NBA Asst GM: The value of staying in school another year

[rrlbees]

I agree. I think Grant can shoot the 3 ball if he puts the time in. Its not like we have Steve Kerr on our roster right now.

Not too many teams have an NBA all time 3pt% leader on their roster.

 

[MSOrange]

I agree. I think Grant can shoot the 3 ball if he puts the time in. Its not like we have Steve Kerr on our roster right now.

I agree with this. That's the part of his game I was a little disappointed about this year. He was 6-15 on 3s as a freshman. Obviously a small sample size but I was hoping he could build on that a little bit this year.

 

[moqui]

Don't you think working on a specific skill with the opportunity to then implement immediately in game situations may be better than working on the skill and hoping you'll have that opportunity next year?

no

 

[Millhouse]

When did this thread become about Ennis? I think the GM and all of us were discussing Grant. Is projection of going 20-25 doesn't guarantee his to be a millionaire because a projection of there can easily turn into the second round with no guaranteed contract.

Sorry you're right. hopefully grant already considers himself rich so it works the other way

 

[timkay99]

Don't you think working on a specific skill with the opportunity to then implement immediately in game situations may be better than working on the skill and hoping you'll have that opportunity next year?

There is a very strong argument that he can work on that skill more in the D-League with 6 figures in his pocket then having the ability to work on it in college basketball, where results matter and coaches want win.

 

[sufandu]

There is a very strong argument that he can work on that skill more in the D-League with 6 figures in his pocket then having the ability to work on it in college basketball, where results matter and coaches want win.

Do the D-league coaches not want to win? Are they not trying to advance their career? I think there's probably a strong argument that the d-league coaches are in a less stable position than a HOF college coach and care even less about a specific player's development. I'd like to see a list of all of these players that develop so well in the d-league and transition to a successful NBA career.

 

[timkay99]

Do the D-league coaches not want to win? Are they not trying to advance their career? I think there's probably a strong argument that the d-league coaches are in a less stable position than a HOF college coach and care even less about a specific player's development. I'd like to see a list of all of these players that develop so well in the d-league and transition to a successful NBA career.

No, D-League coaches are tasked with player development. Similar to baseball. If they develop players, they will get a chance to move to the end of the bench.

If you are in the D-League to begin with, you have a tool that is not ready. So, you will not be a star. However, I will bet there are more people with D-League experience on a NBA bench then you think there are.

I think too many Cuse fans just assume Grant is going to learn a jump shot for next year. I mean, everyone said C.J. should come back so he could improve from 3 and use his right hand. He regressed from 3 and still didn't learn to use right hand.

The difference for C.J. and Jerami is that C.J. wasn't passing on guaranteed money, as he was a first round tweener. Jerami, from everything I have seen, is a 1st rounder and has guaranteed money. Not to mention, back problems are something highly frowned upon by GM's, so if he has a recurrence, he probably gets marked off draft boards from a medical perspective.

Hope Grant comes back b/c we do need him next year.

 

[OttoMets]

...Not to mention, back problems are something highly frowned upon by GM's, so if he has a recurrence, he probably gets marked off draft boards from a medical perspective.

Hope Grant comes back b/c we do need him next year.

On the other hand, perhaps his back problem is hurting teams' opinions of him right now and a full healthy year would give him a boost.

Different era, but it worked for Derrick Coleman.

 

[timkay99]

On the other hand, perhaps his back problem is hurting teams' opinions of him right now and a full healthy year would give him a boost.

Different era, but it worked for Derrick Coleman.

Very true. Wholeheartedly agree.

If he gets through a full season without a back issue, teams will forget about it come draft time (at least enough to not mark him off boards).

 

[Garbs]

Totally agree. But my point is that you don't automatically get better by leaving school. Game experience is critical to a player's development.

just like you don't automatically get better staying in school

 

[sufandu]

No, D-League coaches are tasked with player development. Similar to baseball. If they develop players, they will get a chance to move to the end of the bench.

If you are in the D-League to begin with, you have a tool that is not ready. So, you will not be a star. However, I will bet there are more people with D-League experience on a NBA bench then you think there are.

I think too many Cuse fans just assume Grant is going to learn a jump shot for next year. I mean, everyone said C.J. should come back so he could improve from 3 and use his right hand. He regressed from 3 and still didn't learn to use right hand.

The difference for C.J. and Jerami is that C.J. wasn't passing on guaranteed money, as he was a first round tweener. Jerami, from everything I have seen, is a 1st rounder and has guaranteed money. Not to mention, back problems are something highly frowned upon by GM's, so if he has a recurrence, he probably gets marked off draft boards from a medical perspective.

Hope Grant comes back b/c we do need him next year.

Right now, from the info out there, he's projected 20-25. We've seen how easily someone can slip 10 spots or more in the draft (didn't some projections have Donte going in the lottery?), so his projection is hardly guaranteed money. Given his family, he should get better advice than anyone else and, at the same time, is in no need of a pay day.

I still don't see how a D-League coach has any more incentive than a college coach to develop players. If a coach wants to win, as was suggested earlier, doesn't he want his best returning players to improve? If they don't, he won't win. That is indeed incentive. If Grant was a projected lottery pick, I'd agree with you, but he's not. Not every kid that pop's onto someone's draft board should jump at it.

 

[timkay99]

Right now, from the info out there, he's projected 20-25. We've seen how easily someone can slip 10 spots or more in the draft (didn't some projections have Donte going in the lottery?), so his projection is hardly guaranteed money. Given his family, he should get better advice than anyone else and, at the same time, is in no need of a pay day.

I still don't see how a D-League coach has any more incentive than a college coach to develop players. If a coach wants to win, as was suggested earlier, doesn't he want his best returning players to improve? If they don't, he won't win. That is indeed incentive. If Grant was a projected lottery pick, I'd agree with you, but he's not. Not every kid that pop's onto someone's draft board should jump at it.

The 2 biggest questions for Grant are jump shot and back. The positives he has going for him is he (like MCW) will test extremely well athletically and he is young enough that a team will take him top 20 in the hopes he can develop a jumper. I really don't think he has to worry about falling out of the first round, but things can happen.

Well, a college coach's job is to win while a D-League coach's job is to develop. A college coach can win and not develop players for the next level (does a 2-3 zone prepare players for the next level?), while if a D-League coach doesn't develop his first rounders, he will be looking for a new organization (him or the scouting director, cough cough Hasheem Thabeet cough cough).

I think Grant is a prime example of this from this year. I think nearly everyone here thinks that he was given the red light on shooting threes b/c his drive game is much better. In the D-League, he will be encouraged to shoot the 3 ball.

Not saying that D-League or Syracuse would be better for him to develop, but the D-League does a better job developing then people think.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I quoted the same part in the other Grant thread. It's the same argument I've made a number of times.

Sorry, missed your post.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Has CJ Fair improved his draft stock by staying in school?

There are no guarantees about whether staying will help one or not. None. Period. None. Plenty of examples of guys who've lost money by staying.
.

I agree that there's not guarantee you'll improve your draft stock. Sometimes players' limitations get exposed. But for people to say that it's an automatic decision that you ought to go, they're simply wrong. You need to make the top 10 picks or so, maybe top 12 or 13. After that, the money isn't so big that you have to go if there are clear gaps in your game.

If you look at C.J. last year compared to this year, the "holes" in his game were (a) can he be a go-to guy? (b) can he improve his ball handling? and (c) how good is his outside shot?

He failed to improve in pretty much every area. He went from our top rebounder to our 2nd rebounder. His handle didn't get better, and now that people were looking to guard him at the 3 point line, his shooting percentage dropped by 20 points from three.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Has CJ Fair improved his draft stock by staying in school?

There are no guarantees about whether staying will help one or not. None. Period. None. Plenty of examples of guys who've lost money by staying.

Is it possible it could help and/or lengthen Grant's NBA career? It's possible. That's all I got out of what that GM assistant said, it's possible it could help him. It's also possible it could hurt him. Course, they didn't ask the GM that question.

So what in all of this is guaranteed? The money one can get from the NBA right now is, in fact, guaranteed, if one knows they will be a 1st round pick. Hmmm.

I think Grant has more room for improvement than C.J., don't you think?

 

[IthacaMatt]

BTW, I want Grant to stay as well, but I never blame a kid for taking the money while it's being offered. Sometimes the faucet gets turned off and there's no turning it back on.

I don't automatically say every kid should stay. Jonny Flynn was all he could be.

Donte Greene, however, didn't rebound and was basically a 3 point shooter and ran the break well on the finishing end of lobs from Flynn.

C.J. had nowhere to go. He wasn't a first rounder last year, so he rolled the dice to see if he could improve his stock this year. No harm in that. The kid got his degree, and he'll be a 2nd round pick, just like he would have been last year.

Ennis isn't physically ready to play defense in the NBA or to finish at the rim.

Michael Carter-Williams lacked an outside shot, but he worked on that really well over the summer. But if anyone has gone back and checked on his stats, he has fallen way back from where he was shooting it in the first month of the season. The shot doctor did more for him than his NBA coaches. Probably bad habits have crept back in because of the relentless nature of the game in the NBA - endless games and tons of travel. How much do they actually practice in the NBA?

Grant couldn't get on the court in the NBA right now. He has no outside shot and he's too skinny to defend people his size. He lacks the handle to play the 3 and he's too skinny for the 4 right now. He's got to fix the same kind of problems in his game that Hakim Warrick had.

Fab Melo - probably best that he went. He had problems staying eligible, was immature and had trouble staying in shape. If you don't gave the right frame of mind and work ethic, the extra year in college won't do you any good, although he did salvage getting drafted after his awful first season in college.

 

[IthacaMatt]

The problem is I think there's just as good a chance that he falls out of the first round by returning as there is that he catapults himself into the lottery.

If he doesn't make a gigantic leap, he might be looked at the same way McAdoo was, where his stock just continued to plummet with each passing year because his improvements were big enough to satisfy NBA scouts.

There is NO WAY that Grant is not still a first round pick next year. Did Smart, the PG from Oklahoma State drop out of the first round this year, in your opinion? A year can't go much worse than it did for him, and he's still a lottery pick. Maybe not #5 this year like he was projected last year, but he won't be on the board by the end of the lottery. I would still clearly take him over Ennis, for instance, and almost everyone else at that position.

 

[sufandu]

The 2 biggest questions for Grant are jump shot and back. The positives he has going for him is he (like MCW) will test extremely well athletically and he is young enough that a team will take him top 20 in the hopes he can develop a jumper. I really don't think he has to worry about falling out of the first round, but things can happen.

Well, a college coach's job is to win while a D-League coach's job is to develop. A college coach can win and not develop players for the next level (does a 2-3 zone prepare players for the next level?), while if a D-League coach doesn't develop his first rounders, he will be looking for a new organization (him or the scouting director, cough cough Hasheem Thabeet cough cough).

I think Grant is a prime example of this from this year. I think nearly everyone here thinks that he was given the red light on shooting threes b/c his drive game is much better. In the D-League, he will be encouraged to shoot the 3 ball.

Not saying that D-League or Syracuse would be better for him to develop, but the D-League does a better job developing then people think.

I would agree with the athleticism comment if he also had can't miss size for his position, but he doesn't. MCW had his athleticism matched with uncommon size for a PG. Grant is a very athletic and grossly undersized power forward or he is an athletic, but not nearly as remarkably so, small forward that is lacking much more than shooting for that position. At this point, he's lacking, or at the very least hasn't yet demonstrated, all of the perimeter skills needed to be a 3 in the NBA. He has shown no ability to handle the ball, he hasn't shown passing ability, and, as we've both mentioned, he hasn't shown the ability to shoot. If he was lacking only one of those, he'd certainly be in better shape, but he's lacking all three.

We only need to look at Donte Greene to see how far off draft projections can be. Chad Ford had him at 15 as of May 20 in 2008, and he went 28. Would Grant drop 13 spots? Maybe not, but he wouldn't have to to drop out of the first round since he's projected lower than Greene was.

He isn't a lock for the first round, and, therefore, isn't assured a guaranteed contract. Why throw away the college experience, with an education and the opportunity to work with a HOF coach that has coached the best players in the world at the Olympics, so that you may or may not get as much of an opportunity to develop your game with a coach nobody has ever heard of that may or may not be good at developing talent. If he was a lottery pick, then make the jump, but he's not.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Valid argument. Except that that happened to McAdoo because he was maxed out [basically] in terms of his skill development, versus Grant who has a LONG way to go to improve, both skill-wise and in terms of his physique.

McAdoo is selling low, IMO. Yes, he would have been higher a year ago, but now he's at his low point. Carolina was disappointing this season and could be much better next year. He could work his way back into the top 10 if he bounced back.

 

[IthacaMatt]

if all you are going to do is sit at the end of the bench then, no, you are not going to get better. but if that is the state of your internal motivation, then you aren't really going to get better in college, either, even if you put up some decent numbers.

anyone with the skill and motivation is better off going pro ASAP. anyone who doesn't is going to wash out either way.

It's not about "motivation"; it's about opportunity. That's why sometimes it works out better for a baseball player to spend a season in Triple A, so he can get enough work in to get better.
That's the whole reason behind the D League. If they paid a better wage, and it was really a quality minor league, people would come out to see the product.

 

[sufandu]

Sorry, missed your post.

That's cool. I wasn't calling you out. Just pointing out that someone else shares opinion in another thread.

 

[CuseinNYC]

Got this quote from the article today in the Post about Jerami's draft prospects. This is the essence of the argument I have made regarding certain players who may not be ready for the demands and physicality of the NBA:'

The Western Conference assistant GM laid out two scenarios for Grant.

"If he comes out and he goes, let's say 25th, he's on a good team,'' the NBA exec said. "He's making good money, but he's just under a million dollars a year. It's good money, but he's on a good team and he's not getting that much playing time. It's hard to develop when you're not playing.

"Or he stays in school and works on his skills,'' he added. "He has a much larger role on offense. He adds some weight. Now he goes 13th and he's making a whole lot more money. He's on a lottery team but hopefully an up-and-coming team. He's more prepared for playing time and you'd guess he's on a team that can give him playing time.''

You don't automatically get better by sitting at the end of an NBA bench. NBA players don't practice as much as you may think. A lot of what they do between games is cardio conditioning for guys who don't get enough game time.

But don't kid yourself, you NEED game time to get better as a player.

Did anyone else assume that Troy Weaver was the unnamed asst GM? Maybe JB asked him to help convince Grant to stick around with these "quotes"?

 

[IthacaMatt]

i say it too much you can explain a lot with kahneman's thinking fast and slow

if you have a question that's too hard to answer, people substitute questions they can answer and instead of calculating probabilites and expected values, they use simpler buckets for impossible, possible, certain. people will pay a premium to go from one bucket to another

how do i maximize my earnings is a tough question. don't know if you'll get hurt, don't know how you'll develop, don't know if you'll hurt your draft stock.

so substitute a different question. will i be a millionaire if i go pro? you can have certainty of that assuming nba teams are honest

so maybe tyler ennis is giving up some expected value (paying a premium essentially) for the certainty of knowing he's going to be a millionaire

Good post. I think that getting hurt is much less of a concern if it's a young guy, unless it's a certain type of injury. Even ACL's have become routine - like Tommy John surgery. Once it was considered a miracle, now it has about an 80-90% success rate.

It's not until the 2nd or 3rd ACL that a guy really starts to lose it. You see this a lot watching soccer, where everybody plays a season that runs from August to May, and then play for their countries for a month in the summer, if they are good enough. No rest, and ACL tears are common. Almost everybody recovers well from the first one, especially if they are 17-22 years old.

On the other hand, big guys, especially those carrying too much weight, are injuries waiting to happen. It's almost always the wheels, and we are looking at Coleman on his 2nd year in a row with surgery and a cautious recovery projection.

Flynn's hip tear was a freakish injury. He would have recovered better from a knee than the hip. That usually doesn't happen to players in hoops. That's usually a football type of injury.

 

[IthacaMatt]

There is a very strong argument that he can work on that skill more in the D-League with 6 figures in his pocket then having the ability to work on it in college basketball, where results matter and coaches want win.

D League guys make like $25-30,000 a year, unless they are on an NBA contract. If players were paid $100K, it would be a very good league, and not so many guys would be looking for jobs in 2nd rate foreign leagues like The Phillippenes or New Zealand.

 

[IthacaMatt]

The difference for C.J. and Jerami is that C.J. wasn't passing on guaranteed money, as he was a first round tweener. Jerami, from everything I have seen, is a 1st rounder and has guaranteed money. Not to mention, back problems are something highly frowned upon by GM's, so if he has a recurrence, he probably gets marked off draft boards from a medical perspective.

Hope Grant comes back b/c we do need him next year.

I like a lot of this post. Yes, there's no guarantee that Jerami will develop a jump shot. And I agree, if there's one thing that is going to hurt Jerami, it wouldn't be a knee injury, but a back problem, or broken bones in his feet (knock wood). Hopefully this was just spasms from not being used to playing that many minutes after starting the season coming off the bench.