Los Manos wrote:Mufasa, the reason I laughed is because in the same breath as entirely dismissing the raptors scouting department you go on to say that you've broken down 3 games and claim to know that players game inside and out. If you can't see the joke in that then I assume it is your massively inflated ego that is getting in the way.
No I didn't, I said his complete goose egg in penetration plays in those 3 games, is pretty good evidence that he lacks the skill. That doesn't mean knowing the players game inside and out, it's just knowing what kind of player Barnes is, and that's a player who takes jumpshots and doesn't penetrate to the rim. There is such a thing as diminishing returns with information on players. Some people like Givony have been up front lately about how going to workouts might actually lead to bad decisions, because teams will see a player doing something that he didn't all year in the wider selection of information, and convince themselves in him being a prospect he's not. Likewise I expect if a team watched 30 Barnes games instead of 3 and picked up 10 out of 180 shots where he drove through the defense to the rim or 10 total passes off the dribble drive, then said "Ah ha, he can be a dribble drive penetrator and passer! This play is evidence he has that ability", they would likely be making a huge mistake because in that time period there was probably 150 plays where Barnes wanted to drive to the basket, got two steps in, only to find the defender backing up properly enough to force him to dribble it back out and either take a jumpshot or pass it to Marshall.
Likewise many, many of the big draft mistakes lately have been teams refusing to believe a duck is a duck. Thinking a 6'2 SG can become a PG. Thinking a PF can move to SF. Thinking an athletic big man with no offensive game in college can be carved into a finesse skilled scorer. In reality just about everyone plays the same style in the NBA that they did in college and someone who watched 2-3 games may have had a more realistic expectation of how that guy is going to play at the next level.
As for the Raptors scouting department. Look, I don't know what their lists look like, I don't know competent they are, I don't know if we have great scouts who Babcock and BC ignored. I do know that we've f*cked up repeatedly. The Haffa pick and Graham over Granger is flat out inexcusable. Demar and Ed were B level athletes with no skill games, the big mistake with them being that a player can learn a high end skill game after being near ground zero as a college player, which absolutely does not happen. They don't really deserve the benefit of the doubt. Our most successful draft pick from 04 to now was Bargnani, and he was a #1 overall pick who has only broken 17 in PER once through 6 years (and it was an abbreviated season with a large period of sh*t play by him), so yeah, what does that tell you
