nate33 wrote:I just got done reading that article and was getting ready to post a link, but you beat me to it.
Yes, that article went a long way towards convincing me that Oladipo should be in consideration at #3. It sounds like his work ethic is ridiculous - reminiscent of Gilbert Arenas. He's got all of the smarts, intangibles and general feel to the game that Porter has, but he's also a freak athlete with a "wow factor" that could lead to stardom. It's interesting that he rebounds as well as Porter (who is a good rebounder in his own right) despite being 6-4.
I don't know, I didn't find the article very convincing. I think he also lifts a lot from other articles I've read about Oladipo.
First, it needs to be said that it's an enormous leap to compare Dipo to Jordan. Jordan was a far better player and bigger star than Dipo his sophomore and Junior years and he became the GOAT in the NBA. It's just a bad idea trying to build a comparison of any prospect to Jordan, they will ALWAYS fall short. Even LeBron. The article is so carried away with the Jordan comparison, it wants to use Jordan as a reason to draft Victor Oladipo rather than Victor Oladipo himself.
And of course the core argument about height is foolishly reductive. Players are not evaluated solely by their height. Jordan wasn't passed over just because he was 6'4. Noel is not the top player in the class because he's 6'11. 78" tall is not some magical cutoff for desirability. Kevin Durant plays a lot of PF, if Tony Allen matched up with him full time he'd get eaten alive. Wade checking LeBron at 6'4 doesn't mean it wasn't a horrible mismatch. Jordan at 6'4ish would not have been the best defender Chris Mullin ever faced if he had to play forward or center. Charles Barkley was 6'5 and a lousy defender.
Wizards team fit is the turd in the punch bowl with Dipo, and this the part of the article where he really starts making a lot of bad arguments.
- Being a huge upgrade over Garrett Temple =/= being a great draft pick. Temple's minutes rose because of Wall and Beal injuries, when they were healthy he never played. Temple has no role in a healthy Wizards back court. Projecting Dipo to assume Temple's role and minutes is not going to work.
- He rattles off how inadequate Booker, Ariza, Vesely, Singleton, and Seraphin are, and how Okafor had to go to the bench in the fourth. He'd rather play Victor Oladipo than them. Um, if you know our front court is so bad, doesn't it make more sense to try and fix that rather than force yourself to go with unbalanced line ups because Dipo is better than a collection of bad options? Dipo doesn't replace any of those bad options he names. They are all forwards and centers.
- I think it's weird that he makes the comparisons to Jordan and talks about Dipo as being a potential all time great, and then when he gets down to more grounded and specific predictions for how the Wizards could use him, he talks about Dipo coming off the bench and being a role player. Just drop the Jordan comparison then. The thing that defines Jordan most is his mega stardom, being THE guy on some of the greatest teams with the greatest seasons ever. When you acknowledge Dipo is a bench player here, then you're acknowledging he will never be anything like Jordan here.
- He undermines his own argument about this big need for bench scoring by pointing out how good our bench scoring was compared to the rest of the league, even finishing 12th after we shook up the bench with John's return. To this, he lamely responds that we went 29-53. What exactly does that have to do with our bench scoring? Are you saying that it doesn't matter that our bench scoring was effective because we kept losing anyway? Wouldn't that mean it was the starters who weren't getting it done?
- You don't have back court trios. You have two back court players at a time and three front court players. The Xs and Os of trying to play three guards in the back court at the same time doesn't work. It would jack up your spacing. Someone would necessarily play up in the front court at the SF spot. And if the other team doesn't match your personnel with small hats, then on defense you've got a guard on a forward.
And I think the article totally falls apart when the author starts bashing Porter and Bennett to try and justify a Dipo pick. That tweet from Bennett, he was tweeting about getting up to charge his phone as it was dying. It was a joke. Using that as some sort of evidence against drafting him, to be frank, is **** dumb. Especially when he opens up the article with old quotes from Jordan joking about how lazy he was.
He goes on and on about heart and the ability to improve with Dipo and ignores those exact qualities in Porter. He points out Porter's low shooting percentage off the dribble as a chink in his armor. There aren't many, so I get it. Isn't it something he can improve? James Harden massively improved his ability to shoot off the dribble. The guy just spent a lot of time talking about how Dipo improved all of these ways after all. Well, so did Porter. And he's way ahead of where Dipo was at 19.
Also, Porter's height is certainly not the sole reason so many people like him, that little sarcastic paragraph about the prototype size is a straw man. And he bashes Porter for a poor performance against Syracuse while neglecting that Indiana's season was ended by Syracuse too, they were a fine team. And Porter was THE guy for GTown. He carried Georgetown, including against Syracuse! He dropped 33 on them! Meanwhile Zeller was that guy for Indiana the past two years and Syracuse geared their entire defense toward shutting him down, not Dipo. Triple teaming him. Almost every opponent Indiana faced this season focused on doubling Zeller and shutting him down and he still led his team in scoring, rebounding, PER, and win shares. Dipo's sky high efficiency is partly a product of getting to play a lesser role as a second banana with lesser volume and minutes, something the article fails to consider entirely. His numbers come with an asterisk when you compare him to prospects who were the best players on their teams.
And it's worth pointing out that Dipo is not even the consensus top player at his position in this draft class. McLemore is.
The quotes from Ty Lawson and TRob are decontextualized and really should be considered meaningless given how the author shrugs off John Thompson's remarks about Porter. Also, you're not going to just "give [Dipo] a spot in the rotation." He's going to have to earn a role and earn minutes, not something to take for granted with Beal (a better prospect than Dipo IMO) is in front of him. And talking about Dipo growing taller and becoming an all time great was absurd speculation.
There are a lot of Swiss cheese arguments in the article. The author uses the emotion that Jordan conjures to try and make a case for Dipo but it's just not apt or relevant at all in making a decision about Dipo.
