ESPN article "Ranking Towns, Porzingis and NBA sophomores by future potential"

[MelosSoreWrist]

http://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/18491855/kristaps-porzingis-karl-anthony-towns-best-nba-sophomore-chad-ford-kevin-pelton-debate

Chad Ford

1 Towns
2 Porzingis
3 Jokic
4 Myles Turner
5 Devin Booker
6 D'Angelo Russell
7 Trey Lyles
8 Justise Winslow
9 Emmanuel Mudiay
10 Jahlil Okafor

Kevin Pelton

1 Towns
2 Jokic
3 Porzingis
4 Myles Turner
5 D'Angelo Russell
6 Devin Booker
7 Trey Lyles
8 Larry Nance Jr.
9 Sam Dekker
10 Montrezl Harrell

Pelton: D'Angelo Russell rounds out my top five. The No. 2 overall pick has made incremental progress in his second season, improving his assist rate from 4.2 per 36 minutes to 6.0, increasing his usage rate to 27.4 percent of the Lakers' plays (up from 24.2 percent) while maintaining his efficiency and improving on the defensive glass.

While Russell still has a long way to go in his development as a playmaker and defender, a look around the league shows the opposite story at point guard as at center: Russell is perhaps the league's best full-time point guard younger than age 25, which augurs well for his long-term development.

Pelton: Nance is already an above-average backup big man -- the Lakers have really missed him while he has been sidelined -- who might eventually grow to become a starter.

Not the end all be all, but thought it might be interesting how others gauged Russell and Nance.

[Slava]

Pelton had Russell going #1 in that draft. He's consistently been a D'Angelo fan and probably 1/2 national writers who can comment on him while being completely objective and not referencing the Nick Young video atleast once.

[TyCobb]

Russ should use this as a reality check and improve his conditioning level this offseason.

[No-Man]

LOL at Pelton going full-stats mode without any regard to future upside, Harrell at 10 is a joke.

[mjba]

i think russell at 5 is actually is a reach based on what we've seen thus far.

turner, towns, poz and booker are all clearly ahead, imo. jokic looks to have top 2 potential in a relatively small sample size.

beating out 7-15 is really not much of an achievement given his assumed ceiling by many, myself included. most have underwhelmed.

sux for me to say that...

[Slava]

i think russell at 5 is actually is a reach based on what we've seen thus far.

turner, towns, poz and booker are all clearly ahead, imo. jokic looks to have top 2 potential in a relatively small sample size.

beating out 7-15 is really not much of an achievement given his assumed ceiling by many, myself included. most have underwhelmed.

sux for me to say that...

The myth that Booker is ahead, not to mention clearly ahead of Russell needs to stop. There is no argument either in terms of +/- stats, RPM, shooting efficiency or even PER that puts him higher than Russell. You might have that opinion only if you read RealGM hot takes ant not watch games.

http://bkref.com/tiny/eSsEz

[mastermixer]

Just out of interest, here's all the sophomores current season fantasy rank(among all players) and stats.

[dockingsched]

Still think it sucks that a handful of minutes prevents people from considering Randle a sophomore

[Landsberger]

This demonstrates the problem with limited statistical analysis of a dynamic model with several thousand variables.

What a player can do for a team is more than "Fantasy" value. Ability to lead, attitude and drive to be better are not quantifiable ahead of statistics which are just products of situations and singular factors in a sea of variables.

If the problem is which of the second year guys nets the most stats that's one thing..... if it's which one will be the most valuable to a TEAM that is a contender then it's entirely another.

[stan francisco]

The eye test suggests Russell could top that list. He's dominant when pissed off and fully engaged. It's a mindset thing that can be switched, Hire E.T.'s old pregame "annoyer" coach to piss him off before each start.