76ciology wrote:I think there can be “hidden gems” because guys are still archaic in scouting players.
For instance, why would you rank guards who can shoot that high just because they’re long and athletic?
Another thing is the league has trend towards into an environment that values shooting+scoring very lopsidedly than other traits. A guy like Sensabaugh can be the best player in this draft. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cam Thomas would be the best player in his draft if he was drafted with a top 3 pick than getting buried in the bench.
My take here is the more you absorb the data out there, the more your values in these guys gets skewed because you are taking some irrelevant data (i.e highlight dunks) that is distracting you from things that truly matters in today’s game
I think scouting nowadays is easy because the game is too simple. It’s basically ISO, PnR, Shooting with Rim Protection and switch defense. And every prospect has been practicing these skills even when they’re kids with their personal trainers.
So if you are a bad shooter, there won’t be that “eureka” moment anymore at age 24 when you’ll figure out “oh, i need to practice shooting”. You’re most likely practicing shooting all your life and your very likely gonna stay that way for your entire career.
All of this is obvious and you’d realize this 10-20 games after these guys step into the court. This happens every year. But then you tell yourself why havent u realized this before? Its because these guys are managed by very powerful agents who control the media, control their amateur teams for opportunities or have very talented highlight reel makers in youtube.
On BBall Reference you can sort each draft by WS, VORP etc.. Inevitably half the top 10 are from the 20-50 range every year. Seems like the league is getting more talented & skilled, but there's a ton of cluster-f noise in the evaluation process.
I feel like a some of it could be cut out if teams stopped getting so hyperfixated on who has an "ELITE NBA LEVEL TALENT" in the lottery. It leads to a lot of **** like drafting Frank Nitilikina because "maybe we can teach him to play offense," maybe we can teach Josh Jackson to shoot, maybe we can teach Marvin Bagley to use his right hand, maybe we can turn Rui Hachimura into something, even if it takes 5 years and we dump him once we've done it... Low hanging fruit example in 2023 seems to be Anthony Black. Here we have a guard with all-universe lower body strength... What does it buy you?
If there's someone I think is being slept on with actual high-high-high end potential it's Nnaji. Raw, but he's got every athletic tool you could ever dream of in a rim runner. 18, 3 years pro in Spain, and Barca is using him the way the Boston Celtics might use Tacko Fall. Give him a role and tell him to go to bed every night watching RW3 film, maybe you get somewhere.
