junot111 wrote:RoteSchroder wrote:Bryant - A better athlete than basketball player. Lateral quickness/ability to stay in front of his man on defense isn't that great for a guy who's supposed to be an elite defender. Ability to go North/South with the ball on offense is lacking.
CMB - Strong floor, but also not the best perimeter defender, better suited for small ball PF. Not a believer in his shooting form, I'd project a slow and painful progression, but you never know.
Essengue - highest offensive upside of the three, worst post-D and strength of the three.junot111 wrote:I haven't seen any flashes of a star player from his highlights. He has a physical advantage and he knows how to use it. That is a skill, but will it translate to the nba? Outside of that he hasn't shown any on ball creation, no coast to coast plays, no passing ability, no ball handling, no difficult shot making. From what I can see he plays physical and knows how to move off the ball. He can be a fine player but I'm not seeing the hype based off the German league games that people keep bringing up
He has shown every single point you mentioned. It's just not frequent and very unpolished. If you like Essengue, you need to believe that he 1) has something to build on and 2) has the ability to improve on it (e.g. go from OG-level handles to Durant-level handles).
If you watch his games from 10 months ago, he had a few more on-ball plays in half-court settings where he got to the rim, but they ended up as misses or him getting fouled. You see a lot more "3 point line to rim" plays from Essengue than Carter Bryant.
E.g.
Half court settings:
0:09 - behind the back to a drive at the rim
0:36 - goes the other way off the screen, cross over to the rim
0:59 - simple baseline drive from the mid-range
1:19 - another 1 v 1 drive
1:36 - another 1 v 1 drive
2:08 - another drive past his man
2:13 - another drive attempt
There are a ton of bad misses and air balls in this footage including clunked FT's, but he's gotten better as the season progressed and will likely get even better still. The take away is that he's slashing past his man on every drive without dribbling off his foot. Seven half court driving attempts and he got past his man in all seven. This is someone with "no handles". What's it gonna look like with more training and development?
Now find me a half court slashing reel for Carter Bryant.
Thanks for sharing. This was hard to watch, he looked like Precious Achiuwa with a green light to shoot. I guess his coaches reeled him in to play within his role as the season went on so maybe that's a credit to his coachability. For the record, I don't think Carter Bryant's ceiling is any higher. But these lowlights haven't quite sold me and he has a LONG way to go to reach his potential. It's giving 2 years away from 2 years away vibes
Precious was a solid defender, had good strength, but low offensive IQ, so pretty much nothing like Essengue, who still needs work defensively, is weak, but excels off ball on O and is good at cuts/play finishing.
The slashing attempts seem to be around 0-2 per game at the moment. But everyone improves at different rates. In that vid you saw him clunking a lot of FT’s. He was at 50-58% a couple years ago and is in the mid-70’s now. Same thing with shooting, still not great, but noticeable improvement.
Successful self-creation ability from 11:22:
I would also say it doesn’t matter if he takes 4 years to get there, the key is more so getting there.
