Neeva wrote:shangrila wrote:Calinks wrote:It really is a damn shame we couldn't get Garland. One pick away, one draft position away from winning the 4th the pick. If Garland really does become Lillaird 2.0 this will be a painful memory.
He won't, so don't worry.
Ironically I think his ceiling is similar to what Russell is like right now.
Plus he has questionable fashion sense lol and injury issues already.
I want to elaborate a little here, because while I believe the Lillard comparisons are absurd and barely skin deep I don't necessarily think Garland's a bad prospect.
The main differences between Garland and Lillard are turnovers/decision making and ability to get to the FT line. Lillard takes care of the ball incredibly well and rarely makes mistakes on that end. Garland averaged nearly 4 turnovers a game against sub-par competition until his injury and is late to the PG party to begin with, having spent a lot of his youth as a spot up shooter (which bodes well for his ability to operate off ball, to be fair). The other issues, FTs, is tied to the explosiveness Lillard has and Garland doesn't, even pre-injury. There's just really no way around it. Lillard had a .335 FT rate (number of FTs per FG attempt) which is great and something I'd be amazed if Garland ever came close to.
Which is why I compared him to Russell, though another maybe better comparison might be to CJ McCollum. Either way, they're both jumpshot dependent guards that don't get to the line very often (or the rim actually, at least compared to someone like Lillard) and that will always cap them in terms of superstardom. As 2nd options? Meh, you can live with it. And maybe we do regret passing on another CJ type down the line, but I'd be really surprised if Garland ever reached a point where we were kicking ourselves for not including Covington so we could get the 4 from the Pels.
Besides, Culver has a fair amount of star potential himself so even if Garland reaches some improbable level...maybe Culver does too, in which case who cares?