A few observations on this team

[billsin01]

I agree with you on a lot of stuff, but this isn't one of them.

The odds are always stacked against a player making it in the NBA. Even more stacked against being one of the best in the NBA. Being "ready" has very little to do with it. There are significantly more NBA caliber players than there are in the NBA that we never see because the circumstances don't break their way.

Getting drafted in the first round is the best way to get the circumstances and time needed to convince the NBA that a player is just a cut above all the other guys good enough to be there. Take it if it's there.

And let's stop with this fallacy that the NBA doesn't care about player development. They absolutely do, and take pride in it, and the existence and evolution of the D-League proves it. There are 5 ways teams can get better - the coaching improves, they draft better talent, they trade for better talent, they sign better talent in free agency, and their current talent improves. Teams aren't abandoning 20% of the path to competitiveness. They're just not.

I'm not sure we actually disagree nearly as much as you might think. All of the stuff in your post is correct -- NBA teams need to develop talent, getting drafted in the first round is key for these guys, and plenty of players are victims of circumstance. Agree on all three parts.

If I was boiling it down to its simplest form, what I was trying to say is basically two points;

1) I'm not sure making as much money as possible in the NBA (everyone's goal, for the most part) is exactly the same as getting the NBA as quickly as humanly possible.

and

2) As little as players or fans want to hear it, going to the NBA may not represent the best development path in terms of realizing your fullest potential.

It's fine to argue that the D League is there for developmental purposes but it is in it's infancy so while there are guys like Hassan Whiteside and others who have spent time there, it's tough to argue that it's really a strong developmental presence. In other words -- you really don't want to end up there if you don't have to (as opposed to baseball where even the best players go through the minors or the NHL where some players go straight onto rosters but the majority spend some time in the AHL).

What's more, the NBA isn't the NFL with 53-man rosters and taxi squads or MLB with 25-man rosters and with most teams going through 40 players or so each year. This is a league where you really need to do something to be a key rotational piece and carve out a 10-year career. You're not going to get a lot of time to figure stuff out b/c, as you point out, there are more qualified players than there are available spots.

So my suggestion is that if you are a guy with elite physical tools, being really good at basketball before you head off to the NBA could help you increase your role at that next level and, therefore, increase your value and contract $$. So a guy like Tyler Ennis goes b/c his stock isn't likely to get any higher? That makes sense. A guy like Jeremi Grant goes b/c he is fine with being a 2nd-rounder? I'm fine with it, but if I were advising him, my thought would be take the opportunity to get better offensively when you're getting a ton of touches and playing 40 min/night for 35+ games and however many practices and scrimmages. I find it hard to believe he would have dropped further if he actually takes a step forward offensively. Meanwhile he's facing a major uphill battle for shots at this point.

Does coming back to college guarantee anything? No. I just don't think that decision is nearly as cut and dry for the guys like Grant, Fab -if he's still going to class (RIP), Malachi, etc.

 

[billsin01]

Jerami Grant played alongside CJ Fair, who did stick around for four years, improved very significantly (at least between years 1 and 3), and never played an NBA game. Grant left as a very unpolished player and started 52 games his second year in the NBA. He got nearly 1,000 shot attempts in his first two years. He has played as many minutes each year he has been in the NBA as he possibly could have by staying in college. (Assuming a college team plays 35 games a year, that's 1400 minutes a season. Grant played 1378 minutes as a rookie, 2063 as a second-year guy, and is on pace for something like 1450 minutes this year.)

Many kids who do all the right things, and stick around for 4 years and turn into great college players never make an impact in the NBA. Syracuse fans should know this better than anyone - in recent years, we have Mike Gbinje, Rakeem Christmas, CJ Fair, Kris Joseph. Going back, John Wallace left college as maybe the best player in a very loaded season for the NCAA. It didn't make him any better of an NBA player. Hakim stuck around as a role player in the NBA, but being BE POY didn't make him an NBA star either. (Grant and Warrick are perhaps similarly talented guys, and seem very likely to have similar careers, despite taking opposite approaches on this point.)

The thing is that there just aren't a lot of NBA jobs, and there are even fewer NBA stars. Almost everyone is going to fail at getting there. If you take a group of players - in your example, guys who left Syracuse early - you are inevitably going to find that most of that group fails. But that will be true of any group you pick.

But that's not the group I picked. People aren't getting this point -- CJ Fair wasn't going to be an NBA player. I love him and would take five of him any year and be thrilled but he wasn't going to be that player.

I also have no interest in taking a player and artificially telling him to stick around for four years. Waiters left, good call. Flynn left -- didn't work out but the right call. Melo left, broke my heart, it was the right call. Tyler Ennis left, surprising but right call, stock wasn't going up. Kids leaving early makes plenty of sense in many, many cases. Again, to be clear, kids leaving is completely fine.

However, would you say Grant is on a career trajectory to become a regular starter on a playoff quality team? And my only point is, that is the goal because those are the guys that make the real money. You point out he started 52 games in year 2. He's start 4 in year 3.

Does coming back help, hurt or make no difference for grant? I don't know but my point is that the NBA doesn't guarantee any sort of development whereas you can guarantee Grant would have had plenty of work on that jumper for 35 games at the Cuse. I would argue he could have used it.

If I were advising Malachi, that's a tougher call. Gets drafted in the first round, probably has to go. But the only point I'd make is that he would have been the focal point and worked on getting that jumper more consistent and refining that offensive game. Instead he's logged very little time. Which is the better path long term? I really don't know but it's worth considering for a kid making that decision. The NBA at the earliest possible moment isn't always the best call.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I'm not sure we actually disagree nearly as much as you might think. All of the stuff in your post is correct -- NBA teams need to develop talent, getting drafted in the first round is key for these guys, and plenty of players are victims of circumstance. Agree on all three parts.

If I was boiling it down to its simplest form, what I was trying to say is basically two points;

1) I'm not sure making as much money as possible in the NBA (everyone's goal, for the most part) is exactly the same as getting the NBA as quickly as humanly possible.

and

2) As little as players or fans want to hear it, going to the NBA may not represent the best development path in terms of realizing your fullest potential.

It's fine to argue that the D League is there for developmental purposes but it is in it's infancy so while there are guys like Hassan Whiteside and others who have spent time there, it's tough to argue that it's really a strong developmental presence. In other words -- you really don't want to end up there if you don't have to (as opposed to baseball where even the best players go through the minors or the NHL where some players go straight onto rosters but the majority spend some time in the AHL).

What's more, the NBA isn't the NFL with 53-man rosters and taxi squads or MLB with 25-man rosters and with most teams going through 40 players or so each year. This is a league where you really need to do something to be a key rotational piece and carve out a 10-year career. You're not going to get a lot of time to figure stuff out b/c, as you point out, there are more qualified players than there are available spots.

So my suggestion is that if you are a guy with elite physical tools, being really good at basketball before you head off to the NBA could help you increase your role at that next level and, therefore, increase your value and contract $$. So a guy like Tyler Ennis goes b/c his stock isn't likely to get any higher? That makes sense. A guy like Jeremi Grant goes b/c he is fine with being a 2nd-rounder? I'm fine with it, but if I were advising him, my thought would be take the opportunity to get better offensively when you're getting a ton of touches and playing 40 min/night for 35+ games and however many practices and scrimmages. I find it hard to believe he would have dropped further if he actually takes a step forward offensively. Meanwhile he's facing a major uphill battle for shots at this point.

Does coming back to college guarantee anything? No. I just don't think that decision is nearly as cut and dry for the guys like Grant, Fab -if he's still going to class (RIP), Malachi, etc.

Grant's an interesting example to me because the thing he needed to work on was shooting. JB wasn't going to let Grant start slinging 3 pointers. The 76ers were good with it though (putting aside that the 76ers we're good with their guys basically doing anything).

 

[Bayside44]

Grant's an interesting example to me because the thing he needed to work on was shooting. JB wasn't going to let Grant start slinging 3 pointers. The 76ers were good with it though (putting aside that the 76ers we're good with their guys basically doing anything).

He let Wallace and Hak and CJ