TheSuzerain wrote:I feel like the pro-Edey side has been a lot more forthcoming about why they think it'll work than vice versa.
If Edey does have the ball within 10 feet of the rim, which current NBA centers are going to be able to limit him one on one? There are certainly names, but a lot of those names aren't guys teams necessarily want to play. How about when he gets a non-center switched on him after screening action. How will defenses react when he then sinks toward the paint with a forward or guard attached to him?
To me, posting up went out of style because of the efficiency of it rather than the availability of it as an option for offenses. If Edey can be an outlier in terms of efficiency with those touches (thus the focus on TS%), then these "settled truths" about optimizing NBA offense starts to crumble. And my point here is not that we'll suddenly see some drastic league-wide shift (although I think there are some interesting league-wide currents at play), it's just that we're calling Edey an outlier for a reason.
And again, pure post-up touches would only be a piece of the pie. I don't see why he wouldn't be highly effective in a bunch of more modern offensive actions if coupled with heady passers. He will demand defensive attention in a way a long list of supposed lotto talents will not.
In a league obsessed with offensive efficiency, I think the potential upside is very clear.
Defensively is more of a mixed bag admittedly. But if someone isn't buying the offensive value, there's not really a point in even discussing the defense part.
I think you also have to believe in the volume of those possessions he can get, just by way of what kind of stamina a 7-4 guy with his frame will have in the NBA. Is he capable of playing 20 minutes a night in a league that spreads the court as much as the NBA does? 24 minutes? Any more? If he's a 20-minute or less guy b/c of his frame that pretty much moves his upside to the back of the first round, at best. That's kind of where I'm at on him, is that he can't play as much as he is in college because the NBA is a different game.
Then we move to post-ups. He is going to have to be able to make good reads passing the ball, and it's not clear he can really do that. Otherwise, he is going to get stripped by help defenders all the time. NBA players are also pretty big, so I think they can deny position a bit better than the college players he is up against, so that will impact efficiency a bit.
I wouldn't be surprised if he carves out an NBA role, I'd be shocked if he became a starting caliber player who could go for extended (starter's) minutes. If you have really high confidence in that scoring efficiency translating on good volume when he is on the court, maybe he can be worth a flier at the end of the first round.
I'm not really there, I think it is a big leap to assume that a player archetype that hasn't functioned well at the NBA level b/c of how modern offenses and defenses work to create advantages. I'd definitely take a second-round flier on him, just like I thought it was worth doing so for Luka Garza, who has carved out a small niche in the NBA. But I also felt similarly about Daniel Oturu, recently, and he failed to do so.
