Chuck Everett wrote:tontoz wrote:Chuck Everett wrote:I swear people take this guy for granted because of how consistent he is. That's one of the best traits a future pro can have.
I really don't care what he did in highschool. When I watch him now I see a guy who's athleticism and skills are pretty average.
That's fine, but it's hard for me to discount his Team USA experience as a prep. Even with the creme de la creme in his age range, he's always been dominant. I guess we'll just have to wait and see once he reaches the pro level.
Because even with him putting up 20 and 10 this year (and he is likely to do so), people are still going to look for his warts.
This is my thing with Cam. There are two clear different conversations to be had with him.
Looking at Boozer from a prep view point (high school, U18 international play, and college), you can easily make the case he is a generational player. He's 1 of 4 players to win Gatorade POY 2x. He was FIBA World Cup MVP, and I think he has a fantastic chance to be consensus All American as a freshman. There is no denying how dominant Boozer has been at the prep level, again I think you can honestly say he is a generational player at that level. Like I think there is a great chance Boozer can be NPOY as a freshman (I do think his shooting numbers will shoot up as the year goes on).
I think we can have that conversation, while also having a separate conversation about how he projects into the current NBA. If this were 15 years ago, Id say Cam would be penciled in as the #1 pick. Because 15 years or so ago, we had guys like Kevin Love, ZBo, Aldridge, Carlos Boozer and so on making All NBA teams. Because we still had the classic PF at that time. There was a clear archetype in the league of players with similar builds and athleticism, who were legit All NBA caliber players.
But the NBA is just a drastically different game now. Look at the last 5 All NBA teams, who is the comp for Cam? I know some have said Julius Randle, but just watch Randle move and then watch Boozer move, we're talking drastically different levels of agility. And even then, Randle is on his 4th team and it seems like whenever the team trades him, that fanbase tends to be happy he is on a different team.
In all honesty, I think Sabonis is probably the closest to Cam when it comes to size and athleticism. But even then I think Sabonis is at least an inch to 2 inches taller and he just plays so much bigger. And even then, that's been the question with Sabonis his entire career. Can you play him at the 4 to hide his rim protecting flaws, or can you actually win with him as the 5?