It wasn't ridiculous at the time. Harden went 3rd and Flynn went 6th, and Flynn arguably had the more productive rookie year. Flynn had potential to be a very good NBA player, but that went out the window when he lost his incredible quickness and explosiveness.
He had a ton of work to do too, though.
That comment was exactly the point of my post and the one I responded to. Let me caveat this by saying that very few people here paid more attention to JF in the pros than I did. He was a fave player of mine and I'm a big NBA fan.
1. Ball dominating PG
2. Mediocre jumper
3. Six feet tall (on a good day)
My belief was that he was actually a really smart player who would be coached up to not dominate the ball (which SU needed him to do) and become more of a distributor. Neither of things were showing ANY signs of that happening including pre-injury. I still, to this day, blame that squarely on Kurt Rambus who I think is a bad coach.
Harden was a scorer and a distributor in college. NBA ready at 19 and a pretty efficient scorer (which has translated to the NBA as I think he was in the top 15 or so last season). I know his TS% was close to .600 last season.
IMO, JF was drafted high above his real value. Just dont see how anyone can say JF was a more NBA ready player than Harden was at the time. He was the best 2/wing in the draft and JF wasn't even the best PG.
In terms of the rookie year comparison:
WP48
Flynn: .002
Harden: .124
TS%
Flynn: .511
Harden: .551
DWS
Flynn: 0.7
Harden: 2.5
DRTG:
Flynn: 111
Harden: 104
So by those #'s Harden was a better defender, shooter (shot 2% pts higher from three as well), and overall WP contributor.
All of that said, I still think JF got a bad draw being drafted by the Wolves. Kahn is a train wreck and having Rubio drafted alongside JF was a no-brainer for the Wolves fans to turn on JF early and they did. Rambus having him run the triangle, knowing Rubio was in the wings, was never a good setup for JF.
EDIT: btw, I should also say I appreciate the fact that you seem to like and know about the NBA. We could use a bit more of that around here as from time to time there are NBA discussions here.
44cuse
Sent from my iPhone using
Tapatalk