workouts, media members picking up on that, and regular folks in turn picking up their cues. It's just odd to me that everyone could watch Daniels for months but then private workouts happen with empty-gym highlight tapes being circulated and all of a sudden everyone is hyped by Daniels – even though our own basis for the evaluation has not changed at all.

And again, I'm not blaming the regular folks. We'll always be reliant on bits and pieces from the media and selected footage over which we have no control. So it's perfectly fine that public opinion shifts pretty strongly, but it's still eye-popping to see and essentially demonstrates just how much public perception can be influenced even around the NBA draft, among very interested hobby scouts. In this regard, I'm more critical of professional draft analysts in the media (with much more access than us) which produce or use the hype, because the erratic nature of hype means they either failed to properly evaluate the hyped player before or simply go along with it for the clicks.

Of course that's not true for all players, and some may rightfully rise a lot because they showcase their talents in ways not seen before. But someone like Daniels... he hasn't become a different player over the past couple weeks. Either you liked him before and you should still do, or you had your doubts and you should continue to have them. If he had awesome workouts or measured much better than expected, that can or even should change your ranking a bit of course – but it shouldn't drastically alter it when we already had so many opportunities to see him play and work over the past year.

I'd agree if we were moving him a ton, but - for example - I moved him from 11th to 6th and had him as high as 9th. I am not alone in moving him from mid/late to early/mid lottery. At that point there is a group of players that needed to do something to separate themselves from the other, and it sounds like Daniels may have done that through workouts/his pro-day, etc.