Players you expected more of

[MiamiBulls]

Keon Clark, Jim Jackson, Marcus Camby, Larry Hughes

[giordunk]

Nicolas Batum. Good length, good defender, and good shooter with decent range. Had all the tools to be a much sought after 3&D player moving from one contender to another. Poor attitude and inconsistent prevented that.

This was who I thought of too... I mean anyone who has a 15-year NBA career isn't a bad player but I also think he could have done a lot more with his tools and skills.

Terrence Williams is another guy who had all the tools to be great.

Anthony "Magic" Randolph the hype was a bit overblown. If you watch his Euroleague highlights you'll see he became a defensive anchor and rim runner/lob threat. But yea this kid wasn't some like hyper athletic Magic Johnson.

[JimmyFromNz]

OJ Mayo - I still have one of his Memphis singlets...

Karl Anthony Towns - watched him live in his rookie year and his shooting touch and use of his physical presence was incredible.

Kris Dunn - in College he had Marcus Smart like tools but with better body control. I can't work out how he's faded so badly.

Lamar Odom - incredibly frustrating player, superb natural skillset, zero focus, intermittent moments of brilliance.

[Above The Rim]

Evan Turner
Jordan Crawford
Von Wafer
Jared Sullinger
John collins
Both Shabazz’s

[MrLurker]

For me, it’s Kyrie Irving. When he was putting up crazy numbers as a teenager and looked to have every tool in the world I really thought he was gonna be a top 20 player all-time. Unfortunately, he really didn’t improve that much and turned out to be a huge locker room cancer that didn’t fit into a team concept. I’m not even sure he had a season where he was a top 20 player in the league.

Kyrie Irving, like most Kobe stans (and I guess basketball fans in general actually) fundamentally seems to have an extremely narrow definition of what a great basketball player is, that definition being one with a #BAG.

That might be why a lot of talented scorers aren't really much different in year 10 than they are year 1. They get their farts sniffed from day one and basically shut off any ability to improve their BBIQ from the jump with their myopic, iso-centric view of basketball. CP3, Giannis, Kawhi, Steph, Lebron, Jokic, Butler etc have had multiple player archetypes throughout their career and know several different ways to affect the game of basketball. Kyrie, Melo, KD etc have only ever really had a single player archetype they've had to conform to and never improved much outside of that.

That, and any 1-way offensive player that's better at scoring than they are at playmaking is going to struggle to be Top 20 levels of impactful.

It is not completely fair to say these players, mainly durant and kyrie have not evolved their game over the years to adapt.

Durant who i am fairly critical of has, to his credit, polished his skillset over the years consistently and became better with time at decision making. As has kyrie to a decent degree.

What they never really did was learning to see the game at the level and speed the guys above you mentioned did, ego and pride on their iso skills plays a part but i think they mostly cannot think basketball as quickly

Someone like kobe may be a closer exampke of a player who has the visions to see those passes but often prefered to take the worse shot hinself anyway

I think Durant criticism here is often overzealous - The idea that Durant hasn't grown seems like an alternative reality to me

[McBubbles]

Kyrie Irving, like most Kobe stans (and I guess basketball fans in general actually) fundamentally seems to have an extremely narrow definition of what a great basketball player is, that definition being one with a #BAG.

That might be why a lot of talented scorers aren't really much different in year 10 than they are year 1. They get their farts sniffed from day one and basically shut off any ability to improve their BBIQ from the jump with their myopic, iso-centric view of basketball. CP3, Giannis, Kawhi, Steph, Lebron, Jokic, Butler etc have had multiple player archetypes throughout their career and know several different ways to affect the game of basketball. Kyrie, Melo, KD etc have only ever really had a single player archetype they've had to conform to and never improved much outside of that.

That, and any 1-way offensive player that's better at scoring than they are at playmaking is going to struggle to be Top 20 levels of impactful.

It is not completely fair to say these players, mainly durant and kyrie have not evolved their game over the years to adapt.

Durant who i am fairly critical of has, to his credit, polished his skillset over the years consistently and became better with time at decision making. As has kyrie to a decent degree.

What they never really did was learning to see the game at the level and speed the guys above you mentioned did, ego and pride on their iso skills plays a part but i think they mostly cannot think basketball as quickly

Someone like kobe may be a closer exampke of a player who has the visions to see those passes but often prefered to take the worse shot hinself anyway

I think Durant criticism here is often overzealous - The idea that Durant hasn't grown seems like an alternative reality to me

Both of y'all are putting words in my mouth, I never said "Durant hasn't grown" I said he didn't improve all that much outside of his initial archetype when compared to others.

Kyrie went from being an All Star calibre iso scorer with horrible defence and average playmaking to being an All NBA calibre iso scorer with improved off ball ability, below average defence and good playmaking.

KD went from being an All NBA calibre iso scorer with below average defence and above average playmaking to being a league best calibre iso scorer with slightly above average defence and good playmaking.

I can't be bothered to type out every single player in detail because I just woke up lol but compare them with Kawhi, who's had like 2 or 3 different play styles from when he first started his career, ditto with Butler, ditto with Lebron, ditto with Paul George, ditto with Curry, ditto with Chris Paul, ditto with Giannis. Even James Harden who I have an irrational hate for, I feel like has reinvented himself and played in several different ways. Relative to them, I feel like those two never had to adapt all that much, which might have limited their BBIQ potential.

[cupcakesnake]

For example, I thought Karl Anthony Towns could be a very dominant, close to MVP level big, but that doesn't seem to be any close. I can see him still as a very good third option in a contender but not first and maybe not even second.

I actually mentioned KAT in another thread recently: he looked so amazing already around age 22-24, I kinda had the same thought as you. But it's like he plateaued early and even declined since (and only like 27 years old).

Yeah KAT was disapointing in an unpredictable way. After his year at Kentucky and his rookie season, he looked like he was going to be one of the more physically dominant players in the NBA. He was a real bully on the boards and in the paint, and seemed to have that mean streak you like to see from a physically talented player. If you told me then that he'd be struggling on the boards and considered "soft" by the broader NBA fanbase, I'd have thought that was impossible.

I didn't see the defensive problems coming either. He put up 2.6 blocker per 100 in his rookie season and that's still his career high. I don't usually overly scrutinize rookie bigs defense though so there might have been signs I was ignoring. It still seems like Towns' career trajectory was really hard to predict. Early on he was voted "player you'd starting a franchise with" in one of those NBA.com GM polls. Now he's almost a pariah with very uncertain value.

[cupcakesnake]

- I got a long list of versatile wing players I penciled in for good careers that became total zeroes: Julius Hodge, Julian Wright, Viktor Khryapa, Chris Douglas-Roberts, Terrence Williams, Sam Young, Wesley Johnson, Perry Jones, Qunicy Miller, Livio Jean-Charles, Stanley Johnson, Mario Hezonja, Josh Jackson, De'Andre Hunter. The list gets updated every year!

- I held onto my Il Mago (Andrea Bargnani) stock for a while. The no dip release and crazy first step just seemed too good to be true (it was).

- I thought Jarrett Jack was definitely going to become Chauncey Billups.

- I thought Kenneth Faried was the next coming of Rodman. After 2 seasons it became glaringly obvious that he had none of the defensive mobility or iq that are kind of important to fulfill that comp.

- I thought Houston had the frontcourt of the future when they drafted Donatas Motiejunas and Terrence Jones in b2b drafts.

- I'm still a huge Steve Adams fan (heal up, Khal Drogo), but I thought he was going to develop a lot more than he did. A big part of it is injuries, since it prevented him from having a real athletic peak, but I saw him as a blank slate on offense that was going to have some good skill development.

- I still don't get why Will Cauley-Stein didn't become Tyson Chandler with better foot speed.

[cupcakesnake]

Nicolas Batum. Good length, good defender, and good shooter with decent range. Had all the tools to be a much sought after 3&D player moving from one contender to another. Poor attitude and inconsistent prevented that.

This was who I thought of too... I mean anyone who has a 15-year NBA career isn't a bad player but I also think he could have done a lot more with his tools and skills.

To be fair, Batum's prime got wiped out by a never ending series of weird injuries and illnesses. He had 2 very solid years in Charlotte, averaging 15/6/6 as a dimes and defense point forward (his shot fell off though), and then spent the rest of his theoretical prime years on and off the injury list and playing through stuff. He bounced back in a new role for the Clippers as a really impressive small ball defensive anchor (and the shot came back!) but by then he was getting into his mid 30s.

Batum never had the scoring power to be a star, and his shot was inconsistent (lots of 32% years from 3 after shooting 40%), but with better luck his career might have been a lot closer to someone like Andre Iguodala.