Alex Sarr

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Just because a center has enough size to defend the position doesn't mean they have to be unskilled. A center can be big and skilled, or big and mobile. They don't have to be "goons".

Well, yes. The problem is, really big centers who are also skilled enough and/or mobile enough to stay on the floor in the playoffs are extremely rare, and costly. If you can find one of those guys, and there's maybe 8-10 in the entire league, then sure, add him to the roster and play Sarr more at PF. But even then, there will be difficulties. A team only has so many resources (picks and cap room) to spend at every position. And as long as we already have Sarr, I'd rather spend those resources to fill other needs with Sarr playing at center (plus a low-cost part-time goon center to complement him in certain matchups).

If you pay your star perimeter player max money, and also pay Sarr max or near-max money, and you go find an elite center who costs max or near-max money, you won't have enough money to fill out the perimeter positions. I'm saying, once we have your superstar scorer and Sarr as a (hopefully) star-caliber PF/C, our money is better spent on good wings before we spend it on another high-cost center.

I've said many times that it isn't hard to find a center with the size to defend the position. Utah drafted Kessler at 22. Hornets drafted Kalkbrenner at 34 (obviously not sure how good he is). OKC got Hartenstein on a reasonable deal. Ditto the Raps with Poetle.

How many quality centers have been drafted outside the top 10? We could have drafted Ware instead of Bub. We don't need to spend big money on a C.

I think your entire premise about a center getting played off the floor is moot because if the other team does that it plays into our hands. If they want to play small which allows us to play Sarr at C comfortably that is a win for us.

Do they really want to let us play Sarr at the 5 and Kyshawn at the 4? If so bring it on.

Kalkbrenner leads the league in two categories. He leads in FG% (0.900) and EFG% (0.900). He is 6th in ORB%. His PER is 18.7.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/k/kalkbry01.html

He is a 23 year-old rookie who was at Creighton for 5 years. Donovan Clingan is one year younger than Ryan Kalkbrenner.

[nate33]

Well, yes. The problem is, really big centers who are also skilled enough and/or mobile enough to stay on the floor in the playoffs are extremely rare, and costly. If you can find one of those guys, and there's maybe 8-10 in the entire league, then sure, add him to the roster and play Sarr more at PF. But even then, there will be difficulties. A team only has so many resources (picks and cap room) to spend at every position. And as long as we already have Sarr, I'd rather spend those resources to fill other needs with Sarr playing at center (plus a low-cost part-time goon center to complement him in certain matchups).

If you pay your star perimeter player max money, and also pay Sarr max or near-max money, and you go find an elite center who costs max or near-max money, you won't have enough money to fill out the perimeter positions. I'm saying, once we have your superstar scorer and Sarr as a (hopefully) star-caliber PF/C, our money is better spent on good wings before we spend it on another high-cost center.

I've said many times that it isn't hard to find a center with the size to defend the position. Utah drafted Kessler at 22. Hornets drafted Kalkbrenner at 34 (obviously not sure how good he is). OKC got Hartenstein on a reasonable deal. Ditto the Raps with Poetle.

How many quality centers have been drafted outside the top 10? We could have drafted Ware instead of Bub. We don't need to spend big money on a C.

I think your entire premise about a center getting played off the floor is moot because if the other team does that it plays into our hands. If they want to play small which allows us to play Sarr at C comfortably that is a win for us.

Do they really want to let us play Sarr at the 5 and Kyshawn at the 4? If so bring it on.

Kalkbrenner leads the league in two categories. He leads in FG% (0.900) and EFG% (0.900). He is 6th in ORB%. His PER is 18.7.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/k/kalkbry01.html

He is a 23 year-old rookie who was at Creighton for 5 years. Donovan Clingan is one year younger than Ryan Kalkbrenner.

Kalkenbrenner averages an anemic 9.5 rebounds per 36 minutes. And Charlotte's DRtg plummets by 13.3 points when he is on the floor. With Kalkenbrenner off the floor, Charlottle has a DRtg of 112.5, a respectable number that would rank 10th place in the league. When he is on the floor, Charlotte's DRtg is a horrific 125.8, which would rank second-to-last behind only Brooklyn.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

I've said many times that it isn't hard to find a center with the size to defend the position. Utah drafted Kessler at 22. Hornets drafted Kalkbrenner at 34 (obviously not sure how good he is). OKC got Hartenstein on a reasonable deal. Ditto the Raps with Poetle.

How many quality centers have been drafted outside the top 10? We could have drafted Ware instead of Bub. We don't need to spend big money on a C.

I think your entire premise about a center getting played off the floor is moot because if the other team does that it plays into our hands. If they want to play small which allows us to play Sarr at C comfortably that is a win for us.

Do they really want to let us play Sarr at the 5 and Kyshawn at the 4? If so bring it on.

Kalkbrenner leads the league in two categories. He leads in FG% (0.900) and EFG% (0.900). He is 6th in ORB%. His PER is 18.7.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/k/kalkbry01.html

He is a 23 year-old rookie who was at Creighton for 5 years. Donovan Clingan is one year younger than Ryan Kalkbrenner.

Kalkenbrenner averages an anemic 9.5 rebounds per 36 minutes. And Charlotte's DRtg plummets by 13.3 points when he is on the floor. With Kalkenbrenner off the floor, Charlottle has a DRtg of 112.5, a respectable number that would rank 10th place in the league. When he is on the floor, Charlotte's DRtg is a horrific 125.8, which would rank second-to-last behind only Brooklyn.

Five games in that's the rest of the story.

Perhaps the Hornets have been much better with Moussa Diabate at C .

[tontoz]

I never paid any attention to Kalkbrenner, I just saw other guys mention him. But the point remains that getting a center that can defend the spot effectively isn't hard.

There is a reason why AD and many bigs before him don't like playing center. They take a beating. Over the course of 82 games that is a lot of abuse.

[nate33]

6-and-a-half games into the season and I continue to be impressed with Sarr's offensive aptitude. He has massively improved his finishing around the rim and his ability to absorb contact. He is legitimately an offensive weapon for us at a ripe old age of 20. He leads the team in points per minute at a totally respectable TS% of .620. He really is tough to deal with on the short roll because he passes well and is starting to hit that floater. And even when he misses the floater, his second-effort follow-up is faster than everyone else and he often dunks in the rebound.

Obviously, he is still pretty raw and has a lot of improvement ahead of him with his footwork, hands, and shooting touch, but I really think he is going to be a very good offensive player in a few years - at least good enough to be a 3rd option and maybe even a 2nd option.

His main weakness now is his hands. He still gets the ball stripped too much and he has a tendency to lower the ball too much so little guards get swipe at it. But that's just details and strength. The guy is going to be good.

The other thing I really like about him is his demeanor. He seems sort of emotionless and at first, I thought it was meekness. I no longer think that. I think he is just unflappable. He reminds me of Tim Duncan in that he doesn't let anything get to him and he just goes and makes the next play.

[willbcocks]

The other thing I really like about him is his demeanor. He seems sort of emotionless and at first, I thought it was sort of a meekness. But I no longer think that. I think he is just unflappable. He is more like Tim Duncan in that he doesn't let anything get to him and he just goes and makes the next play.

I've thought this ever since he seemed unphased by that 0-15 summer league game and the firestorm of press attention it brought. He didn't come out of that trying to prove himself, nor did he become tentative. It just didn't seem to bother him one way or the other.

[AFM]

Update:

Dude has been incredible. Sarr George and Johnson all look like the real deal.

Per 36 he is averaging 24.5/10.8/5.0 along with 3 blocks on a TS% of .62. He's also shooting 45% from 3.

Sarr's TS% last year was .48...

[nuposse04]

19-8-4-2 on 28 mins a game is impressive. I would have been happy if he averaged 15-10 per 36 with an efficiency boost, but you can actually run some consistent offense through him. I suspect he will have some bad nights but this is definitely encouraging.

[nate33]

Alex Sarr, at age 20, currently ranks 26th in the league in points per minute, 27th in the league in rebounds per minute, 6th in blocks per minute, and is doing so at a TS% that is 3% higher than league average. Oh yeah, and he ranks 12th in the league in PER

Statistically, he is legitimately putting up All-Star caliber numbers, though a bad team like the Wizards certainly don't deserve to send anyone to the All-Star game this year.

[tontoz]

His TS is 13% higher than last year. Granted we are in ssst but still hard to believe.

[AFM]

This comes as no surprise for those of us that put faith in the Bordeaux Beast.

[DCZards]

I like that Sarr has been increasingly stepping into his role as a center—playing with more and more force and physicality in the paint.

Best part is that the 20 yr old is gonna get a lot bigger and stronger. Sarr is already bigger than Mobley, who he is often compared to, and Mobley is 4 yrs older.

[nate33]

I like that Sarr has been increasingly stepping into his role as a center—playing with more and more force and physicality in the paint.

Best part is that the 20 yr old is gonna get a lot bigger and stronger. Sarr is already bigger than Mobley, who he is often compared to, and Mobley is 4 yrs older.

If he continues at this pace, a more appropriate comparison might be somebody like Anthony Davis

I don't want to get too ahead of myself though. I'm guessing his efficiency is going to regress back to the mean a little bit going forward. And the Scouting Report will probably find better ways to slow him down. Frankly, if he finishes with a TS% north of .570, I'll still be very happy.

[Wizardspride]

This comes as no surprise for those of us that put faith in the Bordeaux Beast.

[willbcocks]

This comes as no surprise for those of us that put faith in the Bordeaux Beast.

I've been a believer in Sarr, but frankly I'm surprised; what he is showing now is close to the max of what I thought was possible, and I definitely didn't expect it this year.

It's crazy because he's doing this despite total incompetence out of the PG position. Usually centers start showing out when they have a good point guard operating on the pick and roll.

[Frichuela]

This comes as no surprise for those of us that put faith in the Bordeaux Beast.

I've been a believer in Sarr, but frankly I'm surprised; what he is showing now is close to the max of what I thought was possible, and I definitely didn't expect it this year.

It's crazy because he's doing this despite total incompetence out of the PG position. Usually centers start showing out when they have a good point guard operating on the pick and roll.

Great point. Our PG situation this season is abysmal with CJ and Bub bricking shots and committing turnovers.

[Frichuela]

On the previous point…

Read on Twitter

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[The Consiglieri]

This comes as no surprise for those of us that put faith in the Bordeaux Beast.

All like 3 of us lol. Get on the bandwagon people!

FTR, it is tiny sample size, but this is obviously also why the FO took a swing on him rather than higher floor guys taken after. The ceiling was worth the risk on a team with no assets worth a damn, and its second tank pick stuck in the worst class in more than 20 years (according to some anyway).

It may not continue, but I think it's quite evident that his collection of skills are enough to make him a useful player at bare minimum. The floor is much higher than it was 17 months ago, and the ceiling is definitely moving up as well.

It's wonderful to have Sarr beginning to hit in this way, and George to really be hitting as well (I will admit I found it quite odd how low both of them were rated in a couple of redrafts I saw done this past summer, especially George who barely moved in the redrafts despite giving some decent evidence during the last 50 games that he was a legit weapon, and Sarr, in one case, tumbling to the bottom of the top 10 if memory serves in 1 redraft was just mind numbingly stupid. It's lovely to see him crushing that take in the first two weeks of the new season. Vecenie's redraft from this past august in particular was so apocalyptically moronic, it calls into question why he should have that gig in the athletic (he keeps his boy Reed in the top 4 because, well, he really liked Reed a year ago, so never mind the absolute nothing that he did as a rookie, our boy Sarr didn't make his top 10, Risacher was 2 lol, I could go on). It's so bad I wonder if that's why you can't pull it up anymore (you get a 404 error when you try to read the article).

Anyway, it has been real fun watching Sarr make all the idiots and fools who couldn't see it, eat it. And I say this fully acknowledging, the raw #'s were not amazing, his hands were comically bad, he had a ton of holes in his game, but, and its a big but, he also proved he was a legit weapon in transition, and could hit the 3 from deep with no problem after a rough first month of the season. To ignore what he did show, and the potential he carried if he put in the work, while betting on guys that showed absolutely nothing, or had lower floors and ceilings? Let's just say I'm really enjoying him making people like Vecenie look as hopelessly take lock suffering as they clearly were and are (the athletic is great, but they have the same thing with their NHL coverage, literally every source on earth has the Caps having a top 10 farm system, with several mega elite prospects, but guess what, their boy pronman no likey goal machine Andrew Cristall (set freaking insane records the past 18 months), nor mega prospect Cole Hutson. Weird. Still love the site but man, their prospect guys with the NBA and NHL blow ---, at least when it comes to evaluating certain DC prospects.

[tontoz]

Watch on YouTube

[DukeLecker]

Has Sarr reached engine status?