BobbieL wrote:MrMiyagi wrote:WeekapaugGroove wrote:Not to get totally down a rabbit hole on analytics and how sports scout but overall the more team oriented a sport less you can use analytics.
Baseball is by far the best sport to judge by analytics because it's a very individual sport.
Football is the hardest because there are 11 men on the field and outside the coaching room it's hard to say exactly what a guy is supposed to do on any given play. I will say they base their draft evaluations on physical measurables more than any other sport. Minor differences in things like the 40 or 3 cone can really impact where a guy gets picked regardless of his college production. Hell I'm a Packer fan and they simply cross any CB off their draft board who is under 5 10.
Basketball falls in the middle. It's a team sport but their is more of an individual aspect than football and less guys on the court so a little easier to judge. Analytics have come a long ways in the past decade but most are still in the early phase and need to be refined to give a real true picture. In general I think offensive analytics are more accurate than defensive ones at this point.
This is the thing analytics junkies forget. Like, I'm all for analytics, they are a useful tool, but you can't just base your entire decision making on them. There will always be weird outliers in the analytics, which is why watching players play full games (and several of them) is necessary to evaluate them.
People like to bash Ayton's lack of defense, but look at his teammates. No one in the Wildcats rotation had a defensive rating below 100. Compare that to the 2013-14 Wildcats who had Aaron Gordon, Rondae, TJ, Brandon Ashley and even Nick Johnson and Tarczewski who were all solid defenders (most had a DRtg in the high 80s to low 90s) and played well in a team scheme. People who watch Ayton tape only watch his performance and don't see the defense breaking down all around him, so he's caught in no man's land too frequently. Now, he isn't Kevin Garnett or Anthony Davis, but he's still a pretty damn good defender.
If somebody takes Ayton off their board because of last season - that's dumb. Miller is not the best head coach.
Ayton is 18 years old. He has time to learn and get better
Well he's 19 and will be 20 in July, but I agree he shouldn't be removed from anyone's board. He was still great at a lot of things, has the size to play C and even though he wasn't a GREAT shot blocker, he blocks shots, shoots free throws well, has range, is a great rebounder and great inside. Also can defend perimeter well.
I think Miller is a solid coach but he just didn't have players who were great at defense. It wasn't all on Ayton but some of it was. Now if he just played C he wouldn't have gotten out of position as much, however the fact that he is good on the perimeter makes it tough. Sometimes he is worse at contesting inside. But with PJC starting he can't defend and Trier wasn't great and was out a lot. Then Alkins should have been better but wasn't too impressive.
