Mizerooskie wrote:payitforward wrote:Mizerooskie wrote:Barnes is far from a perfect player, but a majority of this post is bollocks. You're vastly, vastly underselling him.
At stake here is whether he is a good pick at #3 in this draft. Not whether he's been a good player at North Carolina. "Vanishing" is a metaphor -- he was altogether visible. What's being said is that he hasn't produced enough to merit being picked #3 in this draft. Your thoughts on that subject are...?
'Vanishing' had no implication on his draft position. It implied that he didn't play well when UNC needed him most. While he struggled this year, last season, his point totals in the ACC and NCAA tournaments were: 18, 40, 16, 24, 22, 20, 18. 22.6 PPG during the biggest games of the season is far from 'vanishing'. And before you say that the 40 point outburst skews the numbers, UNC loses that game, no question, without the outburst.
I think he's done just as much as anyone outside of Davis, Beal, and Robinson to merit that draft position (yes, that includes MKG).
My entire point was too fold, first, that for a supposedly elite player, there was no consistency to his game, and there wasn't, in his two years the only consistency was in his inconsistency, horrible start in '10-'11, decent middle, bad-sub par in Feb, good to very good in tourney, in '11-'12 he started fast, then went to sub par, improved a bit, before declining precipitously. The one consistent problem he had was showing well whenver there were issues, poor point guard play in Nov-early Jan of '10-'11, what did you get from Barnes? Nada. Everybody healthy and Marshall discovered, he's suddenly solid as a rock, in '11-'12 Marshall or Henson goes down, his production drops dramatically, pressure applied in the NCAA Tourney without Marshall and suddenly he's totally lost and competely ineffective, needs to shine in '11-'12 in general with his draft day looming, has an uneven season from start to finish.
I don't see consistency, i dont see elite play, except in small little drips here and there, stretches of a week or 2 at a time at best, before sinking below the water again.
He has no business in the top 5 or 6, none. As for MKG, word is the guy is the hardest worker scouts have ever seen, he fights from the first to the last minute in college on the defensive and offensive end, he's a fantastic leader. He does every little thing that can be done, and is a fantastic finisher. Is his jump shot wack and does it need work? Absolutely. But you know whats funny? Down the stretch in his last 10 games at Kentucky as they played their way to a title he wasn't a liability at all as a shooter. He shot 50% from the floor in their 10 game stretch run that ended with their title winning performance against Kansans. 50% from the floor, a far sight better than Barnes 35% at the same time.
As for Barnes shooting percentage in general and why it should take him out of the running, the guys bread and butter is his catch and shoot game, he isn't a great finisher. I agree with Mizerooskie that stats tell you only part of the picture, but Barnes is a horrible example of that issue being in play since his singular reason for being in discussion this high is his shooting, which has been largely overrated this far, particularly without a fantastic point guard feeding him the ball. If he is only a "meh to above average" shooter at the college level, and his grand body of work suggests that, than what is he exactly? You peruse the scouts take in Aldridge's column from April and you shudder:
Link:
http://www.nba.com/news/features/david_ ... index.html"....Barnes' skill is catching and shooting. He's a smooth perimeter talent, and at 6-foot-8 he's more than big enough to get his shot off against most pro threes. A team with a low-post option or a penetrating point guard could have a field day rotating the ball out to Barnes on the weakside.
"No question he's a catch-and-shoot guy," said an Eastern Conference exec. "He's not a slasher. He's not a good finisher at the basket. Doesn't look all that athletic. But he's going to look good. I have to believe he'll be all of 6-8, NBA body, he can shoot the ball and would be a willing defender. He didn't have a great year, but I still don't think it's going to hurt him."
The Tar Heels made the Elite Eight, but lost to Kansas. Barnes scored just 13 points on 5 of 14 shooting in that game, and when he tried to take over he couldn't get going. That game exemplified Carolina's struggles without point guard Kendall Marshall, who fractured his wrist during the tournament.
"What you ended up seeing was those bad shooting nights," said a Northwest Division executive. "He had several NCAA games where he just struggled. Some of that was being forced to do too much. He averaged about one assist a game, so you've got to be thinking, is that on him or is that the lack of scoring on that team?"
Said a Southeast Division talent evaluator: "They took a guy who was essentially a jump shooter, and at the end of the year they have him putting the ball on the [bleeping] ground and driving. Young fella, that's not what you do. What you do is knock down jumpers off two bounces, and off the catch."
Scouts also think Barnes may have felt obligated to live off of the hype that accompanied him out of high school to Chapel Hill.
...."...I don't know where his head's at. But he's a quality kid. No reason he can't figure it out. When he came to college I expected someone who was ahead of Shane Battier at that developmental stage, and Shane's had a pretty good career ... I never saw Harrison Barnes as LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or Jerry Stackhouse. I just saw a nice, solid player."
That isn't a bad thing, and scouts know that.
"I think Harrison could be a guy that we get down on and forget about, and then he has a solid, 15-year career," a Western Conference executive said. "You always want more from him, but he's talented enough and good enough that he's going to last. When you come in with so much hype, it's a disappointment when you don't live up to that."
All of this says to me that Barnes would be a great fourth player, a guy who should go somewhere between 8 and 20, when the elite players, and the guys with the best chance of becoming elite, have gone off the board and teams are looking for good players that fit, and could be great role players, and/or solid career starters for him. You don't take a guy whose upside is "solid career" at 3, when there are far better options available. You just dont. I can see how Barnes would be a perfect fit for Wall in a lot of ways, but not when we've got nothing save Wall right now, and this is likely to be the last exceptionally high pick for us for quite a while. You need to draft a guy with way more upside than "solid-good" career when you're us. You just have too. It would be criminal not too. Freaking Drummond makes more sense and that's saying a lot.
As for the dangers of group think on the board, while i agree there could be some, i dont ever see too much of it. There always seems to be pockets within pockets, for instance on this board there are a handful of Barnes fans, a handful of Drummond fans, clumps of Beal supporters, clumps of MKG supporters, fans of trading down too, and Yoda afficionados and CCJ and his singular approach. Theres a lot more than just group think.
