Boogie! wrote:earthtone wrote:Rapsfan07 wrote:
I don't see it man. I think Barnes' is much more suited to play PF. If we wanted a C, why didn't we take a full sized one? Why we always taking guys and wanting them to play out of position.
I really, really don't like this pick.
Really? I think Barnes' ability to roam and provide weak side rim protection is one of his best defensive traits, he can absolutely hang at the 5 on that end IMO.
It would've been nice to have a more solid answer at the C (even tho we should remember the offseason hasn't even started yet), but I think a rim protection-by-committee approach makes a lot of sense with our roster. The only guys on our roster with a sub 6'8" wingspan are Jamal Shead and the new two-way PG we just signed, we have a lot of length at every position.
If you have a Ja'Kobe/RJ/Ingram/CMB/Scottie line-up, you have all five guys with 6'10"+ wingspans, three guys with 7'0"+ wingspans, and two guys with 7'3"+ wingspans. That's a ton of length and defensive versatility everywhere on the court, and still a lot of size at every position (aside from C).
The defensive versatility is great but at the end of the day can we score efficiently? It seems like every year we keep talking about our lack of offense and shooting and every year we keep compounding it with defense first players. And then the ones who are actually offensively competent we want to get rid of because they don’t play enough defense…
Indiana played great defense all playoffs but let’s not get it twisted they made it as far as they did because of their diverse offensive attack. They have a bunch of guys that can shoot 3s and create offense off the dribble…
And just as a side note to that offensive attack, this is why I’m not high on gradey dick. Not only can’t he play defense, his offense isn’t versatile enough to make him a consistent scorer… his catch and shoot game isn’t elite and he can’t consistently create shots off the dribble because his handle is meh and he gets rattled too easily. I look at someone like nembhard or Mathurin, or guards like Jaylen Williams and I look at dicks game and he just doesn’t look natural or fluid in that type of scorer role.
Yah, Dick is definitely a different type of player than Nembhard and not in the same league as JDub, but I think it’s way too early to write him off.
I think he’s in the same tier as Mathurin and lowkey projects as a better defender down the line once he adds some more strength.
He had a slump then got injured to end the season so I feel like there’s some recency bias to people’s evaluation on Gradey, but he was showing some amazing things offensively for a second year player before he got injured.
If you look at Cam Johnson and Tyler Herro who I think are probably the two best comps for Gradey, he’s pretty much on par with where they were after two seasons (and much younger than Cam).
Pretty good video on Gradey’s shotmaking from early last season, I think he has the highest offensive ceiling of any of our rookie scale guys