Ivica Zubac: huge miss by the Celtics

[liam]

  Ivica Zubac  PER 17.3 and WS 0.5 this must also factor in.

[byennie]

He looks good. That said, 3 things:

1) Zizic is looking pretty good too, against top competition.

2) These lists of 3 or 4 players and their per36 are pretty absurd. You can find 50 more players in the past few years to make your case either which way.

3) A big concern with a big guy like Zubac is the ability to play big minutes. So far so good, he doesn't seem like a fouling machine or out of shape, but projecting minutes for a guy who weighs 250-300 pounds is not trivial. He might also be limited by matchups on many nights if he simply can't guard the perimeter at all.

Would I like to have him? Sure. Huge miss? Nah.

[colincb]

I don't think Per 36 numbers are valuable when a player has played as little as Zubac.

They need a larger sample size.

He also needs to be starting. He's playing 13 mpg on a very bad team against backups on other teams.

[fantankerous]

  Ivica Zubac  PER 17.3 and WS 0.5 this must also factor in.

PER should never factor in to any intelligent discussion of basketball.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Also, there should be a thread where we all compliment Ainge on not drafting Dunn. 

[BitterJim]

Are we really calling draft misses based on summer league?  Not to mention that Zizic didn't play, and could very well have done better than Zubac if he had.  It's one thing to say that you really like Zubac and think he'll be a good player, or that you wished we had taken him, but saying that we screwed up by taking Zizic over him makes no sense

I feel totally comfortable pointing out that Zubac is a better player than both Jared Sullenger and Tyler Zeller right now based on his summer league performance as well as his professional career in Europe.  He could step in and play 18 minutes a night as a center for the Celtics immediately.  This is not even a "risky prediction" since we're going to see him do exactly that for the Lakers this year - they currently believe in him so much that they have no plan B at center.

He's not better than Sully (or likely Zeller) right now.  Heck, he's not better than Sully was his rookie season (unfortunately, Sully never played in Summer league due to the lockout and his back injury).  He may turn out to be a good player, but you have some seriously overinflated expectations for him.  Any 19-year-old rookie that comes into the NBA as a better player than the starting C on a 48 win team would go a [heck] of a lot higher than 33.

Saying that the Lakers have no plan B says more about how bad their GM (who also happens to have taken Zubac... hmmmm...) is than how good of a player Zubac will be

I'm not saying we screwed up by taking Zizic - I'm saying we screwed up by NOT taking Zubac.  Try to wrap your head around the idea that we had eight draft picks and had the opportunity to draft multiple impact players THIS YEAR.  Since the Celtics made repeated claims of exhaustively scouting the Euro prospects I find it hard to believe that they whiffed that badly on a guy who was one of four Euro centers available and lasted into the second round.

 

I keep trying to "wrap [my] head around the idea that we had eight draft picks", but my hand can only count up to 5 so I'm just really struggling 

Are you saying that the Cs should have used all 8 picks? The trade with Memphis could be argued one way or the other, but lets not say that it was a horrible trade because Zubac was available until we at least see what that pick turns into (and what Zubac does against NBA players)

Given that we took a couple of Euros in the first round, I think it's safe to say that Danny had a good idea of what level of prospect Zubac is.  I'm sorry, but I trust Danny and his scouting team more than you.  It's nothing personal (really, it's not), but if Danny didn't think he was worth keeping the 31 and 35 for (not to mention that every GM in the first round passed over him), I'll trust that over some success in the summer league and your view of his career in Europe

If he was some raw prospect who wasn't going to be ready to play a role in the NBA for several years (think Young, Hunter, Mickey, Yabu, Zizic, Bentel, Jackson) I could understand passing on him to avoid having to keep him on the roster, but this a 7'2 260 lbs shot-blocker with a post-game...  He's NBA ready right now and has a skillset that people on this board have been clamoring for for ages. 

There's not really an excuse available that justifies the Celtics trading their two top second round picks away and missing on a player who would A. Make an NBA impact this year, B. Is 19 and has as much potential to improve as any other 19 year old player. C.  Has more trade value today than he did when he was drafted.

I really think you are overrating Zubac to a ridiculous degree.  He may very well turn out to be an NBA ready player, or develop into a real star.  But acting like it's guaranteed to happen is objectively wrong.  Acting like Danny made a big mistake by not drafting him based on a pretty good summer league is a bit premature, too

Furthermore, many people on this board are creaming themselves over the possibility of trading first round picks and prospects for Jahil Okafor who had a similar impact in summer league to Zubac last year.

I know I haven't been "creaming [myself]" over the possibility of trading for Okafor (in fact, I'm against giving up any real assets for him), so I don't see what that has to do with my post, but whatever

You don't honestly think Zubac is on the same level of prospect as Okafor, do you?  I'm not a huge Okafor fan, but that's just ridiculous.  Yes, they both had good (but not great) summer leagues, but that really means nothing. There's a reason Okafor was a consensus #3 pick (arguably should have gone #2), while Zubac went #33 a year later, and it's not because Kupchak is a genius

Time to take a look back and compare Zubac to other NBA players now that we have a reasonable sample size of NBA minutes.

Zubac Per 36:
Age FG%  FT%  PTS    TRB  AST STL BLK   PF   TO
19  .509   .800   16.0  10.5  1.5  0.6  2.0   3.3  2.0

Jahil Okafor Per 36:
Age FG%  FT%  PTS    TRB  AST STL BLK   PF   TO
21  .513   .622  18.1   7.5   1.6  0.6  1.6   3.7  2.2

Jared Sullenger Per 36:
Age FG%  FT%  PTS    TRB  AST STL  BLK   PF   TO
24  .313   .500  11.3   8.2    0.9   1.2  0.3    5.2  1.2

Tyler Zeller Per 36:
Age FG%  FT%  PTS    TRB  AST STL  BLK   PF   TO
27   .468  .577  11.9    9.1   2.5  0.5  1.6   3.9  1.2

All these stats are from: http://www.basketball-reference.com

It's pretty clear to me that Zubac is the best prospect AND player out these 4.   Once again, the Celtics opted to pass on Zubac in the second round.

To add context to those numbers:

Player MPG
Zubac 13.4
Okafor 30.0
Sullinger 23.4
Zeller 11.8

So while Zubac's been doing well (especially in 2017 - he averaged 8.4ppg and 6.9rpg on 54.8% shooting in just 16.9mpg in January), it's in such low minutes that just comparing per36 stats isn't very useful.  I'd probably take him over Zeller at this point, but I wouldn't feel great about our bigs if he was getting regular minutes

To add further context:

Okafor isn't playing 30 mpg this year he's playing 23.2 mpg
And Sullinger isn't averaging 23.4 mpg he's averaging 10.7 mpg (after a completely foreseeable weight related foot injury).

Sorry, I was going with numbers from last year since they were full seasons from them instead of the injury-plagued sEason of this year

Also, Sully had his foot stepped on, so while weight had something to do with it, it was his opponent's weight, not his own. His previous foot injuries may have weakened his foot, bit this was not a weight-caused injury

[Big333223]

I popped over to the Locked on Lakers podcast today to see what they're talking about prior to the game tonight (they're all very pleased with themselves) and they were talking about Ivica Zubac not having a role on the Lakers this season and maybe he'll just get moved.

I know little about the guy but remembered this thread and that there was some passion for him after last year's draft. He's not someone the C's could use the DPE on but if he was out there and the Celtics were looking for some Baynes insurance, are there still Zubac lovers who would like to see him in green?

[hpantazo]

I popped over to the Locked on Lakers podcast today to see what they're talking about prior to the game tonight (they're all very pleased with themselves) and they were talking about Ivica Zubac not having a role on the Lakers this season and maybe he'll just get moved.

I know little about the guy but remembered this thread and that there was some passion for him after last year's draft. He's not someone the C's could use the DPE on but if he was out there and the Celtics were looking for some Baynes insurance, are there still Zubac lovers who would like to see him in green?

You would love to get Zubac. I think he’s a better prospect than Okafor and he’s being wasted on the Lakers

[shake603]

I popped over to the Locked on Lakers podcast today to see what they're talking about prior to the game tonight (they're all very pleased with themselves) and they were talking about Ivica Zubac not having a role on the Lakers this season and maybe he'll just get moved.

I know little about the guy but remembered this thread and that there was some passion for him after last year's draft. He's not someone the C's could use the DPE on but if he was out there and the Celtics were looking for some Baynes insurance, are there still Zubac lovers who would like to see him in green?

I'm not high on him, I was however incredibly high on their other 3rd/4th string center Thomas Bryant before the draft. any word on how they feel about him?