DCZards wrote:willbcocks wrote:Having great hands is about confidence, anticipation, engagement, and coordination. The only one of those things you can't improve with more practice is coordination, and Sarr's other skills show that's probably not his problem. Once he learns the game more and learns the situations in the pick and roll where he'll get the ball, he'll catch better. His picks are already a lot better.
I've said it since summer league, but the guys ability to shrug off criticism, stay confident and just keep putting in the work is a huge reason for optimism.
Sarr became an instant meme following his 0-15 SL game. Now, if those same folks are paying attention, they see that he’s a uniquely skilled big with a ton of potential.
Like you said, Sarr appeared to take the SL game lampooning in stride.
I just don't understand why anyone gave a ----. It's summer league, Vegas etc, seriously, who gives a ----. I get that it's the first time you see these rookies playing, and with Johnny Davis face planting immediately 2 years earlier, it felt like more of the same. But it's 5 freaking games, in July, w/teams playing with various degrees of committment and seriousness, reminds me of international friendlies in soccer.
To take that face planet, and let that face plant matter in any sense in November, December, January too you just always struck me as insane. The guy had hundreds of practices after that through December, dozens of games before New Years, now more than 50, real games, in the rear view mirror, and he's basically been a 37-38% 3 point shooting high volume shooter since Thanksgiving. That July should have been forgotten by December, if not November, the fact that it lingered for anyone always struck me as insane.
Maybe it's just I'm obssessive and watch an absolute ton of sports, focused about 75-80% of my attention in sports on international and club soccer, and pro football, and then the remaining 20-25% on NBA, NHL, MLB, College Football, College Basketball, plus I play and spend an absolute ---- ton of time analyzing prospects and professionals in dynasty football, so maybe I'm just more used to relevance of breakout age, sample size, athletic metrics, tools and whats relevant and what isn't etc, but sometimes it just feels like so granular in detail, and so fixated on one thing here or there that's frustrating (a craptacular summer league, a totally inept opening 15 games to his career, god awful 3 point shooting in that opening 15 games, the truly horrific 2 pt and lay up #'s) that people just miss whats right in front of him. The athleticism, the mentality, the 3 point piece the past 40ish games, the transition play (kind of point forward skills).....there is clearly something here, and it's really odd how people get totally fixated on this negative or that, when what he does have, is pretty damn rare (size and athleticism to go with 3 point skills, and open transition pace), and what he doesn't, is either fixable with practice and offseason weight training, or at least something that can be rendered adequate or average, rather than the gross liabilities that some of these pieces look like now. I'd be far more worried if he was a sluggish, tree trunk without any range on his jumper, no feel, and a weak or ignorant kind of mentality. Instead his mental make up appears good, he's legit athletic, he's got some clear skills he can scout on, and if he's a worker, he can bring up a lot of the lagging pieces of his game AND improve what he's already quite good at.
But I'm one of the hopeful ones. Its just from my perspective, in a draft this bereft of talent, landing the next Arvis Hayes, a euro trash type like Pech or Vesely, a meh jack of all , master of none type like Jeffries or the crappier version of Porter, a total nothing like Troy Brown, and Davis, a "----, he's just never gonna become anything" like Hachimura? Hes none of those versions of disappointing (I'll grant Porter was a legit player and doesn't entirely fit here, but he was also kind of disappointing from a similar draft people felt was bereft of any special talent at the time). to me, Sarr, right now, is an athletic big who can and will help us down the line with that atheleticism, and with the 3 hitting like it is, a genuine weapon. We got something (not even to mention Bub or George who clearly are hits in the way that Singleton, Vesley, Seraphin etc during the previous build clearly were not, even Booker, for as solid he was, didn't ever have much of a ceiling, all 3 of these guys, including the guys taken later have more promising futures potentially than Booker ever did).
But again, none of this matters if we get hosed these next two drafts. If we get hosed in '25 and '26, then this rebuild will fail period, regardless of Sarr, 90% of the future depends on either immense luck in the lottery, or stealing a guy who should have been taken at the top of the lottery in retrospect, if we happen to get killed in the draw in two months. Some of these arguments are chairs on the titanic kind of things. If we end up getting screwed in May, there's a good 75-85% chance none of this matters and we're just gonna suck deep into the rest of this decade, and need to basically get lucky through our pick swaps etc.
