dc wrote:og15 wrote:Did it really? Do you think all that he needed was to have a higher head?
I'd say being foul prone and bad defensively and then suffering injuries is what actually hurt him, and he still lasted 6 seasons. His per minute numbers as well as if you remember watching him play don't suggest him having any issues producing numbers in the NBA like he did in college, but being foul prone, a bit turnover prone, a weak passser and not much of a defender will limit how much you get on the court to produce those numbers, not to mention consistently getting injured.
Also from a previous post, I'd say that you're certainly overstating the difference height in small doses makes in terms of seeing over the defense and shooting over people. As a shooter you really only need a glimpse of the basket, but with the players that people would be comparing, it isn't a 6'0 guy vs a 6'8 guy, so the difference in head height isn't going to be that drastic.
A higher head would not have made Diogu a better defender, better passer or less foul, turnover or injury prone.
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On the other side of the spectrum, we look at a guy like Blake who is 6'10 based on head height but is not much of a presence as a shot blocker and struggles contesting shots and defensive impact because of his length (or lack thereof) that is closer to that of a SF. Being 6'9 and having much longer arms but still being the same body wise would not make him "undersized" in comparison to the current Blake who can actually be considered undersized when it comes to length for his position.
Before his injury issues, Diogu was already being being swapped from team to team. He was the supposed jewel of the trade for the Pacers in the whole Murphyleavy for StackJack/Harrington deal, yet just over a year later Indy ended up trading him as a thrown in on draft day. His height did hurt him because he was almost exclusively an interior player with a back to the basket post game. If he were a face up guy like Milsap with the ability to play on the perimeter or an energy guy who runs the court like Faried, it wouldn't be as big a problem (though height still presents a problem for these 2 guys, just not to the same degree).
Blake measure out at 6'8.5". He's more/less an average sized PF (though in today's game you could argue that's slightly above the mean). His relatively short arms hurt him as a shotblocker, but overall he's hardly a liability on D and on offense he's physically too much for most opposing PFs to handle 1 on 1. Plus he's not limited to strictly being a back to the basket player.
Jimmer's game in college was just pulling up off the dribble and nailing bombs in people's grills. In the pros, he's obviously facing defenders who are just a lot bigger/quicker. At this level, reducing the amount of daylight a shooter has is going to affect his shot, especially because he doesn't have the quick release like most of the game's best shooters.
I never said that Jimmer flat out can't play in the NBA because of his height, because guys his size or smaller have obviously succeeded in the league. It just hurts him given his style of play, to go along his other athletic deficiencies.
Blake isn't a liability on defense because he's strong, athletic and can move well, not because his head is a couple inches taller, but his ability to be any sort of elite interior defender is capped by his lack of length. Diogu wasn't a liablity on defense because his head wasn't tall enough. He was a hack in summer league even, had like 10 fouls in a game.
I still don't grasp how you are allocating Diogu's struggles to height or even suggesting that his issue in the NBA was scoring. Isolating scoring alone, while he wasn't perfect of course, he was quite good enough.
Diogu also had an effective mid-range jumpshot, very effective actually even though he didn't take a lot. He was good at throwing his body around and drawing fouls, and didn't have issues moving players and scoring inside since he did most of his work from post-ups. Again, you keep talking about scoring and how his height hurt him, but the guys per minute offensive production in the NBA was good. He didn't bounce around early because teams were saying "oh he's too short to play his game on offense". Diogu had a career 17.4 pts/36 on .578 TS%. Whether he's playing backups or starters, that is excellent. His rebound rate of about 8.9 rebs/36 for his career was almost identical to what he was doing in college.
Now outside of scoring, similar to the defensive side, his issues on offense were bad passer and turnover prone.
Overall though, his main issue was defense. His defensive IQ was awful. He was extremely mistake prone on defense, he couldn't stay in front of guys, he couldn't stay on his feel, and overall he fouled way too much. There are guys who foul on defense, but are still good defenders. Diogu fouled way too much on defense (5.5 fouls/36 for his career), and was a bad defender. He averaged fouling out every 36 minutes, you're not going to get much playing time when you foul that much.
Diogu measured similarly to Elton Brand, but again, his issues were with skill related things, passing, turning the ball over, defense, and then injuries also added to it later on. The difference between Diogu and all those players you mentioned, Faried, Millsap, and the ones I mentioned, Blake and Brand is that Diogu while explosive vertically did not have very impressive foot speed and lataerl quickness.
While it was adequate, in combination with his poor defensive IQ and fundemantals, it caused him to be quite awful defensively as an NBA player and extremely foul prone. It wasn't Diogu's height that hurt him at all, he didn't struggle on defense because he was too short, he struggled because he made mistakes and was essentailly a hack on defense.
So before we even came to any effects of height, Diogu didn't last longer in the NBA because of poor passing and turnover issues offensively, and poor IQ and foul issues on defense, and even before height, we still have injuries that later derailed him as he could have still survived as a backup scoring option like a Carl Landry even with those issues.
The essential point is that being taller would not have alleviated any of those issues and made him stay in the league longer.Height could help Jimmer, but what would help him more is if like Redick he decided to adjust his game to fit what teams would want. Even if he was let's say 6'4, if he still didn't have the ability to handle and create at a good enough level and was poor defensively, he would find a hard time sticking, especially if he's still trying to emulate some of the playing style he had in college.