WaltLongmire wrote:Ironic and kind of pathetic for some of you (you know who you are) to talk about drafting the next "Ibaka" at #4 when you would have passed on the real Ibaka as a top 6 pick the year he was actually taken. Would any of you have taken him at #4 at that time? Would any of you have taken a risk on a guy who had never even played big minutes in Europe, and was destined to not play in the NBA the year he was drafted? I can just think of the posts that would have attacked him as another mysterious Euro player who was a project.

Brilliant move by OKC/Seattle- they were actually willing to wait for him to develop, and they came out of that draft with their PG and PF of the future, but people around here would have been howling more than they did when Gallinari was drafted, if we took a raw 18 year kid whose experience was minimal and was destined to stay in Europe another year. Ibaka might be one of the best 24 picks ever, and in hindsight, he should have been taken earlier, but most of you would not have had the guts to take a risk on a young Euro big in the top 10.

Ibaka was actually 18 when he was drafted, and did not play in the NBA following the draft, but did play in Spain where his minutes were small (16MPG), but his per/36 stats were eerily similar to what he has put up in OKC. Most of the guys on this forum probably would not have taken him at 4 in 2009, either, given the minimal playing time he had that year in Spain.

He was able to shoot 72% from the FT line during his final Europeans season when he was only 19 years old, so he was already showing a decent stroke. At that same age Stein was shooting FTs at a about 37%, which is less than a good NBA 3pt shooter, something guys around here are now expecting him to be, if you look at some of the more outlandish comments about his game.

Ibaka and Stein are not the same player. Ibaka had a reliable jumper early on- had a good midrange and fall away stroke according to what I read. He is not the perimeter defender Stein is, but is more of a classic PF and has a much stronger base than Stein has ever showed in college, where he was being shoved around by much smaller opponents.

I have issues with OK4 on D and am worried about his weight, but assuming he is in shape, Stein is not in the same category with him.

I would not put Stein in the same category as Kaminsky either, for that matter, who would be a perfect player for the Knicks...but that is another argument that won't be settled around here, although some feel it was settled in the Wisc/Kentucky game, a game where WCS seemed to wilt under the spotlight.

I can't wait for the Towns or Stein @1????? thread from the Stein sycophants. That should be a fun thread, and will segue perfectly into the "Stein or Anthony Davis-who is better" thread.

I think most are talking about Ibaka as he is now and not as a prospect coming into the draft.

I agree that Ibaka is not a perfect comparison of WCS but he's about as close as we can come IMO. WCS has the agility, hops and speed of KMart but the size of a center. I don't believe that he's that outclassed as a prospect by Okafor. I think they're much closer than most believe. WCS just needed to learn to establish a wider base it's not that he has a lack of leg strength. He just had a tendency to have his legs too close together and standing to tall when in the post. When he had a wide base he was just fine in the post. Most of his flaws are really just technical things he can fix and he has been doing that.

Calipari said that WCS started with basketball late and that he was very raw when he came to Kentucky. He has shown flashes of some offensive ability and despite low production there is IMO untapped offensive talent with him. IMO this isn't a case of a player who has no offensive talent. He's merely behind others in terms of his development. It's not impossible for WCS to continue to develop his offense at least to a decent productive level. He won't have to be an offensive juggernaut in order to be a great prospect.

As for WCS not even being on Kaminsky's level as a prospect I think this is over the top. WCS at the NBA level will be able to display his talent on a nightly basis to a high degree on the defensive end. One game is a foolish thing to pin a judgement on.

JoeyBagadonuts wrote:Jahlil Okafor vs. Willie Cauley-Stein: Who Is the Shiny New Toy?"

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-nba-draft-jahlil-okafor-willie-cauley-stein/

Great article. It was one of the best i've read on the subject of WCS vs Okafor.

For most of the teams in the lottery, the NBA draft is basically Christmas, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s a “shiny new toy syndrome” that greatly influences the pre-draft process. The objective is to better the team, but there’s also a burning desire to wow fans, to give them everything they thought they wanted and more. Even if your dream is to win the national spelling bee, the package that resembles a Webster’s dictionary isn’t always the most alluring. Sometimes it’s the thing that looks like He-Man’s Power Sword under layers of gift wrap.

In other words, all drafts circle back to the question of polish vs. upside. And this year, nowhere would that comparison seem clearer than between Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein. Do you want the guy who’s likely to realize his lower ceiling or the one who just might become something we’ve never seen before? It’s always an either/or, but as two of the 2015 draft’s best big men show, rarely is it ever that simple.

In the summer of 2013, Jahlil Okafor, the near-consensus no. 1 recruit from the Class of 2014, put the finishing touches on a dominating world tour. At just 17 years old, he was months away from declaring his intent to attend Duke University and sealing his fate as a future national champion, but he was as imposing a basketball player as you’re likely to find at that age. Despite being the second youngest player on Team USA’s roster at the FIBA U19 tournament in Prague, Okafor dominated, averaging nearly 11 points in 14 minutes on a ridiculous 77.2 percent from the floor. If those stats don’t wow you, how about this? In those nine games, Okafor had a player efficiency rating of 40.2. For reference, the highest PER ever recorded over a single season in the NBA is the 31.8 Wilt Chamberlain registered 50 years prior. Okafor was named to the All-Tournament team along with four players1 who would hear their names called in the NBA draft one year later — three of them in the lottery. Okafor was only a boy, but he was a monster, the kind of Hulk-like manifestation every bullied little kid wishes they could summon when playing against the big kids on the playground.

That same summer, Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein was gearing up for his sophomore season, only his second year as a one-sport athlete. You may have read about his football exploits, but if not, here’s a quick primer: A kid with quarterback aspirations, he was foisted into a wide receiver role during his senior year of high school and went on to become the best receiver in the state of Kansas. In his one season as a wideout, he had 1,265 receiving yards, he averaged close to 20 yards per catch, and nearly a quarter of his receptions went for touchdowns. Cauley-Stein played alongside a slot receiver who ran a 4.4 40 — and Cauley-Stein, who was 6-foot-10, was faster than him. Although he also played AAU basketball throughout high school, he was one of the most raw players Calipari had ever recruited for Kentucky. However, his size, length, agility, and unconventional pedigree gave him a chance to become the best defender in the college game. He stayed for three seasons and eventually made that happen.

Cauley-Stein is two years older than Okafor. The two are vastly different prospects; their respective strengths lie on opposite ends of the court. Okafor, who has been pegged as a potential no. 1 overall pick since he started high school, has had to bat back constant criticisms about his defense and his place in today’s NBA. He is young, but his back-to-the-basket game encapsulates an old-world view of the sport. On the other hand, Cauley-Stein is exactly what the league is craving at this very moment, and other than a few concerns about his passion for the game and some vague character-issue questions that have vanished over the past month or so, he fits the profile of a top-five pick. But which one is the shiny new toy?

As if Cauley-Stein’s ability to defend all five positions on the court weren’t enough to sell you on him as a prospect, recently there’s been a campaign of sorts hoping to paint him as more than just a guy with Defensive Player of the Year potential. There’s footage of WCS shooting corner 3s with pretty good form on his release that becomes almost unbearably amazing later in the video when he shows off his fluidity shooting jumpers off the dribble.2 Kenny Payne, one of Cauley-Stein’s coaches at Kentucky, called him “John Wall–ish” for his size. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but if stock footage of a rocket ripping through the stratosphere suddenly flashed before your eyes after hearing that comparison, you aren’t alone. The general message is clear: The ceiling we have on Cauley-Stein’s potential isn’t nearly high enough. Yet it hasn’t provided any stability in terms of his projected draft position. He’s still slated to go anywhere from no. 4 to the end of the lottery.

Meanwhile, Okafor currently stands as the reluctant answer at the no. 2 spot. There aren’t any workout videos that have gone viral with him because he knows that’s not his bag. Instead, he’s tried to address critics with perspective and logic. Scouts have been ogling him for more than half a decade, and after all that time maybe he’s started to look like a fully realized product. But in what other context would anyone place limits on a 19-year-old like that, let alone one who has proven to be one of the most talented amateur basketball players in the world? “Who at my age is a fully developed player?” Okafor told ESPN The Magazine. “You never know how someone can transform their speed, movements, quickness.”

He’s right. You can never be too sure. NBA players are capable of remarkable transformations: Paul Millsap entered the league as an undersize lunch-pail player who was the best rebounder in college for three consecutive seasons. He became an All-Star after miraculously turning into one of the league’s best all-around players. Meyers Leonard was a raw, run-jump big man who’d only attempted 12 3-pointers in his college career; this season, in his third year, he was the only player in the league to log a 50-40-90 season. Andrew Bogut, the former no. 1 overall selection in 2005, was touted for his “gorgeous” hook shot, but because of his less-than-stellar athleticism, his defense was considered a major issue, and there were concerns that he would “never be an outstanding shot blocker.” A gruesome arm injury in 2010 forced him to alter his game, and since then, Bogut has become one of the best defenders in the league. He hasn’t averaged lower than 2.4 blocks per 36 minutes in six years.3

Here’s what the two have in common: Okafor and Cauley-Stein are savants of one domain, and both are clearly hoping to prove that their limitations on the other end of the court were little more than a matter of context.

Cauley-Stein was a quarterback turned receiver, but he also played a bit of cornerback. He played three different positions with three different vantages of the field, and it all coalesces in the way he tracks the ball and the movement on the court. You can see it in how he chases point guards out on the perimeter and plays the switch on pick-and-rolls. None of it works without his otherworldly lateral and straight-line agility, but he’s not a guy who gets by on athleticism alone. He’s patient and anticipatory, both on defense and in how he has allowed his college career to play out. There is defensive genius in play here — the polish is obvious — and at least some of it has to do with the way he has accepted the different roles he’s been put in throughout his athletic career. But that role has rarely ever been “offensive star.” And while the NBA will surely welcome the diversification of his talent, turning WCS into a do-it-all player on both ends of the floor seems, in a way, limiting. Especially when he has the potential to be a defender as unique as Anthony Davis, Draymond Green, or Kawhi Leonard.

Okafor has had an NBA-caliber body and post game since at least his sophomore year of high school, and he has refined that part of his game to a point where it might be safe to say there haven’t been five prospects in the last decade or two who’ve had better skills down low. The ability to shift your weight quickly and place your body in positions of leverage over your opponent, to time your maneuvers and quickly adjust with countermoves to stay two steps ahead of your defender, to know when to pass out of the double and when to face up — he had it all down to a science before most people start going to prom. And when he put that knowledge into practice, his teams were virtually unbeatable. He was the MVP and a gold medalist at the FIBA U17 tournament in 2012; he won gold at the U19s in 2013; he won an Illinois state title with Whitney Young High School; he is an NCAA champion. Defense just hasn’t been all that important up to this point. His defensive education starts the second he’s drafted, which can be said about nearly every other player drafted into the league. But nearly every other player doesn’t have Jahlil’s catalogue of skills preset and ready to go.

That sure sounds like upside to me.

blkexec wrote:I dont think the discussion is wcs vs okafor

Its wcs vs everybody after the top 3.

But the article highlighted some additional positives about both. I wonder how they will be compared in 10 years?

Stein with a KG jumper.

Okafor with a Carl Malone career.

I think both will be great players when its all said and done.

Its a deep draft....i say it every year. Has to be true eventually. ...

I think knowing WCS background story helps a lot to understand what we're dealing with. I've been saying that he still has a ton of upside and it just as talented as any of the other top prospects but for some they look only at his performance up to this point and haven't accepted that he could simply be behind in his development rather than deficient in talent. He could end up being a far different player when it's all said and done. I think WCS's combination of elite athletic ability and the physical talent needed to develop an offensive game makes him a very worthy pick at #4. I doubt that the Knicks will have to make a choice between the 2, but rather WCS or Russell or Winslow or KrisP.

nixluva wrote:

blkexec wrote:I dont think the discussion is wcs vs okafor

Its wcs vs everybody after the top 3.

But the article highlighted some additional positives about both. I wonder how they will be compared in 10 years?

Stein with a KG jumper.

Okafor with a Carl Malone career.

I think both will be great players when its all said and done.

Its a deep draft....i say it every year. Has to be true eventually. ...

I think knowing WCS background story helps a lot to understand what we're dealing with. I've been saying that he still has a ton of upside and it just as talented as any of the other top prospects but for some they look only at his performance up to this point and haven't accepted that he could simply be behind in his development rather than deficient in talent. He could end up being a far different player when it's all said and done. I think WCS's combination of elite athletic ability and the physical talent needed to develop an offensive game makes him a very worthy pick at #4. I doubt that the Knicks will have to make a choice between the 2, but rather WCS or Russell or Winslow or KrisP.

I think one of the top three teams might surprise everyone and select Stein; because it is no longer a secret that he can shoot the ball or will not be a liability on offense. If some are willing to pay D Jordan to dollar for his services, Stein also will be viewed as an important asset.

WAKEUPKNICKS2015 wrote:Taking stein at 4 would be the dumbest thing the Knicks could do. Dude has bust written all over him. Choked big time in the tourney and was beta to Towns.

So does Okafor. IMO, the three players I see doing big things in the NBA are: Russell, Stein, Towns, and Winslow. Okafor's game may suffer tremendously due to his lack of range. He was able to get away with it in college, because guys were much shorter and not strong enough. Golden State just gave a blue print on how to defend teams with players like Okafor. Look for the entire league to copy that style. If you can't defend the P&R, you won't see much playing time; specifically given his low freethrow percentage

most def!

WAKEUPKNICKS2015 wrote:Okafor will be a beast. He may not have the cute little practice shot workout video, but that dude is a gamer and will be a perennial all-star. To me he's the safest bet in the draft.

Obviously Okafor is legit, but we most likely can't get him. I do think tho that it's not just about how potent an offensive player Okafor will be. There's more to the game than that. If we look past that and look at the impact WCS can have on the Defense and that he's efficient scoring and doesn't need the ball in order to have a great impact then WCS looks a lot better. Once you have WCS you will always have a strong anchor to your defense and that will keep you in more games because whereas offense can come and go you can give defensive effort every night.

CrushAlot wrote:Just saw an article on phillysports.com where the writer suggested that if Okafor drops to the Sixers that Hinkie would take him and try to get a deal out of the Knicks like he got last year for Payton from the Magic.

Then there is this:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/chadfordinsider/status/613033303403159552

Phil talking about OK4 possibly not being there and trading out, and his relationship with Buss makes me think he has some insider info.

Add the Porzingus and Russell workouts and it makes you think that we will get one of these guys.

nixluva wrote:

WaltLongmire wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:Just saw an article on phillysports.com where the writer suggested that if Okafor drops to the Sixers that Hinkie would take him and try to get a deal out of the Knicks like he got last year for Payton from the Magic.

ESPN radio- one of the hosts said that he saw OK4 and thought he had lost some weight and looked like he had taken the criticism about his fitness to heart. Did not give any source as to what he saw.

Then there is this:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/chadfordinsider/status/613033303403159552

Phil talking about OK4 possibly not being there and trading out, and his relationship with Buss makes me think he has some insider info.

Add the Porzingus and Russell workouts and it makes you think that we will get one of these guys.

I think Phil would see it as a major victory to get Russell but KrisP may not be a bad prize either. It will depend on how Phil feels about the kid after getting a chance to size him up in person. We know he probably loves Russell, but what's his take on KrisP?

The fact that he invited Porzingis in means that he's interested but it also lets other teams know this too, and you figure we might get some offers.

Heard that the Porzingis people wanted the Laker workout to be secret, for some reason:

They’ve been over to Spain to see Porzingis play. Kupchak, Jim Buss, assistant GM Glenn Carraro, scouting director Jesse Buss, assistant scouting director Ryan West and scout Chaz Osborne were among a considerable Lakers contingent to attend Porzingis’ recent workout in Las Vegas. The Lakers followed up immediately with a private workout his agent preferred stay clandestine at the Lakers’ home facility last Monday night.

All up to Hinkie, anyway, and you never know with him.

Might end up with Russell, even after the lottery fiasco and all of Knicksland will sing in joy.