Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
Not a single person has denied that AD was a better prospect coming out of college. Literally on this same page that you replied to this post on, I said, and I quote:
''AD was possibly the most gifted college big, at least defensively, since... god knows when.''
That fact doesn't mean that Davis walked out of college perfect. He didn't. The weird attempt to rewrite history to claim that he was hitting threes and spacing the floor regularly is just that: rewriting history. We don't have his exact midrange stats in college because they just aren't out there, at least not publicly, but we know he shot 15% from 3 in college. That's abysmal. Did AD have some good hooks, and fantastic touch around the basket? Yes, he did, there is no dispute about that. Did he have a great midrange game? Well, since those college stats aren't available, the best and most detailed statistics we have are from his rookie year, and from those stats we find that no, he didn't have a great midrange game at 18, 19 years old.
Is Hayes better than AD at some things? Sure he is. Nobody is saying that means he's better than AD, or that he's a better overall prospect, at least no one that I can see. Andre Drummond is a better rebounder than AD is even today, and there's no arguing that, but just saying that doesn't imply that you think Drummond is a better overall player: he's not. It's perfectly possible for Hayes to have better hands than AD (which he does, at least partly just because his hands are bigger) and still be a worse prospect overall.
I get the temptation to dismiss any and all criticism of AD as sour grapes, and sure, I think some of it is. But it's perfectly possible to go too far the other way and start pretending AD was things that he never was. And that's just as silly.