SeattleJazzFan wrote:jman3134 wrote:I was completely warming up to Murray as a player, thinking maybe he could crack my top 10 prospects in 2022. I am rethinking things a bit after this game. He was easily beat off the dribble by hybrid big Nathan Cayo. Keegan is serviceable enough as a team defender, but he was exploited one on one many times against Richmond. When his jumper was not working, he did not want the ball in his hands and he deferred to Bohannon and everyone else.
Keegan is still an elite shooter and undoubtedly a top 5 college basketball player. The handle is still too loose for my liking, and he does not play with enough physicality if I am an NBA team. Still a lotto pick, but think he is more of a 10-12 range complementary piece vs. a top 10 home run. How will Keegan stack up when matched up with 6'8 NBA athletes on the wing? He has the ball skills and shooting to make an impact, but he will not dominate in the way he has at the college level.
if you (or anybody - so not specifically directed at you) let one game sway your opinion of a prospect you a) either haven't seen them enough to form an educated opinion or b) you just aren't very smart. sorry, just being honest. either Murray is a top 10 pick or he's not. and whether he is or isn't is based on several factors that have been evident over the course of 60+ college basketball games (and some might include what they saw of him in HS even) nothing that happened in that game yesterday changed who murray is as a prospect. iow, he's the same prospect today as he was wednesday.
if anything that happened vs richmond changed the way you think about murray i will give you the benefit of the doubt and say in your case it's option A - you simply haven't seen him play all that much, hence the reason you've allowed one game to sway your opinion significantly. which is understandable - those of with day jobs can't watch every prospect 50 times.
Whether you like it or not, the biggest stage is the most important, regardless of the small sample. You clearly aren't understanding what I am saying, but that is fine. You can stack my track record against anyone on here (in just the last year calling Jaden's breakout pre-tournament and having him on my top 12 list for last year's draft).
It isn't about one game. This is what you do not understand about prospect valuation evidently. It is about how you play when you are playing your worst. So no, I don't suddenly imagine that Keegan won't be a lights out shooter in the pros because he was garbage against Richmond. If I did, I wouldn't rate him as a lottery pick because this is his most obviously translatable skill. So, yes, I have watched him dominate shooting the ball and imagine this can continue at an NBA level.
With that said, will his handle be serviceable as a pro? Not if he does not work on this significantly in the offseason. He very well could given the leap he made from last year to this year. That is the art of evaluation.
So what did I learn from his game against Richmond? You can iso him and score at a pretty high rate. Something which I thought he would be okay with if I only watched all of his Big Ten games. His closeout D (and subsequently his timing here) has always been suspect imo (allowing 1.192 PPP in spot up scenarios, bottom 8%: his opponents are shooting 45.3% FG% in spot up scenarios according to Synergy), though he exhibits good defensive intelligence in help rotations down typically. He is usually a step too slow on many of his perimeter closeouts. This is something you normally can improve on if you understand ball movement and how teams will rotate the ball. Studying film can help with this. However, Richmond was a clear example of where his 1 on 1 D was very, very bad. To be clear, it was never elite at the Big Ten level, but it was downright awful yesterday. I always noted that he was not matching up against his physical equals during the season. So defense has always been a question mark.
His physicality was poor on the defensive end, and Iowa's team D masks it a bit. He generates steals converging on defenders in the lane and rotating down in help scenarios. This will not happen at the NBA level if he functions as a wing because of the improved spacing. If he helps down every time, his man will hit 80% from 3 on uncontested shots all game long. Another nugget I did not realize is that Givony and ESPN mentions that NBA execs are imagining him as a small ball center. That is patently absurd to me, especially in lieu of how he guarded Nathan Cayo yesterday. Obviously, having Keegan shooting as well as he does as your 5 man opens up the rest of the game for a team. But, this is not feasible imo.
Typically, in the top 10, you take a home run for a star. I don't know Keegan personally, but maybe he has a Kobe-like mentality and will improve significantly every year. However, I can only evaluate based on what I do know, which is his tape. And I see a clearly defined role with several limitations for Keegan, not a star.
