Q12543 wrote:Abe mentioned Edwards......God I already hate his game. I'm saying it now: Terrible pick! Volume, inefficient scorer that otherwise gives nearly nothing else. What a shock! The exact same player he was at Georgia! Gee whiz!
"but he's so young! He can still develop!"....seen this movie before. Yes, he probably gets more accurate and starts passing better, but the other stuff rarely improves much. I'm sure some team will eventually overpay him on his second contract - could be the Seattle Timberwolves in fact - because he can score 20+ PPG on any given night, but he'll be nothing more than a volume scorer that takes up valuable cap space.
Ugh!
Yep. But as I've mentioned before, players in the NBA almost always always end up as the players they were in college. Yes, they can improve. In fact, they have to improve simply to perform a the same level in the NBA given the much higher level of competition. But they rarely change materially from the type of player they were in college. If they were inefficient scorers in college, they rarely become efficient scorers in the NBA. If they were poor 3-point shooters in college, they rarely become decent, much less good, 3-point shooters in the NBA. If they were poor defenders in college they rarely become good defenders in the NBA. The list goes on. Yes, I'm sure there are exceptions but they are just that - exceptions. It's important to look at a draft prospect's baseline talents, including athleticism, size, quickness and basketball instincts. But at the end of the day, a prospect's statistical production profile is critical, especially if the prospect played a lot of minutes. It's even more important when you have a really high lottery pick.
There's no mystery to what we've seen so far from Edwards. To paraphrase Mike Ditka, "Edwards is who we thought he was....". Edwards is who he was in college. It was a reach for Rosas to expect that he'd be materially different in the NBA against higher-level competition. Edwards could yet prove to be one of those exceptions and become a reasonably efficient high-level scorer who also defends and rebounds - i.e., an elite 2-way player worthy of the 1st pick in the draft. But that's a long shot and not an assumption for basing crucial personnel decisions. I get that LaMello had a similarly questionable track record in the Aussie League, although he at least put up elite rebounding numbers for his position, a stat that tends to translate well to the NBA. I also get that Wiseman had a very limited college track record. That's why I thought the best move was to trade down for other assets and draft someone like Okongwu who had a very nice baseline talent profile, but also stats to match. Even Patrick Williams would have been a better bet than Edwards based on his actual college performance.
