OT: Marcus Smart to the NBA
Via @Sportscenter on Twitter. Not at all a surprise, but still another guy our three sophomores would potentially have to deal with in the draft order. Probably not a huge deal though, since Smart is a point guard and obviously none of Nik, Glenn, or Mitch are. I guess this could be looked at as an example of coming back to school NOT working out (because Smart in all likelihood would have gone higher last year than he will this year), but most of Smart's problems were not based on his play but rather his attitude, which I don't think we need to worry about with any of our potential early entries.
Nah I'd say he was too young.
because he would have been like what, 1 or 2 years old. The NBA likes 'em young, but not that young!
(serious answer...yes, I think he would have been. The NBA cares about talent more than anything. The other stuff is viewed as fixable. This kid has talent to spare.)
The league's talent may be watered down a bit by expansion but college kids today are every bit as athletic and talented as college kids 20 years ago. Probably more so, with advancements in athletic training, diet, etc.
that the nba had more talented players back in good 'ole days.
I would disagree. I think that players are more skilled. I think that if you comb through the numbers, things that most people would define as the "skill" aspects of basketball, you'll find that players are more skilled now than they were 20 years ago. I also don't buy the "nobody plays defense anymore" or "they were better at defense back then" arguments either. The NBA had a mini crisis 8-10 years ago because teams were way too good at defense. So much in fact, that it forced them to change a number of rules in order to balance things out.
Just look at 3 point shooting, and how vastly that has improved from 20 years ago. TS% and eFG% are up from that era as well (comparing 13-14 to 93-94 there is a difference of 15% in eFG%).
I also believe that teams take slightly better care of the ball than they did 20 years ago, which is a sign of more skilled play.
IIRC, the 50-40-90 season (50%fg-40%3pt-90%ft) or at least the near 50-40-90 season, was an extreme rarity prior to a few years ago but more players have done it recently and quite a few have done it several times.
Teams and players are growing more and more efficient which is a definite sign of improved skill level.
The trope that "The players may be more athletic now but were more skilled back in my day!" has been said by literally every single generation of older players, and it's almost categorically false.
I addressed that in my post.
If you can argue in that direction, then I can argue the inverse. That being, if a team today were allowed to play defense on a team from the 90s with 90s rules they would shut them down.
Defense today isn't any worse than it was then. If anything, it's better. It takes more skill to stay in front of your man without hand-checking than it takes to hand-check, which is a point for my more skilled argument.
Also, like I already pointed out, defense became so dominant in the early to mid 00s that they had to change a number of rules because the defenses were too good. Not to mention the rule changes allowing teams to play zone defense in 01-02, which was previously banned. Tteams can pack the paint more than they could before, when everyone had to play man to man.
Look at the history of 3 point shooting. It has been on an extremely steady upward trend since its inception. The only outlier is in the mid-90s when the 3 point line was moved in 1 foot 9 inches.
Somewhat randomly looked up hall-of-famers: Bob Cousy--career 37% shooter, and Elgin Baylor 43% as a power forward. Look at footage from the 50s-70s---they weren't playing better D. All facets of basketball are better today: high school, college and pros. And in 10 years they will be better yet.
As far as I'm aware, the only major wildcard for this year's lottery is Jabari Parker of Duke.
Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, Marcus Smart, Noah Vonleh have declared, and we'll see what happens with Julius Randle and Willie Cauley-Stein after the game tonight.
I'm fairly confident that Nik's draft range is pretty much set, regardless of any wrinkles caused by early entrants or kids unexpectedly returning to school.
a valid point, but I don't think his emotions would've been that big of a deal before Twitter. The nature of sports news now led to his overexposure, which probably exacerbated any problems previously present with his temperament.
Also, on another note, the flaws in his game that have led him to drop in this year's draft (not big enough to be SG, not really a PG, not a great 3-pt shooter) probably would've been overlooked 20 years ago, just because the style of play was so different. Smart's got a better NBA body than most, so I think that, combined with his talent and reduced coverage of his "emotions", would keep him in the first round despite his sophomore status.
I disagree. It has been proven over and over again that teams generally don't care how insane you are if you have talent. The NBA probably more than any other American pro sports league, has a high pick graveyard littered with those sorts of guys.
Also, it's not like Smart has done anything that bad. He's a little moody for sure, but the same thing could be said about a number of NBA first round picks.
Also, it's a tad disingenuous to set the arbitrary cutoff date at 20 years ago because the very next year (19 years ago) Joe Smith was the number 1 pick (Soph), Antonio McDyess number 2 (Soph), Jerry Stackhouse number 3 (Soph), Rasheed Wallace number 4 (Soph), Kevin Garnett number 5 (High School), and it isn't until you get to the 6th pick, Damon Stoudamire, that an upperclassman was selected.
Not to mention it was 18 years ago that Allen Iverson was selected as the number 1 overall pick (Soph), and he had waaaaay more issues than Marcus Smart. Also, that year featured a number of underclassmen. Shareef Adur-Raheem was the 3rd pick (Frosh), Stephon Marbury 4th (Frosh), Antoine Walker 6th (Soph), Lorenzen Wright 7th (Soph), Samaki Walker 9th (Soph), Vitaly Potepenko 12th (Soph), and don't forget the high schoolers, Kobe Bryant (13th) and Jermaine O'Neal (17th).
A number of the guys I've listed have also had questions about their maturity (or legal issues) prior to the draft that teams ignored because they thought they could play.
He's a little moody but whatever -- he cares and just needs to learn to channel it better. I'd rather have a guy who cares. As far as what happened with the TTU fan, sometimes people have it coming and Orr had it coming for a long. I don't blame him -- he should be applauded.
he's got flopping skills to rival the world's best