tecumseh18 wrote:HiJiNX wrote:Randle McMurphy wrote:Edey not moving well enough to guard PnRs against college kids had exactly nothing to do with avoiding foul trouble. It had to do with him being one of the worst movers in the NCAA. The vast majority of teams in the country just aren’t skilled enough to take advantage of that but UConn did. It will only get even worse for him against better athletes and shooters at the next level.
Yeah agreed. Also people need to stop deferring to combine measurements to say someone is a good or a poor athlete. Combine stats don’t take into account fatigue, reaction time, general awareness and spatial intelligence, physical coordination, hand eye coordination, explosiveness through contact, etc. The best way to measure athleticism is to watch what players can do in game situations. It’s like that guy at the park who can only dunk off alley oops while shooting around because they can’t coordinate themselves or explode through contact in a game situation.
Based on what I saw last night, Edey has a long way to go. And it’s not just because of his foot speed, but his awareness/reaction time isn’t great. And he needs to work on his coordination, ironically, when he doesn’t have the ball. His arm placement for contesting shots and deterring drives could use lots of work.
You look at a guy like Jokic…terrible athlete on paper but his awareness and instincts are off the charts. He’s also phenomenally coordinated. That stuff doesn’t show up in the combine.
And you could see that last night side by side (literally) with Clingan. Clingan has a much faster reaction time than Edey, which made him an intimidating defender. Edey looked like an old stop-action King Kong (ironically) movie out there.
Of course Clingan has zero offensive game, and shoots FTs 100 point below what Jak did in college.
I remember watching Brook Lopez in his rookie year when the Nets played the Raps. He looked so good. I would have been willing to trade Bosh for him immediately. I suspect Mustard Tiger would have, too.
Clingan is obviously the better defender and way more mobile, but you have to compare the teams they're playing on too. If you switch teams for them, Clingan is not looking quite as good with Purdue's guards not being able to stay in front of anyone and Edey looks a bit better being surrounded with much better defenders that can stay in front of people.