Search results

One thing we can count on is that Cody will add weight/strength: even during the season he looked (and played) noticeably stronger at the end compared to his first month. The guy lifts. Now, in terms of developing his skills and becoming more aggressive...there is way more uncertainty in there.

You have it a bit backwards. You don't draft a player at 5 to compensate for the defensive shortcomings of your middling young prospects. Instead, you try to find a core player in the top 5 and build the team around his strengths and weaknesses. If Keyonte and Brice are not willing to play...

The handle is arguably the hardest thing to develop for the players already in the NBA, regardless of their work ethic. There are many incredibly committed 3-and-D players who never managed to develop their dribbling ability.

Then we have a problem. Whoever plays the shooting guard should be able to create good shots through dribble penetration, shooting off the dribble and shooting coming off screens. VJ is not good at that. Also, standing at 6'4" with the 6'7" wingspan he is a bit below average for SG and will be...

I have a question for people who prefer VJ at 3: what position do you see him playing for the Jazz?

Now, I heard that about Cody a lot: "one of the absolute worst players in the NBA" and I think it deserves to be challenged. How do you know that Cody was one of the worst players in the NBA? The advanced stats like NETRTG are heavily influenced by the team's performance (all leaders tend to be...

Well, obviously. However, I don't understand folks who are so upset about drafting Cody that drop him to Cs for that pick alone. It is incredibly hard to draft 18 year-olds and every great GM has duds along with solid selections. Ainge was right for 5 picks out of 6 - that is a great batting...

Was he a reliable predictor of the Jazz draft choices in 2023 and 2024?

It's not. I personally like VJ more than everybody else we can draft at 3. His defense and court vision are really special. But he is still an undersized SF, a tweener. Every once in a while you end up with someone like Draymond Greene or Paul Millsap but usually these players are struggling a bit.

Not everyone, but teams are usually not looking for that type of player with the 5th pick in a strong draft. Especially when it is their first top-5 pick in 10 years.

So you want our next Royce O'Neale.

Well, for what it's worth your description of Ace Bailey really fits Dirk in his rookie year when he lived off low% mid-range jumpers, had abysmally low assists and played horrible defense. "When the season finally started, Nowitzki struggled. Played as a power forward by coach Don Nelson, the...

Kinda like drafting Vince Carter over Dirk Nowitzki.

I don't think anyone can reliable predict how good a player can be when the guy is just 18 and his only college season was interrupted by an injury and he is not a freak athlete.

He can end up being really good or really bad. Or just average. Kasparas is 18 yo, he played just one season in college and had a lingering injury.

Quite interesting results we having so far: the grades run from B+ to F without any obvious clustering. It looks like there is a wide, wide disagreement about how well Ainge has been drafting for the Jazz.

Personally, I think Ainge earned a solid "B" so far: only Cody Williams looks worse than players drafted immediately after. 5 out of 6 picks look very solid given the available options and that is pretty rare. Looking back, Ainge really did not have any great/very good players to choose from.

Soon Ainge and his team will have to make their 2025 draft selections. I know it is early but lets look at how well Ainge drafted for the Jazz so far as he already drafted 6 players who played at least a season for the Jazz. I will list 4 players drafted right after each of the Jazz draft pick...

Having endured the last seasons of the Jazz I really like Edgecombe: his defense is superb and he is much better than Tre or Ace at understanding the game on both ends and anticipating the action. He is also a much better and willing passer. But at the end of the day he is a SF who desperately...

Where are you getting this from? Lauri looks to me as being slightly below average on defense. Do you have any stats to show that "he was one of the worst defenders in the league last year"?