tmorgan wrote:Duke4life831 wrote:The Moose wrote:
Duren as a HS Senior aged freshman anchored a top 25 defense in the NCAA at Memphis while doubling Sims senior season block and assist rates. I think he's in a much higher class of player than Sims, he had plenty of flashes as a short roll passer, started flashing mid range and short range jumpers in the 2nd half of the season as well, when Memphis went on that 12-1 run to end the season
I still think Rob Williams is his best comp
Rob was an elite defender the second he took a step on the college court and he did that in one of the best conferences in the country. No one would consider Duren an elite defender last year. Memphis was the 33rd ranked defense and a big reason for that was the fact they had a huge talent gap over the majority of their conference.
Yes Sims is an exaggeration on my point. But my main point still stands, the vast majority of Duren’s game is solely based off of athleticism. His awareness, positioning, and just overall basketball IQ is very low. When you take away the highlight couple blocks, you see him out of position all of the time and getting beat by not making good rotations. And offensively he is pretty much just a lob threat and nothing more.
100% agree on Duren looking lost defensively. It was bad last night.
100% disagree on him being just a lob threat. He already sees the floor better than a lot of non-handling bigs, and his turnaround and middie look like very comfortable shots.
He did look a bit lost defensively that game, but I actually thought he was pretty proficient in that area in the NCAA, particularly in the 2nd half of the season
He literally had no practices with the team before the tip off last night, I wouldn't read too much into that performance
As for the offense, I agree. Even last night he made a couple of nice passes in limited minutes. One was a nicely placed hit ahead pass on the break, this was the other