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Knowing what you know today: would you rather start a team with Zion, BI, Jaxson Hayes or Ja, JJ, and Brandon Clarke.
Just focusing on these three players from both teams for the sake of discussion. Obviously the Pels have way more assets in the short and long term to go along with Jrue, Lonzo, etc.
I'm pretty firmly on the Pels side here. I'm not sure how well JJ's offensive game translates to the playoffs, and he hasn't been near the player defensively that they thought he would be. I think BI wins that battle pretty firmly.
Hayes v Clarke is more about whether you prefer a high ceiling or a high floor. I think Clarke is going to be a very good player for a long time, but Jax has that something extra that could potentially make him a star.
It's one of those largely pointless questions that's designed to spark an argument without actually containing content.
People are going to say Ja because he's been healthy so far this year and they've seen him play most recently. Anyone who actually watched both of them at college knows Zion is the better prospect. Ja is a good prospect who has top 10 NBA PG potential written on him: Zion is an all-time prospect who has top 10 NBA player of all time written on him. There's just levels to this.
But recency bias is a thing, people have seen Ja dunking on people while Zion's been sidelined, and they let their imaginations run wild. Fair enough.
Basketball.
I admit during Zion's extended recovery, I've felt some pangs of envy watching Morant excel as a rookie phenom. It played into my one reservation about taking Zion over him, which is it's such a guard-oriented league now if you have a chance to get an elite point guard you may regret passing it up. That said, the real regret I have is us passing on Brandon Clarke with the 17th pick. I loved his game with the Zags and thought he'd actually be a good pairing for Zion, both filling the Zion role from the bench and as a small-ball center in a speed line up. Here' s hoping NAW makes me eat those regrets, but for now they remain. Especially considering our glut of players in the backcourt, Clarke would have been my pick at 17 even with picking Hayes at 8. I'd particularly have loved having him on the roster given Zion's injury status. The real X-factor though is Lonzo. It looks like Morant is going to be a great PG. Can Lonzo become one too? Jury is out on that one, though he obviously has potential to be a great passing lede guard.
Yea it's a bit ironic that Clarke is the exact type of player that this team has been missing all season. Just a tweener 3/4 who can hold his own defensively and hit open shots. I do think, however, that there are guys like that in every draft.
The skills we saw from NAW in both summer league and preseason are much tougher to find if he can figure out how to do it against higher levels of competition. He has that SGA type ability to pull off shots that most others can't by using his length, and he has outstanding vision. He just needs to make an adjustment to NBA athleticism. We can't forget that NAW wasn't really asked to play much point at Virginia Tech. Its a shame his expectations were so high considering the position change.
I’m a bit higher on Clarke than a standard-issue role player. He’s an explosive athlete with a high motor and good basketball IQ. He was the second most efficient scorer in college last year behind Zion and that scoring efficiency has carried right over into the NBA. I loved the idea of him and Zion together for stretches in a small-ball line up.
I agree, when we hit 17 and Clarke was still on the board I had a real hope that we'd take him. Obviously we didn't, and I think NAW has plenty of potential (and is several years younger than Clarke) but I did think Clarke would go well on this team.Originally Posted by new city champ
I get that Clarke is a bit older (23 for a rookie is pretty old) but this is a guy who didn't even attempt 3s in college, and already he's shooting 40% from 3 in the NBA. He's added that to his game over the summer. I have enough faith in his touch as a scorer (insane accuracy on floaters and runners) to think he may well be able to maintain solid 3pt shooting even when the volume increases. That's a tangible improvement he's added at the age of 23. If he had stagnated since turning 21, I'd see the reasoning for saying that maybe he's hit his ceiling, but he's still making obvious improvements.
Will he ever be an all-star? Very probably not, especially in the West, but he can be one of those all-star-value roleplayers who just don't get the nod, imo. Starter calibre player with impact beyond the box score.
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I think Memphis' group has a lower potential, but they have far easier questions to answer longterm. They just need wings and more wings and they are good to go. They can even add bigs because of how versatile Triple J and Clarke are. We have far more roster questions. It's still up in the air what kind of defenders our guys are going to be longterm and how they fit on the court, I still don't love the fact Jax is so good offensively in areas that Zion is also good, hopefully Zion can be that talent that can do everything and make it work because the team talent is definitely there. You can only really go as far as your best player can take you.
I was a big Clarke guy. Him, Doumboya and NAW were my guys after the consensus top 6. Clarke can be really good. He's a unicorn type talent who will be the ultimate complimentary star if he develops any perimeter skill. But I've seen enough from NAW that it won't be too painful that we passed on him, NAW's mistakes come from a bad case of the rookies than a lack of talent, and his tools and job are much harder to adjust to the NBA game than Clarke's. And Hayes has been fantastic.
Thanks
I honestly think Morant has been really really good. He's adapted to the NBA a lot faster than I thought he would, and he's make a bunch of really good decisions that have improved his game in important, NBA relevant ways (like his decision that seemingly happened this summer to just start accepting that there will be contact on drives and stop trying to avoid it). I still have doubts about him in terms of his ultimate, peak-level, but he's shown he can be legitimately good and impressive. Good for him.
But Zion's going to take, I don't know, maybe 5 games to remind everyone why he was the no-brainer #1 pick and any other choice was insanity.
I’m sure that will be the case, but I admit I’m now a bit more concerned about his physiology. When we drafted him I thought his mass was no problem. After all Barkley came into the league from Auburn at 300 pds + and had a long hall of fame career, maintaining his dynamic athleticism into his 30s. But then word started to leak about Zion’s injury history going back to high school. And every time you turned around some former player or talking head was saying Zion would never make it thru a season and how the club had to teach Zion to walk and how Zion should be held out all year as a precaution. All the noise has me a bit zapped on his durability.
Why? The fact is that the majority of the talk about Zion's previous injuries are (frankly) overstated at best. Many people, for example, cite his injury at Duke, but that wasn't a case of injury-prone-body, that was a case of equipment malfunction when his shoe exploded. People also cite him ''getting injured at Summer League'', except we all know that that injury wasn't real: Griff himself admitted it was just an excuse to stop him playing when he clearly wasn't ready. His high school injuries, from what I can find, were basically just standard stuff. He had a foot contusion, a knee bruise, and he hurt his thumb. These are not career defining issues.
Ignore the former players: former players are often clueless. Gilbert Arenas thinks that Zion should play as a shooting guard, and Eddie Johnson's on Twitter saying the league should ban players from shooting 3s in the 1st and 3rd quarters. Some players are smarter, sure, but in reality there's very little reason to give weight to something a former player says just because of their name recognition. Kendrick Perkins proves this daily. They do a segment every year where they laugh at Shaq for not even know what teams people play for, and then rely on him to give analysis. This is absurdity, obviously. The same issues apply to the talking heads on an even greater scale: they're just as clueless as the players, and they don't even have the bonus of having playing experience to make up for it.
Zion didn't get taught how to walk again. He had physiotherapy following surgery, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Aaron Nelson is renowned for making modifications and adjustments to players and extending their careers: why would it be a shock to find out that he's adjusting the mechanics of someone on the team after surgery? They phrase it the way they do for clickbait purposes, and clickbait purposes only.
Could Zion get injured seriously, in a career-defining way? Sure, it can happen to anyone, especially vertical athletes. Is there any reason to assume Zion is destined to be injury prone moreso than any other incredible vertical athlete in history? Not at all. Just let things happen, try not to worry, and keep your fingers crossed: just like we'd be doing if we ended up with any other superstar.
Last edited by Pelicanidae; 01-18-2020 at 04:38 AM.
Couldn't have said it any better. You are of great value here. Thanks for bringing the rational side of it to the table. By the time Zion or Jax are 30, Clarke might be out of the league given the difference of age.
It takes some analysis capability to consume NBA-related (frankly, any content nowadays) these days. Always think about who benefits, or what the purpose is with a certain statement (views? likes? generate discussion without adding anything?) before getting concerned about Zion being a 6'6 Greg Oden.
Recency Bias or an old southern saying "Prisoner of the Moment" syndrome. Let's see what happens when Memphis loses 7 out of 8! And it will happen.
Ja has looked special the past month. I definitely liked Zion more as a prospect and didn't think it was close at the time, but Ja's combination of nuclear athleticism, handle, passing have been on display and his shooting is way further along than I thought it was. I think he has All-NBA, top 10 player potential from what we've been seeing of late. I think it probably ends up as a debate for awhile, similar to AD and Dame.
I do have similar injury concerns for both players.
We're also seeing with BI, Ben Simmons, and Jaylen that it can be hard to definitively say who the best player in a draft is early on. These guys are not finished products and we haven't seen a minute of regular season Zion basketball. I think he has potential to be a unique interior force, but Morant is setting a high bar.
Morant will be the greatest PG to ever play the game. He is a 6'3 Chris Paul with Westbrook athleticism. There is no flaws in his game. Elite handle, elite passer, elite athleticism, elite IQ, elite scorer. Will become an elite shooter and defender. He is a created player. You could not ask for a better PG. He will terrorize the league for years to come.
Having said that. Zion will still be the better player. Zion has potential to he the GOAT and will finish top 5 of all time. He is a 6'6 285lb combination of Jordan and Shaq. His ability to dominate will become obvious very quickly. There is no one that can stay in front of him, no one can that can stop him. Once he develops a consistent pull up jumpshot, it's going to become a horror story for the rest of the NBA.
My impression of Ja was that of Harden and Westbrook. Will be an elite player who gets stats but just doesn't win when it counts.
This is a very ignorant take based off of college play. I haven't watched him much in the NBA, yet.
Good positive energy.
But also, yo mama's fat.
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