I think that it's very close between Ball and Fultz, but I'm a Ball fan.
Fultz is the classic great player on a bad team as Simmons was at LSU last year. Washington is horrible. They will not make the NCAA tournament, like LSU last year.
Fultz and Ball's stats are not that far off from each other except in ppg ,22.8 to 14.8. Everything else is very close.
The Kentucky game told me a lot about Ball.
Ball had a rough start heaving 3s especially. But, he came through when he needed to with some really timely plays.
He led his team to a win at Rupp, historically a difficult place to play, against the deserved #1 team in the country at the time. Kentucky has arguably 4 players (Fox, Abedayo, Monk, who I think is their best player right now and Briscoe) who are better athletes than anyone except Ball on UCLA. Leaf is a baller, but not the athlete that those 4 guys are.
It took Ball a while to adjust to this type of collective athleticism that he has never faced before in a hostile environment, all the while playing all but 2 minutes of the game. His 38 minutes was more than any player on either team, as a freshman on a team with a bunch of upperclassmen. This is Ball's team, and he led them to a win.
And really, even if you look at the stat-line for that game closely, he and Fox were not that far apart, despite the fact that Fox had a better supporting cast.
Ball and Fox are pretty close in my mind right now. Fox is an electric player, Ball is a leader and a winner.
Fultz hasn't shown either of those qualities to me yet and his opponents that his team has lost to (Yale, Nevada, TCU) are pretty bad. At least Ball has played and won against some decent teams (KY, Mich, A&M, Nebraska).
Topic: Fultz vs Ball - who is the best pg of the 2017 draft? (Read 17955 times)