Tanking Tim - Raptors at Wolves GDT

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

Lip, I think Zach will improve his feel and instincts to a degree, just like all young players do with time and practice. It's the degree to which he would need to improve to make him a star that I find highly improbable. It's just too big of a gap to overcome in my opinion.

[Monster]

We always looks for outliers for hope and we use what we have seen in the past torpedoes what will happen in the future J O'neal was a guy that didn't get much opportunity his first couple years and also didn't do much when he did and he was a very good player. Billups was a guy with lots of talent but couldn't stay healthy and bounced around and then ended up being a Terrific basketball player one that may be a HOFer. So maybe Lavine ends up being really good despite struggling early on. Maybe Bennett overcomes his injuries and becomes a terrific player. The reality is we can only make the best judgements we can. Who thought Marc Gasol was going to turn into one of the best all-around centers in the league when he was in the prade package for his brother? Nobody. There are a bunch of guys that were can't miss prospects and they flames out. I'm not saying don't trust whatever knowledge you have or even your gut just that sometimes we should probably admit more often we really don't know.

What I have to go on I think Lavine can make some strides and be a really terrific player. A taller version of some of the combo guards Q mentioned might be pretty amazing quite frankly especially Lou Williams who I have always been a big fan of. Lavine is a skilled guy and he has certain aspects about his game that make me think he actually knows how to play basketball. He seems to have a good package of skills, traits, confidence and physical abilities to be successful and he is pretty young so the potential is there. It seems like he actually loves the game and he has improved some aspects through the season which give me some hope for him. I'm not penciling him in as an above average starter yet but I love having a guy with his potential on the team.

[Lipoli390]

Lip, I think Zach will improve his feel and instincts to a degree, just like all young players do with time and practice. It's the degree to which he would need to improve to make him a star that I find highly improbable. It's just too big of a gap to overcome in my opinion.

Q - I think we disagree on the size of that gap. I just see a smaller gap than you see if Zach is evaluated as a future SG rather than PG. Time will tell. We both should hope that I,might about the size of the gap or that, if you're right, LaVine will be the exception to the rule. :)