Poll: Smart will end up being top two player in his draft class.

[MJohnnyboy]

Let's note for a moment that statistically Zach Lavine was one of the worst players in the NBA last year. I understand he has freak physical gifts, but we probably would have got similar numbers from James Young if he was forced to start all season.

Really? Not disagreeing with you or anything but I'd love to see those stats to prove that!

And Smarts proven more than Lavine yall. Just saying.

[PhoSita]

.

He needs to take better shots this year, and become a better playmaker. It's really that simple for him in my opinion. If summer league is any guide he's made progress on the second thing but not the first.

I'm totally convinced at this point that the shot selection is just part of the whole package with Smart.  We want him to play tough, aggressive, and a little cocky.  Being willing to take shots is part of that.

His field goal percentage may never be pretty as a result, but as long as he steadily improves as an outside shooter, at least on catch-and-shoot opportunities, and gets to the line more often, his overall efficiency will be fine.

[Beat LA]

With the Parker injury that rookie class is basically Wiggins, then a bunch of 10-12 guys who showed some promise but haven't really established star potential.

Smart's in that group, at least....probably toward the high end of it.

He needs to take better shots this year, and become a better playmaker. It's really that simple for him in my opinion. If summer league is any guide he's made progress on the second thing but not the first.

Maybe Stevens can help by developing one or two offensive sets designed to get Smart a high-percentage look from somewhere. If I were Marcus I'd be working on a couple of post moves...seems like he'd have an edge down there against many PGs.

Sadly, I believe that you've identified both the problem and solution, in that Smart has post moves, but Stevens never calls anything for him other than brick city, because I agree, he does have a definite advantage down there, but if he's not allowed to use it, there's not much he can do, unless of course he flat out decides to go rogue, lol , and demands the ball inside, thereby countermanding Brad.

[Beat LA]

Let's note for a moment that statistically Zach Lavine was one of the worst players in the NBA last year. I understand he has freak physical gifts, but we probably would have got similar numbers from James Young if he was forced to start all season.

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year.  That way, he would have actually gotten the chance to DEVELOP . Sure, there would have been growing pains, and there still are, but it also took both Wiggins and Lavine at least a quarter of the year to get going, as well, and I would have preferred for us to have done the same, because it's win-win, imo - the guys get a chance to develop and we get a better draft pick as a result, probably 9 or 10.

What stats are you referencing to substantiate your claim that LaVine was one of the worst players in the league last year?  Are we talking advanced stuff, because his old fashioned stats look fine to me, and certainly better than Smart's, especially for a 19 year old.

[Big333223]

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year.  That way, he would have actually gotten the chance to DEVELOP . Sure, there would have been growing pains, and there still are, but it also took both Wiggins and Lavine at least a quarter of the year to get going, as well, and I would have preferred for us to have done the same, because it's win-win, imo - the guys get a chance to develop and we get a better draft pick as a result, probably 9 or 10.

Simply throwing a player onto the court doesn't mean he's going to develop. Giving a guy too much responsibilty too soon can kill his confidence and seriously stunt his growth. Of the opposite can happen, if he gets minutes in spite of his performance he could become entitled and then when those minutes are takent away, he pouts. Bringing along a kid of Young's age slowly makes sense to me.

[greece66]

He is top of his class in leadership!

I was planning to write this but I also suspected someone had already done it 

[greece66]

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year. 

Trouble is, he really wasn't ready. Black hole on D, at best mediocre offensively, no strength and still not fully recovered from injury.

There is no way to precisely calculate this, but IMO giving him 10 mpg would have cost us something around 10 wins, ie miss the playoffs, which is too high a price to develop a talent.

[Beat LA]

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year.  That way, he would have actually gotten the chance to DEVELOP . Sure, there would have been growing pains, and there still are, but it also took both Wiggins and Lavine at least a quarter of the year to get going, as well, and I would have preferred for us to have done the same, because it's win-win, imo - the guys get a chance to develop and we get a better draft pick as a result, probably 9 or 10.

Simply throwing a player onto the court doesn't mean he's going to develop. Giving a guy too much responsibilty too soon can kill his confidence and seriously stunt his growth. Of the opposite can happen, if he gets minutes in spite of his performance he could become entitled and then when those minutes are takent away, he pouts. Bringing along a kid of Young's age slowly makes sense to me.

Well, you do need nba minutes to develop, so how could that hurt?  It's better than having him sit on the bench all year or spend the season in Maine, imo, which I suppose is the other extreme. 

As for any issues regarding pouting or entitlement, well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  I'd much rather keep reminding the kid that, no matter what, no matter how bad you might shoot or whatever, we're going to keep throwing you out there, because WE BELIEVE IN YOU.  If the guy struggles so much that he doesn't look ready to start, make him you're 6th man, but keep playing him, regardless.  Even though I hate the guy, Rick Barry once made an excellent point about developing rookies, and the gist of it was that one nba season is nearly equal to 3 years of college ball, so play the guy(s).  I'd much rather instill confidence in him than have him work so hard only to have a couple of poor shooting games and be sent down to the d-league for the rest of the year as a result.  You can't develop if you're not on the court.

[CelticsJG]

No. Might not even craack the top 10

[Beat LA]

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year. 

Trouble is, he really wasn't ready. Black hole on D, at best mediocre offensively, no strength and still not fully recovered from injury.

There is no way to precisely calculate this, but IMO giving him 10 mpg would have cost us something around 10 wins, ie miss the playoffs, which is too high a price to develop a talent.

No, but neither were Wiggins or LaVine at the start of the year, either.  Like I said, it took a significant portion of time for both of them to get going, but as they're a part of Minnesota's future, it's in the best nature of the franchise to play them.

In regards to your last point, I respectfully disagree.  If Young was given 10 minutes a night and that did cost us about 10 games, and thus, the playoffs, that's awesome, imo.  I would have rather missed the postseason and come away with Winslow for our trouble at 10 instead of making the playoffs and getting swept, which left us with the 16th pick.  That way, at least Young gets some time, and we significantly upgrade our talent moving forward.  Wouldn't you rather have a core of Winslow, Smart, Young, and the rest of our young guys moving forward than our current abundance of roll players?  That's how you build a team, to me - year by year, piece by piece (or pieces), and that isn't even counting the other 3 draft spots.  Coming out of one draft with Winslow, Hunter, the other 2 second rounders (whoever they would be, as I disagreed with who should have been taken at 33 and 45, respectively.  Shocking, I know (sarcasm) ), and any assortment of undrafted guys would have given us an absolute goldmine of talent, imo.

[jpotter33]

Let's note for a moment that statistically Zach Lavine was one of the worst players in the NBA last year. I understand he has freak physical gifts, but we probably would have got similar numbers from James Young if he was forced to start all season.

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year.  That way, he would have actually gotten the chance to DEVELOP . Sure, there would have been growing pains, and there still are, but it also took both Wiggins and Lavine at least a quarter of the year to get going, as well, and I would have preferred for us to have done the same, because it's win-win, imo - the guys get a chance to develop and we get a better draft pick as a result, probably 9 or 10.

What stats are you referencing to substantiate your claim that LaVine was one of the worst players in the league last year?  Are we talking advanced stuff, because his old fashioned stats look fine to me, and certainly better than Smart's, especially for a 19 year old.

 

          MPG   PPG   APG   RPG   BPG   SPG   TOPG   FG%   3PFG%
Lavine: 24.7 10.1  3.6     2.8     0.1    0.7    2.5       .422    .341

Smart: 27.0  7.8    3.1    3.3     0.3     1.5    1.3       .367    .335

On the worst team in the league with virtually free rein to play however he wants offensively with a much higher role on the team, Lavine did not put up much better numbers than Smart, who virtually always played as the fifth option on a MUCH better team. Furthermore, the 3PFG% of these two players is really close, even though Smart took almost twice as many threes per game as him (which gives him the much lower overall fg%). This also doesn't mention the fact that Marcus makes twice the defensive impact that Levine does. Given the context each player was in this past year, I don't see how anyone thinks Levine had a better year than Smart did, especially since Smart was doing this in meaningful games rather than a team trying to get the #1 pick.

[jpotter33]

I would say that Smart had a better chance at being the top player in this draft if you added the condition of "two-way player" to the poll, but in reality this particular draft was deep with potential two-way players: Wiggins, Embiid, Gordon, Exum, Smart, Payton, etc. Though I'm fairly confident in saying that unless Embiid miraculously turns his career around and realizes every bit of potential that he has (which he still has a ways to go given his relatively short playing career), Smart will be the best defender in this class hands down.

[LarBrd33]

If you did a re-draft right now

1. Wiggins
2. Parker
3. Nurkic
4. Exum
5. Embiid (yes I still think he goes 5 as there is just too much potential there)
6. Payton
7. Smart
8. Randle
9. Vonleh
10. Gordon
11. Clarkson
12. Lavine

I think 6-12 could be altered a bit, as I think they are all pretty close.  Saric is still on the radar, Hood just on the outside looking in, and guys like McDermott, Capela, etc. could still be really good (just haven't seen enough).

Ya'll know that Aaron Gordon just complete dominated summer league (in which he was statistically the #1 player)... the same summer league that is causing everyone to be so excited about Marcus Smart (who wasn't statistically one of the 20 best players)...

 

[Celtics18]

If you did a re-draft right now

1. Wiggins
2. Parker
3. Nurkic
4. Exum
5. Embiid (yes I still think he goes 5 as there is just too much potential there)
6. Payton
7. Smart
8. Randle
9. Vonleh
10. Gordon
11. Clarkson
12. Lavine

I think 6-12 could be altered a bit, as I think they are all pretty close.  Saric is still on the radar, Hood just on the outside looking in, and guys like McDermott, Capela, etc. could still be really good (just haven't seen enough).

Ya'll know that Aaron Gordon just complete dominated summer league (in which he was statistically the #1 player)... the same summer league that is causing everyone to be so excited about Marcus Smart (who wasn't statistically one of the 20 best players)...

I don't think summer league is a particularly large factor in what is causing most of us to be excited about Marcus Smart.

Speaking for myself, I am excited about Marcus Smart despite the fact that I hardly watched any of this year's summer league. 

[Beat LA]

Let's note for a moment that statistically Zach Lavine was one of the worst players in the NBA last year. I understand he has freak physical gifts, but we probably would have got similar numbers from James Young if he was forced to start all season.

I think it would have been great if Young had been forced to start all of last year.  That way, he would have actually gotten the chance to DEVELOP . Sure, there would have been growing pains, and there still are, but it also took both Wiggins and Lavine at least a quarter of the year to get going, as well, and I would have preferred for us to have done the same, because it's win-win, imo - the guys get a chance to develop and we get a better draft pick as a result, probably 9 or 10.

What stats are you referencing to substantiate your claim that LaVine was one of the worst players in the league last year?  Are we talking advanced stuff, because his old fashioned stats look fine to me, and certainly better than Smart's, especially for a 19 year old.

 

          MPG   PPG   APG   RPG   BPG   SPG   TOPG   FG%   3PFG%
Lavine: 24.7 10.1  3.6     2.8     0.1    0.7    2.5       .422    .341

Smart: 27.0  7.8    3.1    3.3     0.3     1.5    1.3       .367    .335

On the worst team in the league with virtually free rein to play however he wants offensively with a much higher role on the team, Lavine did not put up much better numbers than Smart, who virtually always played as the fifth option on a MUCH better team. Furthermore, the 3PFG% of these two players is really close, even though Smart took almost twice as many threes per game as him (which gives him the much lower overall fg%). This also doesn't mention the fact that Marcus makes twice the defensive impact that Levine does. Given the context each player was in this past year, I don't see how anyone thinks Levine had a better year than Smart did, especially since Smart was doing this in meaningful games rather than a team trying to get the #1 pick.

I'm not sure that we are a much better team than Minnesota.  In fact, I think it's the other way around.  Aside from the obvious advantage that the Timberwolves have in talent moving forward, they're also helped, in terms of tanking, by the fact that they play in the powerhouse that is the western conference.  If we had to play out west all year we would have had a top 3-5 pick, no matter how well Smart defends. 

I'm also not sure that Minnesota was tanking.  What they did do was hit the reset button by trading Kevin Love, leaving them to start all over again, with Wiggins and LaVine as their two cornerstones moving forward, not to mention, Dieng, Rubio, and Shabazz Muhammad.  I don't understand the problem with letting the kids play.  It's not like you can just wave a magic wand and these guys turn into superstars over night, especially when they're 19 years old.  It takes time, and plenty of court time at that, to properly develop players so young, and as of right now, Minnesota has a far better idea of what kind of players they have moving forward because they were given time to grow.  It's the only way to rebuild, imo.  Look at us - this is now year 3 of the rebuild and we don't have one player who looks anything like a cornerstone or foundation player moving forward, let alone a superstar or even an all star, and there certainly is no clear vision in place from the front office as to what kind of team we're trying to build.  When you've cleaned house, as Danny has done, it's going to take time to find that new franchise player, and we'll never find out if we have one if we don't let our youngsters play.  I'm not advocating to purposely lose games, either.  All I'm saying is that we should be investing in our youngsters, but right now I have no idea what this team is doing, aside from biding time until a superstar becomes available, like DMC, who had to be given time to develop.  Play the kids and get rid of the veterans (maybe not all of them, but most of them).  End of story.