misterearl wrote:Sometimes it takes a minute. The more Toppin plays, the more he seems to be learning the rhythm of the pro game. No longer limited to hoisting three point shots, he is mixing in an occasional foray into the paint and making plays on both ends. Inaddition, wingspan has produced a few timely steals along the way. Nothing to go overboard with praise about, but encouraging signs. I’ll take it.Now, if we can persuade Julius Randle to not dribble into double teams...
Baby steps.
http://www.ultimateknicks.com/forum/topic.asp?t=61186&page=4
TripleThreat wrote:Jimbo5 wrote: I haven't really thought of Obi as a pick. Can he be a good pick for the knicks at 8?
.....His success becomes a question of long term fit and coaching.
A coach like Doc Rivers will see Toppin as a power forward and try to get him to work on his defense to get it to replacement level. If Toppin spends 80 percent of his skill work on his defense, he won't get to replacement level. It's max effort/high volume/utility of time for low returns. It's choices like this that make Doc Rivers a non elite coach.
A coach like Erik Spolestra will see Toppin as a miscast lead guard/attack guard and will try to get him to work on his handle to get it to replacement level for a primary ball handler. If Toppin spends 80 percent of his skill work here, it will be max effort/high volume/utility of time for exponential returns. It's choices like this that make Spolestra an elite coach and frankly the best coach in the current NBA.
You aren't getting defense from Toppin. There are only three real positions left in the NBA - Pivot, wing, attack guard. The only one where the current pace and space game flow tolerates a **** defender is at attack guard. This will play to Toppin's strengths. He's a good offensive player. He can get to the rim and finish and that should translate to the next level. He'll help you in transition. He's actually a pretty good passer. You aren't getting a high IQ player. You aren't getting a guy who understands how to operate in space thus he's net negative on the glass. You aren't getting a guy with high situational awareness. He plays small/slow for his size ( bullied by power players and chasing speedy players) which is shielded by people waiting for him to take a lob to the rim and seeing the explosion over the technique. He's not a high floor guy, he's an "immediate floor" guy. What you see his rookie year will be 98 percent of what he will be the rest of his career.
Will his long range shooting projection translate? No. He'll project out as a slightly below replacement level shooter. NBA defenses will cover him better and he won't get the same clean looks behind the arc like he did in college.
Defensively, his best asset is his length. Keep him away from the rim as his technique, situational awareness and timing are all tragic. He's just going to have to give "energy guy" level effort here to try to offset the massive holes here. He makes Chris Mullin look like Gary Payton. I don't think you can fix that.
How should a team see him?
He's the kind of player who can help a bad team become decent but not a good team to become great. If you have a great team trying to be elite, he's a tax on your roster.
If you are OK with a fun team to watch and you know you won't last in the playoffs, he's a fine type of player to have. If you want to build a contender, you pass on him, or you draft him with the intent to trade him quickly, basically churn him because this is a weak draft and teams have to think about value for slot.
His best pathway to success is to let him be ball dominant and let him run your offense. Like a lot of players, at lower levels, he was a former point guard, so while he didn't do it at the college level, it's not completely foreign. The questions become can he improve his handle enough and can he efficiently score enough to be worth the trade off on defense.....
I wrote this in early September, in the preseason and before the draft and I still stand by it. Lots of people believed his long range shooting would translate and I did not and I still do not.
Like all Knicks draft picks, once he's here, I wish him only the best and success because I love this team to death. But I wouldn't have drafted him and said so.
Was Toppin "Value For Slot" where he was picked. In a technical sense, the answer is Yes. He was projected by some as the 2nd overall or 3rd overall pick and ranged somewhere in the top 5-6 on some boards. So the Knicks got "Value For Slot", but VFS is not always the "Best Player Available" Technically, Greg Oden was VFS for Portland, but he wasn't the BPA. It happens but the Knicks can't afford to keep missing on picks like this.
To hit his ceiling, Toppin needs to run the offense, but the two big questions still loom
1) Can he produce enough offensively to overcome all his other negative trade offs? That's an insanely big ask. ( If you remove all superstar level players, you need scoring punch in wild uncontrolled unstoppable bursts like a prime Jamal Crawford to make a zero defender worth it. )
2) Is he currently, and will he be in the future, the best option to run the Knicks offense as the consistent ball handler/facilitator?
Given that the Knicks hired Thibs, and he's a clear defensive oriented coach, the pick become even more baffling.
Toppin brings more questions than answers. He's a pick the Knicks really couldn't afford given their situation. I'm not a fan of his fundamentals.
I like certain types of players - Saddiq Bey, Mikal Bridges, De'Anthony Melton, Matisse Thybulle, Keldon Johnson, etc, etc and I like them for a reason. My viewpoint is you get high floor long defensive-established wings and hope their offense picks up and a few of them break out into something more. I wanted Bey, wanted the Knicks to try to trade back and pick up some other asset and select Bey, and barring that, I still thought that Bey would be the right pick in Toppin's slot, even as a technical "overdraft/not Value For Slot" pick. Even the "default" projection by Jon Giovany of Devin Vassell would have been more useful for this team.
Like I did for Frank N, I want to wait until mid season of Year 3 for Toppin to see how he develops ( or not). The pandemic didn't help things for these young players obviously. I still believe the Knicks would have been better off taking someone else.
While drafts are a total crapshoot on some level, part of the Knicks' problems with drafting is the same problem many teams have - They can't just pick a useful player, they also desire the external validation in public of "being smarter than everyone else" Phil Jackson couldn't just pick useful players. He needed to pick players and prove a point - That he was some kind of unstoppable basketball God. I recognize guys like Melton and Thybulle and Johnson aren't sexy type players or highlight reel types, but they are infinitely useful. Of course the bizarre irony of it all is if you stick to just grabbing useful players, eventually people around you will start to believe you are smarter than everyone else.
When I lived in Seattle, I used to frequent a grocery store where a homeless guy would always be around. ( This was before that city basically destroyed itself into some kind of woke apocalyptic mess) Sometimes I'd converse briefly while loading my bags into my truck. One time he said he saved up some money and bought a ski rack off of Craigslist. He said he used to ski and loved it. Well was he telling the truth? Don't know. But he had no skis. He didn't have the money to fund a lifestyle where he could ski. He needed things like shelter, food and stability before a ski rack. The ski rack was a luxury this guy simply couldn't afford. So, to be fair, there's a good chance this guy was mentally ill in some fashion, as many homeless unfortunately have mental health problems. That's a complicated topic on it's own.
Obi Toppin is that ski rack.
5/8/2021 10:12 PM