Rapsfan07 wrote:Mark_83 wrote:Rapsfan07 wrote:That's good. Means that someone would theoretically drop to us.
Why would that be good though if he's the player we might want? I wouldn't be happy to miss out on him just to have a chance at Ja'kobe Walter or Ron Holland.Rapsfan07 wrote:I like Salaun, don't get me wrong but every year one of these long, athletic wings shoot up the board. This year it's him.
Yeah, but they tend to shoot up for a reason. Scottie wasnt considered a top 5 pick until right about a week before the draft. Coulibaly is looking like a stud and more NBA ready than people thought as a 19 year old. Jalen Williams is another long armed wing who shot up into the lottery after being ranked much later. Going back further Giannis is one of those players who rose late in the draft process. Salaun isn't even a late riser like those guys. He's already rising before the midway point of the season.REJECTEDBYCLARK wrote:The problem with all these young long 3 point shooting international prospects every year is that they barely show any self creation skills because they either dont have them or due to the more minor roles they play on their teams overseas don't get to display them or practice them in game situations. It's largely a guessing game until they show up for workouts and 1v1s. If they have good defensive tools and stroke it well from deep you can get an idea of the floor but the ceiling is much more difficult to determine. Even with half an NBA year under his belt nobody knows if Coulibaly is just going to continue as a transition + 3s + straight line drives on offense guy or not.
I don't really buy the argument because it's a guessing game with virtually every prospect except for a select few in every draft. Saying "the problem with all these young wings is they barely show any self creation" doesn't really mean much when the majority of draft prospects have flaws of some kind that make it difficult to project their ceiling. Knecht has "shot creation" but how will he get his shot off against longer and more athletic defenders? Holland has shot creation but he can't shoot from distance and could max out as RJ Barrett. Walter's has shot creation but he's not a great athlete and struggles to finish at the rim. Show me a player in this draft that is both uber athletic, has shot creation, can defend, and can also shoot. Heck, Alex Sarr can't even do two of those things yet with any consistency.
Treating shot creation as though it's the determinative skill for a prospect to succeed is great in a perfect world where you have your choice of unflawed players. But again I ask, show me that player in the draft without flaws that may limit his ceiling and I'll gladly take him.
Short of that what I look for in a prospect is a baseline set of skills and attributes that I can project from.
Are they athletic? Do they have burst? Can they handle the ball? Can they shoot? Do they have feel and IQ? Are they aggressive? Do they have work ethic? How will they be able to create an advantage on the court?
I take those attributes and I compare them against a player's age to get a sense of what their development curve might look like (this isn't disposative though since a guy like Pascal was both older and had virtually no shot creation and worked his ass off to develop it).
All players' ceilings are "difficult to determine" when you don't have a LeBron or Wembanyama to choose from. Coulibaly is only 19 and he's already averaging 11.1pts 5.5reb 2.4ast 1.2stl and 1.1blks prorated over 36 minutes on 39% shooting from deep. An NBA player he's been compared to is Mikal Bridges. Bridges was not a shot creator coming into the NBA. He was strictly a 3 + D player. He didn't really become a shot creator until the last two years at the ages of 26 and 27. At Coulibaly's age he was a college Freshman averaging 6.4 points a game shooting 29% from 3. Will Coulibaly develop shot creation? Maybe maybe not. But he has a baseline set of transferable skills already to project from, and even if he doesn't develop it like Bridges did or Pascal did, you still have plenty to work with. Bosh never developed into a shot maker and he's a 2-time NBA champion and Hall of Famer. Vince was not a shot maker when we drafted him. He was a slasher and dunker who could hit spot up threes on low volume in college. Michael Beasely was an incredible scorer and shotmaker in college but was severely lacking in a lot of attributes.
The point of all this is to say evaluating prospects is hard always. The best you can do is find a player that checks off enough boxes to give you hope in their ability to develop into something.
#31 pick like taller Tre Jones but more like a bigger Tyus Jones.
