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Honestly just haven't seen enough film from him. These are still super early rankings and he could very well rise, but I've generally liked what I've seen but not enough has jumped off the screen for me to feel confident putting him higher over guys that I've seen do more, more consistently thus far.
Basketball.
He's been in my signature basically the entire year
I'm a big Garuba fan. He has extreme problems with his shooting and that stops me from moving him up any higher than about 10-13th in my rankings, but he's really fantastic defensively and has improved a lot as a ballhandler through the year.
He certainly caught my eye while looking at film on the top 20 or so guys. He looks like a real defensive monster down on the block. His shot does look clunky, but he's a fluid athlete who is built a little stouter than some of the long wings that may be available when we pick. I think he brings some of the same explosiveness and physicality that Zion does and I like it when guys can approximate what the guy playing in front of them does. He's young with a giant wingspan. He might good value in the late lottery, if he makes it that far. I'm biased though as I still don't think I've gotten over the Pels not taking Clarke in '19...
This is gonna be such an anticlamatic thread. Pels aint drafting a guy in the top 20 this year. That pick is getting traded. Focus time on potential late 1st/2nd round sleepers
@mcnamara247
Is Griff's seat that warm? I wouldn't mind adding one more lottery talent in the draft then using our 2nd rounders and/or creating some cap room to acquire a couple of role playing vets--and not the $15 million variety. Of course, if they plan to swing for the fences this off season on a "3rd star," then I get it. I don't particularly like that route--I'm in the minority in that I like program/culture building rather than reaching for one star--but that's a legit reason to use the pick in a package to go for a guy. I wouldn't do it to sign, as you suggested they might, a Robert Covington-type player. I'd rather 90% of a Covington on a decent deal than sacrificing a lottery pick for that kind of guy...
For me it all depends on where the picks falls and what's on the table for it.
If you get the number 1 pick you don't trade it unless it's part of a deal to secure a top 20 player.
If you get the number 10 pick, trade it, but not for like some scrub; make sure you're getting back someone who can legitimately play and isn't 36 and dying of injuries.
That's assuming we do trade it, which we very well might.
It wouldnt be just the pick for Nance. You would be getting off Bledsoe too, which is probably worth a late 1st by itself. Cutting that salary would also allow you to use the MLE after re-signing Hart and doing whatever with Lonzo. So, if you think about it as: Pick 11 and Bledsoe for Nance and say Danny Green or Doug McDermott - it isnt the worst deal in the world. Especially considering all the other young guys on the team that we are still developing. Its hard to develop five or six 20-22 year olds all at once
Buckle up lol. I honestly can't see a better deal,maybe players and Bled for Mccollum, but honestly I don't believe in Mccollum making this team drastically better. I know MM thrown around trade ideas for him if the Blazers blow it up, but a trade for him will probably make us slightly better. I get in theory having a true closer, and better shooter shall help, but man I want to focus on defense more when obtaining new players.
Attempting? Yes. Executing? No.
Fans will be back in stands next year. Owners will want to sell as many tickets as possible to recoup revenue, and you dont do that by trading your best players. Griff will go after Beal and others but I dont see teams moving those guys and they definitely wont for a poo-poo platter of picks headlines by the 10th or 11th pick in what many consider a 5 man draft with just role players after that.
Now, if we jump into the top 4, then he might be able to pull it off. But otherwise, I would anticipate quality upgrades that cost a pick or two, in addition to matching contracts.
Professional career high 24 points, 12 rebounds for potential lottery pick Usman Garuba in arguably the biggest game of his career thus far: game four of the Euroleague playoffs to stave off elimination and force a deciding game five. Impressive stuff for a 19-year old.
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) April 29, 2021
Draft guy PD Web has just uploaded his full scout document on Usman Garuba which is great. PD is cool, he's a good follow on twitter and also does a twitch basketball breakdown stream. Here's the link to the document:the USMAN breakdown is live (free)
— PD Web (@abovethebreak3) April 28, 2021
team defense as systems of thought, Movement Skill Mario Kart & the greatest youth basketball performance of all time.https://t.co/CFkNVD3ve5
It's technically a link to his Patreon but this document is free, you don't have to pay or anything.
Here are some interesting/important things about Garuba taken from this document, for the shortened version. His full document contains clips to go along with some of the information and analysis.
lmao RubioD Fun Fact
Garuba (15 points, 11 rebounds, 10 blocks) is one of three players to have a triple-double in the final of the FIBA U16 Euro Championships.
The others:
Dario Saric (2010) - 19 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists
Ricky Rubio (2006) - 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists 7 steals (2OT)
The DEFENSESo let’s label some outcomes- Garuba is a W/F/C offensively and defensively who wins games and plays hard and prolly needs to shoot. That much is black and white. Everything else is grey.
Garuba is a cool type of POA defender: a big strong switch defender who can recover downhill but struggles to change direction. That seems like a lot of terms but basically Garuba can get up to a high top speed and struggles to change direction or decelerate at top speed. If you have ever used the heavy weightclass in Mario Kart, you are familiar with the tradeoffs and trickiness at play here. What makes USMAN so interesting stylistically, is that he is very aggressive on-ball, wanting to defend like a flittering pest rather than a dude who is built like Garuba actually is, a Tapas Julius Randle if you will. So you have interactions like the one above, where he tries to climb into a guard’s handle, gets beat middle when his footwork falters and then recovers for a “pin”. In the league, the aggressiveness and quick hands are going to pay off, but doing so with mediocre footwork and a reliance on reactionary athleticism is a steep difficulty curve.Off-ball defense brings about two questions about Garuba- what position does he defend & how much time would you like him to defend that position. Not all defensive assignments and archetypes have equal weight - a solid defensive 5 is about the most overstocked position in the NBA & placing a tweener there has serious lineup and team building implications, as backup 5 is one of the easier dollars to relative skill availabilities & on the other hand, players who can defend jumbo creators on the perimeter are the least available.
Garuba has great hands and good enough mobility to jump while backpedalling in drop - but there is a knock on effect of putting a smaller 5 in drop - they have to be SO good technically and athletically to be able cover the same ground as a traditionally sized 5. ******** is insanely hard, and I’m not sure it’s the best practice to use Garuba as a 5 in more than like 25% of lineups. It’s a steep challenge to return value and there is another, much more lucrative positional assignment that he could be spending that time at. It’s not that Garuba is a bad 5, he is hanging in EL, with its wild horizontal offenses, super physicality and brolic bigs - as a teenage big. There is so much communication and defensive feel required to not get exposed between those lines. But To me, I see an interesting facet, rather than the central pitch of his defensive utility.ON THE JUMPER:Garuba gets happy feet when he is on an island, to the point that I think his defense is more impressive due to how tough he makes it for himself.
PASSING SKILLSThe jumper itself is pretty solid - there are three major issues that seem to be in various states of fix depending on the day. The first is the energy transfer - Garuba shoots in sections, and it’s what creates that versimilitudinous clunkiness, that not-quite-right feeling of a well trained but not well repped shooter. Getting the shot smooth is gonna reward the good form that Garuba has, especially for his rep as a bad shooter. Garuba is an almost exclusively hop shooter, which is prolly good for a player with serious segmentation issues. The next two issues are related but cause his misses most often - elbow collapsed inwards & the hand placement. The elbow creates a sorta lonzo ball effect, where he is shooting cross body, not because he is right eye dominant, but by body misalignment. Getting the elbow to face the rim will solve the hand placement (shooting bed) problem. Try a shooting motion with your elbow tucked across your body right now, look at your hand, see how it's diagonal and wonky. That’s the elbow concern and why Garuba misses all over. By getting the elbow in, it's gonna stabilize the hand and that will stabilize the follow-through, with enough in-game reps of course.
Getting the hand under the ball is also gonna solve the arc issues, sometimes he shoots a moon ball, other times it’s regular, other times it's a line drive. Again, shooting bed, but that idea of a “shooting a soft ball” all comes back to a repeatable form, with no moving parts. Garuba has shot fairly well considering the leaks in energy from his current form. I think his footwork is generally pretty good and speaks to the work level and growth. It’s a whole lot better than it used to be and he is letting shots fly relative to where he used to be. It’s mostly c&s on kickouts, but he is taking them.
If you're interested in watching some analysis of Usman, you can catch PD Webs stream on him here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003326064 with Nekias Duncan.Usman is a good playmaker in a specific sense- one touch passing with a quick read. Garuba can identify the coverage and process what decision needs to be made in a way that hints at other playmaking abilities. These 5/4 high lows, on the short roll in PNR, one mores - but that’s also the end of the flashes because on this Real Madrid side, that’s all they need. Teaching a wing to read the floor in a broad variety of situations is a really messy developmental process. A wing/forward has to know how to make reads in basically every situation across 3 different positions & that's going to involve a lot of trial and error. You know what doesn’t allow for error - Euro League. Would you believe that Garuba had 4 possessions of PNR ball handler usage across the 70+ games RM played this year? Four.
Just saw someone on Twitter do a version of this and I thought it looked like a pretty decent idea so I made my own.
This is ranking prospects for this year's draft by archetype. So players are being compared to other players of their style.
Primary Creators - Off Guards - Scorers - Off Ball Wings - 3+D - Big Wings - Small Bigs - Stretch Forwards - True Bigs
Rank: Primary Creators Off Guards Scorers Off-Wings 3+D Guys Big Wings Small Bigs Stretch Forwards True Bigs 1 Cade Cunningham Jalen Suggs Keon Johnson Ziaire Williams Moses Moody J. Kuminga Usman Garuba Kai Jones Evan Mobley 2 Sharife Cooper Jaden Springer Tre Mann Corey Kispert Franz Wagner Roko Prkacin Scottie Barnes JT Thor Alperen Sengun 3 Josh Giddey Jalen Green Bones Hyland Marcus Bagley Chris Duarte J. Johnson RaiQuan Grey Jeremiah Robinson Earle Isaiah Jackson 4 Jared Butler Davion Mitchell James Bouknight Joe Wieskamp Aaron Henry Kessler Edwards Mark Vital Filip Petrusev Dayron Sharpe 5 Daishen Nix Deuce McBride Josh Christopher DJ Stewart Terrance Shannon Santi Aldama Isaiah Todd Neemias Queta 6 David Johnson Ayo Dosunmu BJ Boston Johnny Juzang Herb Jones Yves Pons Sandro Mamelukashvili Ariel Hukporti
Something like that, there are a few names that I don't really dig that much but I was just trying to fill the columns (you can see I ran out of small bigs I was willing to put, even Grey and Vital are stretching it a bit, second round type guys.
A few of these are very debatale too, like I had a bit of a brain-melt over whether to put Bouknight above Hyland or not, or whether I should put Kispert over Williams. To some extent it depends what you're looking for. But this makes it a bit easier, cause rather than just trying to wonder who is good you can just say ''listen, I know a true primary is the most valuable player we can possibly have, who is the best true primary?'' and there's the answer. Similarly, if you're a team like the Thunder who will end up picking around the middle of the lottery, like 5th or something right now, and you know you already have SGA filling that true primary role and you're not high enough to get Cade, you can say ''I think we could really use a talented big wing'' or something and you can look and bam, that's your guy.
What do you all think about these prospects?
Amar Sylla
Greg Brown
Josh Christopher
Ibou Dianko Badji
Isaiah Todd
Davion Mitchell
Isaiah Livers
Landers Nolley II
Roko Prkacin
Been turning my attention to Isaiah Todd. Definitely like what I see so far. Might be a Demarcus Cousins type head case but skills are undeniable.
'Depending, of course, on the bounce of the ping pong balls, I wouldn't be adverse to trading out of the draft all together to get rid of Bledsoe and pick up an expiring contract that can help us immediately. We already have a "Kiddie Korps"...there is no sense in adding to our "Kindergarten Klass" with another project who will be, at best, a "definite maybe".
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