Before the season I had expected some Exum comparisons because I understood he was far away. I couldn’t have imagined it would be this ugly. The difference with Exum is that you could at least tell he was a physical specimen. There weren’t many 6’6 PG’s with his speed and you could at least imagine a world where he’d be a good player if he could develop some skill/experience to match his physical tools.
Cody is just complete absent of any promise right now. Both his game and his physical tools look awful. He has long arms, and that shows up sometimes, but he looks slow as hell and not explosive. On top of that, he has incredibly low motor and this has been the book on him since HS. He’s a do nothing player.
I’ve been ranting about this for awhile, but I think his frailness was a distraction. We know that it is reasonable for a young guy to add on weight. But there are two major problems here with Cody. 1) He is frail to an extent we haven’t seen before. He is 15 lbs away from being 15 lbs away and that’s being generous. The guys who are 15-20+ lbs heavier than him are the guys who need to gain weight. Exum weighed about 20 lbs heavier than him. So while we can confidently say he will gain weight, the extent to which he does is more than anyone we’ve seen. 2) His game outside his weight also sucks. His frailness is the most obvious concern, but even if he was built like Adonis right now he’d probably suck. His shooting sucks, his ball handling is awful, his athleticism is poor, and again…extremely low motor.
I think we brushed aside concerns because his main one will realistically get better, but for Cody better still sucks….and if he does get there with the weight you still probably have a crappy player. It’s not a situation where he will combine great physical gifts with skill if he improves one or the other. Reality is that both sides of that equation are awful.
And just from a FO perspective, I think taking a chance on the unknown with Exum is more justifiable than missing on a well known player like Cody. Obviously the draft is a crap shoot to begin with, but add this pick to the list of things that do not inspire confidence from the FO.