17 Years later the next Duncan is here. J. Okafor

[footey]

 Call me crazy. This kid is not even fair. Keep Wiggins, Keep Parker, This kid is 18, he's 6'11" 275 pounds he's got a 7'5" wingspan and best of all It's not because he's the best athlete you have ever seen in your life, It's because he plays like a super strong super sized  Tim Duncan, This kid will be so good barring injury it's scary.

 If we get Okafor we win a title within five years. Heck maybe sooner if we could lure someone else here, hell, a Celts fan can dream, Can't he?

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is exactly why tanking is the ONLY way to go for the Celtics. Out tank Philly, out tank the Lakers. We need to be the worst team in the NBA and our prize is Okafor or Towns. Two dominant big men.

Too late to out-tank Philly.  We already won 1+ games!! They are the tank masters.

[D.o.s.]

 Call me crazy. This kid is not even fair. Keep Wiggins, Keep Parker, This kid is 18, he's 6'11" 275 pounds he's got a 7'5" wingspan and best of all It's not because he's the best athlete you have ever seen in your life, It's because he plays like a super strong super sized  Tim Duncan, This kid will be so good barring injury it's scary.

 If we get Okafor we win a title within five years. Heck maybe sooner if we could lure someone else here, hell, a Celts fan can dream, Can't he?

Tim Duncan didn't shoot 50% on free throws in college. Or on any other level, for that matter. It's just not going to work this way, no matter how good he is otherwise.

Is this the very same kozlodoev who continuously retorts "sample size" for any other player (in Okafor's case, both the games he's played at the collegiate level as well as the number of free throws he's taken in such games) and then throws in the eye-rolling emoticon? 

Duncan played for four years, though. Okafor's a freshman.

That's exactly my point. Kozlodoev is asserting that Duncan is and always will be a superior free throw shooter based on the less than ten college games that Okafor has played.

Right -- don't mind me, I'll be in the corner remembering how to read. 

[footey]

If you go into a dark room and say "Jahlil Okafor" 3 times into a mirror, your team will be guaranteed a championship.  It's science.

I don't get it. Last year was supposed to be THE draft with transcendent talent. Wiggins, Parker, Embiid. We need one of them! Now: Next year is THE draft with Okafor, Towns,... Who will be in the 2016 draft? I'm curious who will be the next messiah?

One of my favorite parts of the offseason was watching this pivot happen less than a week after the draft.

... Are there people out there who are already dismissing Wiggins, Parker and Embiid?  Lol...  Those guys are going to be fantastic.

Especially Embiid if he can get healthy. 

[greece66]

To put it differently, there is roughly a 27% chance that a team outside the bottom four will win a top-3 draft. But this could be any lottery team, ie any of the remaining ten teams.
If we really want to go after Okafor or similar calibre talent we have to tank so badly we finish in the bottom 4, but this, apart from being a disgrace, is very unlikely to happen. LAL, Minny and Utah play in the Western conference, so they have a way tougher schedule, and then there is Detroit, Charlotte, Orlando...

[greece66]

 Call me crazy. This kid is not even fair. Keep Wiggins, Keep Parker, This kid is 18, he's 6'11" 275 pounds he's got a 7'5" wingspan and best of all It's not because he's the best athlete you have ever seen in your life, It's because he plays like a super strong super sized  Tim Duncan, This kid will be so good barring injury it's scary.

 If we get Okafor we win a title within five years. Heck maybe sooner if we could lure someone else here, hell, a Celts fan can dream, Can't he?

I agree that Okafor is great. Problem is that even if we finish as bad as 5th from the bottom (really unlikely considering that Philly has already established itself as the worst, and then you have Utah, LAL, NYK, Pistons, Minny, Charlotte and Orlando) this gives us only a 8.8% chance of getting Okafor.
Even if Okafor is not nr1, the chance of getting a top-3 pick will be 29.1%. I wouldn't get myself too excited.

Cleveland against all odds won the #1 pick last year, and I believe the Bulls in 08 did as well

Which, really, isn't making it any more attractive to tank.

I'm just not really interested in basing my organizational strategy on the outcome of lottery balls anymore.

thank you. My manager was right about basketball vs football. Now correct me if I am wrong or feel free to add what I missed

The teams that tank or does bad does have a guaranteed top 10 pick, to get lotto pick is another story. But essentially, the best players in the NBA are USUALLY picked in the top 10, vs football where good players can be in any of the rounds.

How can we solve the tanking issue with all the teams and how do we get more talent in the draft that can also prevent tanking assuming pick 11 to round 2 are also decent players?

I guess the biggest argument from what I heard is the size of the team in football vs the size of 15 players on a basketball roster

50% of all HOFs were in the top 5 in draft. Having said this, especially in the last 15 years or so there have been plenty of excellent players outside not even the top-5 but even the top-10. Think Giannis, Ginobili, T. Parker, M. Gasol. Good scouting can be the answer to our problems.
In any case, next year's draft has enough Centers to keep everyone happy- even with a 7 to 10 draft pick we ll probably be fine.

[kozlodoev]

 Call me crazy. This kid is not even fair. Keep Wiggins, Keep Parker, This kid is 18, he's 6'11" 275 pounds he's got a 7'5" wingspan and best of all It's not because he's the best athlete you have ever seen in your life, It's because he plays like a super strong super sized  Tim Duncan, This kid will be so good barring injury it's scary.

 If we get Okafor we win a title within five years. Heck maybe sooner if we could lure someone else here, hell, a Celts fan can dream, Can't he?

Tim Duncan didn't shoot 50% on free throws in college. Or on any other level, for that matter. It's just not going to work this way, no matter how good he is otherwise.

Is this the very same kozlodoev who continuously retorts "sample size" for any other player (in Okafor's case, both the games he's played at the collegiate level as well as the number of free throws he's taken in such games) and then throws in the eye-rolling emoticon? 

Okafor's FT woes are well-documented and don't start with the 23 attempts he took at Duke. He was a 57% FT shooter in high school (on 420+ attempts), and most scouting reports have "Must improve free throw shooting" solidly pinned on the list of negatives. But yes, perhaps he HAS miraculously improved to a 70+ FT shooter, and the 20-odd streak is just an aberration. Never discount the improbable, right?

Either way, I'm not particularly sold on Okafor. Even without the free throw issues, he looks like a slightly bigger Jared Sullinger to me. As opposed to the Wake Forest version of Duncan who appears longer, quicker, faster, and more explosive than any of those two.

[Fred Roberts]

Tim Duncan made the All-Star and All-Defensive team in his rookie season. Okafor might make the all-star but his defense is suspect to even be mentioned as an all-defensive team candidate.

  Duncan played 4 years of college.

Yeah. Duncan got seasoned on the game before he came out. Very few of these 1 and done guys will ever have a hold on the subtleties of the game the way Duncan does. He's the ultimate pro.

[mr. dee]

Tim Duncan made the All-Star and All-Defensive team in his rookie season. Okafor might make the all-star but his defense is suspect to even be mentioned as an all-defensive team candidate.

  Duncan played 4 years of college.

Yeah. Duncan got seasoned on the game before he came out. Very few of these 1 and done guys will ever have a hold on the subtleties of the game the way Duncan does. He's the ultimate pro.

Most of kids these days declare for the draft in their freshman year. Only few stay in the college that long to develop their game. Maybe if Silver tweak the draft eligibility and goes back to the old ways where only junior and senior can declare, we might see more polished products.

[D.o.s.]

There's no reasonable argument to be had in favor of four year students being better basketball players than they would've been at the same age had they come straight out of high school.

Think about it: It's actually completely ludicrous to suggest that a 23 year old who's entering his third year of NBA play would be worse at playing at that level than that same 23 year old who's about to start his rookie season.

There is an entirely different argument to be had about the social and economic and emotional factors that play into getting a ton of money at 19, rather than 23, and the merits of finishing up an undergraduate degree... but that's exactly what it is -- an entirely different argument.

[hwangjini_1]

 Call me crazy. This kid is not even fair. Keep Wiggins, Keep Parker, This kid is 18, he's 6'11" 275 pounds he's got a 7'5" wingspan and best of all It's not because he's the best athlete you have ever seen in your life, It's because he plays like a super strong super sized  Tim Duncan, This kid will be so good barring injury it's scary.

 If we get Okafor we win a title within five years. Heck maybe sooner if we could lure someone else here, hell, a Celts fan can dream, Can't he?

I agree that Okafor is great. Problem is that even if we finish as bad as 5th from the bottom (really unlikely considering that Philly has already established itself as the worst, and then you have Utah, LAL, NYK, Pistons, Minny, Charlotte and Orlando) this gives us only a 8.8% chance of getting Okafor.
Even if Okafor is not nr1, the chance of getting a top-3 pick will be 29.1%. I wouldn't get myself too excited.

Cleveland against all odds won the #1 pick last year, and I believe the Bulls in 08 did as well

Which, really, isn't making it any more attractive to tank.

I'm just not really interested in basing my organizational strategy on the outcome of lottery balls anymore.

thank you. My manager was right about basketball vs football. Now correct me if I am wrong or feel free to add what I missed

The teams that tank or does bad does have a guaranteed top 10 pick, to get lotto pick is another story. But essentially, the best players in the NBA are USUALLY picked in the top 10, vs football where good players can be in any of the rounds.

How can we solve the tanking issue with all the teams and how do we get more talent in the draft that can also prevent tanking assuming pick 11 to round 2 are also decent players?

I guess the biggest argument from what I heard is the size of the team in football vs the size of 15 players on a basketball roster

50% of all HOFs were in the top 5 in draft. Having said this, especially in the last 15 years or so there have been plenty of excellent players outside not even the top-5 but even the top-10. Think Giannis, Ginobili, T. Parker, M. Gasol. Good scouting can be the answer to our problems.
In any case, next year's draft has enough Centers to keep everyone happy- even with a 7 to 10 draft pick we ll probably be fine.

ha, ha, ha...not saying you are wrong, but i wonder if a bit of homer-greekism (please note the clever double meanings.  ) is going on here by greece666.

i would have thought on cb that THE example of a great player who was not picked in the top 5 would automatically be our very own paul pierce!!

[D.o.s.]

Pierce was drafted in the top 10, though. 

[fairweatherfan]

There's no reasonable argument to be had in favor of four year students being better basketball players than they would've been at the same age had they come straight out of high school.

Think about it: It's actually completely ludicrous to suggest that a 23 year old who's entering his third year of NBA play would be worse at playing at that level than that same 23 year old who's about to start his rookie season.

It's weird that this is still a thing nearly 20 years after "How the heck are these Garnett and Bryant kids ever going to compete against pros without any college experience?"

[D.o.s.]

There's no reasonable argument to be had in favor of four year students being better basketball players than they would've been at the same age had they come straight out of high school.

Think about it: It's actually completely ludicrous to suggest that a 23 year old who's entering his third year of NBA play would be worse at playing at that level than that same 23 year old who's about to start his rookie season.

It's weird that this is still a thing nearly 20 years after "How the heck are these Garnett and Bryant kids ever going to compete against pros without any college experience?"

It's because the league as an entity and owners can't really come out and say "we just want our draft picks to be as risk free as possible because evaluating talent that will still be there four years from now is neigh impossible."

[fairweatherfan]

There's no reasonable argument to be had in favor of four year students being better basketball players than they would've been at the same age had they come straight out of high school.

Think about it: It's actually completely ludicrous to suggest that a 23 year old who's entering his third year of NBA play would be worse at playing at that level than that same 23 year old who's about to start his rookie season.

It's weird that this is still a thing nearly 20 years after "How the heck are these Garnett and Bryant kids ever going to compete against pros without any college experience?"

It's because the league as an entity and owners can't really come out and say "we just want our draft picks to be as risk free as possible because evaluating talent that will still be there four years from now is neigh impossible."

Yeah, that and you can more easily market guys who already have national exposure from college play, but I mean it's weird to see fans still doing it.

[Beat LA]

Remember when Harrison Barnes was the next Kobe?

No, actually, that is not something I ever recall hearing, even once.

Well then today you can either say you learned something, or you can start to worry about your memory. 

From the blogo/forumosphere:
www.insidehoops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=170184
https://asubstituteforwar.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/harrison-barnes-o-j-mayo-and-the-perils-of-illogical-projections/
http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=39866949&sid=bfe1f244caa8730d4147cb250158969d#p39866949
http://forums.prosportsdaily.com/showthread.php?474486-An-unnamed-NBA-scout-suggests-Harrison-Barnes-is-the-next-Kobe-Bryant


And from Chad Ford:

It's been several years since I've compared a player to Kobe Bryant. Barnes is as close as you're going to get.

http://m.espn.go.com/ncb/story?storyId=5710090&insider=&wjb=

Barnes came into the matchup with an enormous amount of hype. Not only is he ranked as the No. 1 player on ESPNU's top 100 list, I have him projected as the top prospect in the 2011 NBA draft, and scouts have compared him to Kobe Bryant.

http://m.espn.go.com/general/story?storyId=5078028&pg=1&lang=ES

IIRC it was also mentioned on the broadcast of the Team USA vs. Team World game in 2010, when Barnes was still in high school.

If you didn't hear about it, I'd wager it's because you weren't paying attention.

Haven't we learned by now that Chad Ford doesn't know crap, lol?  Besides, I don't remember Barnes being compared to Kobe, either, but that's probably because I don't visit all of those sites.  My main source has always been nbadraft.net, and I believe that they compared him to Ray Allen/Luol Deng, so cut the guy some slack lol.  Geesh.

Also, weren't similar comparisons made 7 years ago when Oden was being called the best center prospect since, well, Jay Bilas said Ewing, to which I rolled my eyes, so this type of thing has happened before, and I'm sorry to say that we won't be getting any of those players - that's just not how it works for us, so I suggest that you don't get your hopes up, unfortunately, because there's no point - either we'll be shafted by the lottery as usual, or the guy won't declare, or he'll be on the board and Danny will pass on him for some moron who no one has ever heard of who likely won't be in the league in 2 years.  Sigh.