Charm wrote:nolang1 wrote:Charm wrote:
yoyoboy put it better than I did. A good analogy would be 3-point shooting...some players were terrible 3-point shooters as college freshmen but went on to become good or even great shooters in the NBA. There are probably even examples of players who were bad 3-point shooters (or non-shooters) *and* bad foul shooters, and they still somehow developed respectable 3-point shots later in their careers. This doesn't mean that college shooting numbers and assist:TO numbers are worthless for predicting NBA outcomes. It just means that there's significant uncertainty in predicting NBA outcomes, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone here. If you want the odds to be in your favor, of course, you pick players with more proven skills and higher likelihood to develop new skills (i.e. younger players).
It's too bad Cade Cunningham just started playing basketball last November; maybe if he had played against nationally-ranked high school competition or in the EYBL or maybe even a FIBA U19 World Cup we would know more about whether he's a good passer. Of course, even if hypothetically speaking he had played basketball before this year and was a good passer, there's always the chance he forgot (for reasons that have nothing to do with playing with zero floor-spacing teammates who shot a poor percentage on the opportunities he created for them, obviously).
In addition to being more recent, the level of competition and the sample size (of non-blowout games) are both much more significant for Cade's 2020-21 season. There's a reason people generally focus on a prospect's most recent season, barring injury. There's a reason no one talks about Brandon Boston anymore.
The stuff about Cade's teammates is totally overblown too. They had no problem scoring when Cade was on the bench, or even in entire games without Cade. They shot a higher percentage overall than the NCAA average. And even if his teammates *were* terrible, it wouldn't be a great excuse. Take a look at fellow freshman Nijel Pack, an unheralded prospect marooned on a KState team utterly devoid of offensive talent. Still he managed a very respectable 3.8 assists and 2.0 turnovers per game. If Cade was as good a passer as some people think he is, he would've done similarly.
OK little buddy, keep pretending this guy is a bad passer and that the minutes he wasn't on the court (he played 35+ in 16 of his 27 games) make up a meaningful sample lol. Again, this started with you making some smarmy "can't imagine some NBA team ever being dumb enough to put the ball in the hands of a guy who had more turnovers than assists...let's see how that works out for them" remark and having it patiently pointed out that even if you were to charitably assume that his stats were a true measure of his current passing ability (i.e. completely ignore that he played with non-shooters against defense that will pack the paint more than he will ever see in the NBA) there are plenty of players, even stars, who had more TOs than assists in college. Now you've totally moved the goalposts to saying it means he's overrated because he will never be his team's only ballhandler for the entire (which as others already pointed out is a standard that is too much to expect from even the Harden or Luka type of guys over a prolonged period).
