ILOVEIT wrote:
You know what's really weird....is how we all adjust the bar for a guy like Oubre. We lower it waaaaaaaaay down. He hits two threes in a row and we think...yes...what a player!
We see him move the ball onto the next player and we are relieved lol.
And then we see Toscona come in and do the same things with less flare....
Sigh.
Oubre is a great example of the “moneyball” inefficiency in the NBA marketplace. Teams pay through the nose for athleticism. They see athletic ability always as a “potential” rather than a “result.” Oubre is a superior athlete because of countless 10,000 hours since childhood spent running up and down basketball courts and leaping and cultivating a body that can perform outrageous athletic feats. That is not a “natural gift.” This level of athletic ability is absolutely earned and a result of tremendous investments of physical labor. Just like a jump shot. Just like ball handling. And just like BBIQ. Oubre is not mentally deficient. He’s not learning disabled. He just didn’t invest the 10,000’s of hours in cultivating the mental skillset. Anyway, back to the market inefficiency, teams always view the athleticism as a given, a gift, and a base, something that is “raw material” they believe they can shape it into a hi IQ super-athletic Lebron or Giannis. It’s fools gold. Guys are largely who they are by 21-25. The learning had to start earlier. 10,000 hours if 4 years of 9-5 labor. You aren’t going to get that kind of investment along side of maintaining the physicals + competing in games and having a life etc. the die is cast.
Waitng for an Oubre to become basketball literate at the level of the Warriors system is like waiting for your cat to start playing the piano more like Chopin.
JTA clearly invested in a different parts of the skillset, parts that are clearly more valuable to winning, but parts that NBA teams don’t yet recognize when they see them.
The market has to get smarter. Oubre’s next contact will still be larger than JTAs, pricing him out of an appropriate role where his particular skills could be maximized off the bench and against other flawed/limited players. We need to casg in on that market inefficiency and move Oubre for a smarter player even if they dunk less.