SomeBunghole wrote:bkkrh wrote:There is exactly 1 player in that draft with Ja Morant that until now had clearly a better career than him. You can make an argument for Darius Garland and RJ Barrett might be slowly getting there. I might also take Tyler Herro over him, just because he was less injured. So that puts him at worst at 5th. Which other 11 players from that draft would you pick over him?
Who's picking anyone over him? How many players are better than him in that draft has nothing to do with my argument or with whether someone is a bust. You can be the best player in a draft and still be a bust.
There are expectations that come with a draft position and expectations that come with the hype that followed you. If you fail to meet both, you're a bust. Zion was picked first. That's a spot where you should be looking to draft a franchise cornerstone, a generational player who will determine the course of your team's future. On top of that, Zion was anointed the greatest prospect since LeBron James a couple of years before the draft.
He has fallen well short of both of those expectations and it has zero to do with how good Morant or Herro or anyone is.
So how has he failed the draft position part? He has played 5 seasons in the NBA. He missed a full year due to injury. He had 2 more seasons where he missed big parts of the season due to injury. He had 2 healthy seasons. He was an All Star twice, he averaged over 20 points every single year. He is currently 24. He played 184 regular season games during his first 5 years, Embiid played 158. Lebron, AD and KAT are the only 3 other 1st picks since 2000 that averaged at least 20 points in 4 of their 5 first seasons. If he would have played in his 3rd season and averaged 20 points that year, he'd be the only player besides Lebron to go 5 for 5. He currently has already had a more successfull individual career than 9 of the 19 players that were picked first between 2000 and 2018.
The hype part is related to the media and has nothing to do with actual player quality. He was hyped up because he was a super athletic high school kid that created highlight reals and looked like a grown man playing with boys. Mac McClung had a lot of internet hype, so had Julian Newman, who never made it to the NBA. It's not the fault of players that the media generates unrealistic expectations that are not built on any facts. It's not that tv experts pay scouts to watch the game, they try to create a story. That's why there were enough people doubting Luka, while he was at 18 the best player in Europe and dominating on a level like no youth prospect before and was still viewed as a dark horse.
Anthony Bennett had 0 media hype, does it make him less of a bust? He was a bust at 1, he would have also been a bust if he would have been picked 20th.
The actual quality of the draft class has to matter. You'll have classes like 84 or 03 where you have 3 players that would go first in other drafts. I can't blame Carmelo for being picked 3rd because Lebron went first and I can't call Kenyon Martin a bust for being a underwhelming 1st, when he still is probably the best player in that draft and would have most likely landed in the 5 to 8 range a year earlier or later.
LeBron is 0-7 in game winning/tying FGs in the finals. And is 20/116 or 17% in game winning/tying FGs in the 4th/OT for his career. That's historically bad 
