Who?s your young guy breakout player for next season?

[keevsnick]

Baylor will be 26 to start next season, so I'm not even sure you can really count him as young. 26 is like the start of an NBA player's prime years.

The obvious answer is Hugo. Not sure you'll see some huge stats explosion but the impact metrics liked him a fair bit last year at just 19 years old. It will be interesting to see if stuff like on/off net rating holds up in year two. Could very easily see him morphing into an elite glue guy type player.

Cenac probably won't get enough minutes. Granted we said the same thing about Hugo last year but the consensus on Cenac seems to be he's raw and will need some time.

Walsh is another interesting case. Assuming no extension next year will be in a contract year. He's still young at just 22 and showed some definite promise last year.

[lbgreen33]

I hope it is Cenac.

I hope you are right! That would be awesome!

[RodyTur10]

I say Ron Harper Jr. He's not super young with his 26 years, but with less than 400 NBA minutes under his belt there's enough reason to assume he has unleashed potential.

If Pritchard and White would start in the backcourt, which I would not given our enormous wing depth, then the back-up (point) guard could be Harper.

I expect in first instance Conley will be given the nod, but he's completely washed and that would give Harper an opportunity for big minutes and development.

That said, I'm really curious how our wings (besides Tatum and George) will perform this year. It's a dogfight for minutes between Hauser, Scheierman, Walsh and Gonzalez.

It would make sense perhaps to trade Hauser in that regard for a back-up PG, but we know Mazzula and the Celtics demand defense reliability. There aren't a lot of point guards with good playmaking and decent defense in that price range (in the means of both salary and asset value).

[Who]

I say Ron Harper Jr.

That is a good call. A breakout year for him would be going from a borderline NBA player to showing he can play regular minutes in the NBA. Prove he belongs in the league.

I don't expect them to start Pritchard. I think if that was the plan, they would have signed a guard better than Mike Conley. Conley is not a rotation caliber player anymore. So I see Pritchard as the backup PG.

So I am looking for Ron Harper Jr to break into the team at the SG spot. To either beat out Baylor or to beat Hugo / J Walsh at that position. With Baylor, it would be Ron Harper's non-scoring game is better than Baylor's non-scoring contributions. For Hugo & J Walsh, it would likely be R Harper's shooting is better than their shooting.

He has got a legit shot at that.

[jambr380]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqOhOpv7Io&t=7s

This is an interesting video discussing Hugo's potential. It does a great job breaking down his elite off-ball defense, his strong and versatile on-ball defense, as well as some positives and areas of improvement on his offense.

I watched pretty much every game last season and liked what I saw from Hugo, but taking a deeper dive into his play has me pretty excited about what kind of player he can be one day.