Agree with DSOUTH and I know I touched on it in another thread. You gotta use your eyes folks. Maybe they need to re evaluate the rating system. Again, the example I always use is a guy like Kyrie Irving pg to Greg Paulus pg. both 5 stars. However, the difference in talent is and has ALWAYS been immense. There was no time in either's respective career high school or college where the talent level could even be confused. It's almost blasphemy to compare a guy like Okafor to a plumlee etc but yet they are rated similar.
tru cane and gary, replying to both because you both kinda on a similar page on this as I am. I kinda feel like so much of evaluations of kids is based on how many points do they score, do they wow ya with amazing dunks that rattle the rims, how much FLASH do they show off. And while yes it does take talent to do those things, I never dispute a kid being in the top 20 is not a talented kid.
But I more want to see how a kid moves, how well a kid runs, how solid is he catching the ball and turning or does he fumble it? How often does a kid go in to attack mode, not talking about putting up volume of shots in a All Star game, not talking about 20pts from 20 shots, talking about does he attack on the offensive and defensive ends, does he play thru contact, does he lock down like a dawg with a bone on defense, does he play with passion. Theo put up shots in HS, jump shots that went in but you could easy see he was a poor jump shooter because his mechanics where poor. But I see in him the ability to actually be a solid jump shooter because he has a shooters feel, pretty much all he shot on last season was feel. You see him at the free throw line, it is all feel but it goes in well,l if he can learn mechanics IMO he can be a deadly jump shooter, you can learn mechanics, feel you have to just have as a part of you.
What I am saying is I don't look at the results of games to decide if a kid can play or not, I look at how they move, how they react, what do they have that is already instinct and what is mechanical to my view. I don't care if a kid can every now & then complete a sports center highlite pass for example, I care if the majority of his passes go to guy in position to finish in that comfort zone. Joel Berry for example, not flashy IMO, was not in high school, he made more simple passes, not the high lite reel stuff but his passes were easy for a big man to catch and his pass tended to be in a spot that his big man could catch and finish in a single movement.
Example, a kid I think will absolutely blow up in college and could end up being the best kid to play college ball as a frosh next season could be the Ball kid committed to UCLA. That kid to me is fantastic, absolutely fantastic as a floor general and passer supreme. Folks saw him in the Micky D but you put that kid in a regular season game after a few weeks of getting to know his team mates and not the nonsense of the Micky D show boating, he will really be special.
