FarBeyondDriven wrote:The Moose wrote:FarBeyondDriven wrote:
but it actually does have guys that have NBA aspirations, both of whom were getting draft buzz and a coach that was prioritizing them in Mathew Cleveland and Wooga Poplar. This is similar to what happens to most players when they go the NBL or play overseas. You can't evaluate prospects like these using stats and production and that's where so many here and in the media fail when it comes to this class since it's loaded with more examples like this than normal. You had Dillingham and Sheppard playing backup to Wagner. NBL guys all backups if playing at all. Furphy backed up Elmarko Jackson for first 1/4 of the season. Ignite was a wreck and made evaluating its players much harder. McCain was prevented from playing much PG. Castle didn't play PG like he could have. Cody Williams was injured all season with one thing or another.
It is just requiring a different manner of evaluation and people don't seem quite up to it imho, mostly because of their reliance on stats and production which should be the last thing you should care about tbh. Go look at the production for Embiid at Kansas, Bam at Kentucky, JJJ at MSU, Barnes at FSU and international guys like Jokic, Giannis Avdija, Coulibaly and Luka playing overseas before entering the league. I just don't get why people are so harsh to the kids in this class but overlooked production when it came to these other guys in past drafts. Anything to fit the narrative I guess.
Embiid, JJJ and Barnes are some of the strongest performing freshman analytically in the last 10 years. Stats draft guys were higher on them than consensus/eye test guys
they had underwhelming production and nobody would have cared (and probably didn't back when Embiid and JJJ were playing since evaluators weren't obsessed with advanced stats like they are now) about their analytics if not for the fact that they all possess elite, translatable physical and athletic traits. They were really starting to go overboard with advanced stats when Barnes came out but loved Barnes mostly because he was a 6'8" wing with a near 7'3" WS that had ball skills and played great defense.
Yeah, no. They were outliers analytically due to their production, the idea they didn't produce when on the court is not based in reality. Embiid and JJJ both had 10+ BPM as freshman, this is elite freshman box score productivity, and historically a very, very strong indicator of NBA success.
I mean there were literally stat draft guys saying JJJ was one of the best prospects in recent years based off his freshman production. You are correct in saying the elite physical traits in combination with elite advanced numbers helps to solidify peoples thoughts.
As for Barnes, he was a 6'8 wing with a 7+ BPM (11 BPM vs t100 teams), 30+ AST%, positive A:TO and elite STOCKS, any decent draft model would have him ranked in top 5 based on that production.
The only freshmen in this class who are actually anywhere near the production level of the guys you listed are Sheppard and McCain.
If you want to talk about guys who actually had garbage production/poor analytic measures but some elite physical traits (which is more in line with a lot of the freshman/internationals the mainstream is pushing in this class), you should've used examples like Jaylen Brown, Jaden McDaniels, Dejounte Murray or Zach Lavine. These are some of the few guys who actually overcame their awful pre-draft production