Worst 3PT Team of Self Era?
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As of the end of the B12 tournament, these are the 3pt shooting percentages of KU’s perimeter players.
Wiggins 35%
Selden 34%
Tharpe 38%
Mason 35%
Greene 33%
Frankamp 28%
White III 32%
Compare to ISU.
Kane 40%
Long 40%
Compare to OSU
Forte 44%
Brown 38%
Smart 30%
Clark 41%
Looking at Wiggins and Selden, I have to ask: how do these guys expect to play in the NBA given that that level of 3pt shooting against D1 players. The NBA trey is farther out. The NBA players are vastly more athletic and much taller and stronger than D1 players. Really, I fear for Wiggins and Selden in the NBA. They seem destined to be two more Julian Wrights.
Perry Ellis is currently our best trey baller. He is 8-16 from trey. It is time to turn the trey attempts over to Perry and see if he can keep it at 40%, or better.
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@jaybate This is scary. I so want to believe we will make F4 and may/should win the title but it’s just not realistic.
Who in the world would draft Wayne Selden this year? I like him and I’m glad he’s a Jayhawk but what stands out about him?
Here’s a question I’ve been mulling over for a few days. How good a pro would Paul Pierce have been if he came out after his freshman season?
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@jaybate 1.0 Well, Wiggins & Selden are only freshman. Take a player like Kane, who in 3 seasons at Marshall shot 31.8%, 25%, & 24.8% (that’s progressing from freshman to junior seasons). Naz Long shot 27.8% last year as a freshman. Markel Brown shot 26.2%, 31.9%, 36.4% his first three years at OSU. I’m not even going to bother with Smart, who we know isn’t a good jump shooter, or Stevie Clark, who had limited attempts before being kicked off the team. Even the best sharpshooter on your list - Phil Forte - shot 33.8% last year as a freshman.
So Wiggins & Selden are actually shooting better as freshman than everyone on your list.
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@icthawkfan316 good info! Who do you wish WSU draws in their bracket?
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@Crimsonorblue22 I hope they draw us. If we’re still on the 2 line, we have to be one of the last 2s, so we’re either going to be in there with Florida (who should be the overall #1 seed) or Wichita State (who will probably draw the second #1 seed), assuming the committee seeds using the S-curve. While I’m not trying to knock the Shockers, I don’t like the prospect of us having to get by Florida just to reach the Final 4. So if we’re to not end up in Florida’s region, we’d almost certainly end up in the WSU’s. If they don’t draw us as a 2 I’d like to see them maybe have Louisville in their region, as a 2 or 3. Would be kind of neat to see the rematch from last year but with the roles reversed.
Aside from us, and understanding that I actually want them to lose, as maybe a 4 seed in their region I’d like them to get maybe an Iowa St. or Creighton (how funny would that be if they get knocked out by their former MVC rivals? LOL). For the 8/9 game some of the teams around that line that could give them a run would be Okie St or Oregon (also with some MVC ties with former Creighton coach Dana Altman now coaching the Ducks).
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@jaybate 1.0 Well, Wiggins & Selden are only freshman. Take a player like Kane, who in 3 seasons at Marshall shot 31.8%, 25%, & 24.8% (that’s progressing from freshman to junior seasons). Naz Long shot 27.8% last year as a freshman. Markel Brown shot 26.2%, 31.9%, 36.4% his first three years at OSU. I’m not even going to bother with Smart, who we know isn’t a good jump shooter, or Stevie Clark, who had limited attempts before being kicked off the team. Even the best sharpshooter on your list - Phil Forte - shot 33.8% last year as a freshman.
So Wiggins & Selden are actually shooting better as freshman than everyone on your list.
I’d add to that that Lebron James didn’t come out of high school as a great shooter, hitting only 29% from deep and 41% from the field. Julian Wright didn’t drop out of the league because he failed to come in and be a great player. He dropped out because he never developed. He was a jack of many trades and a master of none. It’s hard to make a living like that in the league.
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@icthawkfan316 I was hoping they would get osu! Love to see that game. I watched creighton tonight, can shoot, but slow, no ISU! I’m not to far from Wichita.
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Very nice points Ict. Context, context, context…when you put the numbers in context the picture changes big time.
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@jaybate 1.0 Combine worst 3 pt team and worst defensive team and it makes a nice recipe for being back in Lawrence at a very early date.
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ict,
Thanks for your anecdotal list of shooters improving year to year. That is interesting. That makes me think more about this issue of Selden and Wigs mediocre first year trey shooting that is anecdotally speaking, only bad in comparison to certain other starting and reserve trey shooters on ISU and OSU that have played more years.
We could certainly add Mario Chalmers and Travis Releford to that list, could we not?
But you know how thinking is. One thing leads to another.
Do you suppose we could build an anecdotal list of perimeter shooters that do not improve so dramatically? that say are tried and found wanting? that say are beaten out by better trey shooters because they do not improve fast enough?
Do you suppose we might even build an anecdotal list of perimeter shooters that stay about the same, or even fall off?
Do you suppose we might even build an anecdotal list of perimeter shooters that cease being perimeter shooters, because after being given trials as outside shooters, their skills are found so wanting that they are assigned other duties, or that they become bench warmers, or that they transfer?
Next, if we were to build these anecdotal lists, what would we then be able to infer validly about Wiggins and Selden’s chances of becoming 40% trey shooters in D1, or in the pros? Would we infer that there was no way of knowing from these anecdotal lists whether Selden and Wiggins both were likely to become 40% trey shooters? or would these anecdotal lists let us infer something else?
I know you know the answer: we can infer nothing statistically significant at all from these kinds of anecdotal lists, right?
Right.
Thinking about inference can be such a bitch some times.
Still, I am intrigued with your notion. I wonder if anyone else, could enlighten us here as to what percentage of D1 freshmen acting as their team’s starting wings and with a comparable number of first year FGAs to Wigs and Selden, improve from shall we say the 35% level to the > 40% level after 4 years of D1, or, harder still, after three succeeding years in the L?
Surely there must be a significant failure rate regarding freshman anything going to the NBA, over a four year stretch.
My hunch would be that the percentage that do achieve 40% might be rather significantly less than all. How about you? And of course this introduces the significant chance that Selden and Wiggins might not, doesn’t it?
Hmmm.
Now, what if that percentage were not merely statistically significant, but say, oh, I don’t know, say, approaching 50/50; that 50% did not improve to a level comparable to or better than the average percentage for NBA sharp shooters over 4 years?
Might then we be justified in saying that Selden and Wiggins could be risky to draft as 2s for the NBA because they start out shooting only 35% in D1–a league where Selden and Wigs will shoot treys much farther out and against playerss of much greater length, strength and quickness at the 2 than they have faced in D1?
I know, you were only talking about D1, just as my original post was only talking about the risks of Selden and Wigs being able to successful trifectates in the NBA. I’m just trying to keep both issues in the stew, so to speak.
Even just assuming a normal distribution of success and failure at reaching >40% 3pt shooting for D1 shootists that start as freshmen shooting 35% with the number of FGAs that Wigs and Selden have had, makes me considerably less than confident about their chances for achieving 40% after 4 years of D1, much less reaching the NBA average 3pt shooting by NBA 2s, doesn’t it you?
I mean, I think its great that Brown started out a lousy triacetate and became a good one, but is it really indicative of a central tendency that most guys that start out shooting 35% from trey as freshman are necessarily going to get to 40% in four years?
I don’t know. I’m not sure I can follow that logic with confidence.
Regardles, thank you for taking time to stimulate me to think this through a bit further.
Ooops, I almost forgot. Do you think this is the worst 3pt shooting team in Self’s KU tenure?
Surely there must be another one or two that shot this poorly.
I just can’t recall them off hand.
Rock Chalk!
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Thanks for chiming in as always.
Comparing him with Lebron in shooting forces me finally to think about the Lebron analogy generally, something I have not posted much about, except to say I thought intuitively it was not a valid comparison.
In short, I am not sure, after watching Wigs a year and against D1 competition, that comparing Wigs, even anecdotally with Lebron, on any stat, can tell us much. There just doesn’t seem to be much comparison between Lebron and Wigs. Lebron is on some higher athletic level than Wigs. And I like Wigs. Some time in the next few days I am going to write at length about what a terrific basketball player I think he is. But Lebron? Wigs would have to go through a nonlinear transformation to become better than Lebron in the NBA. I am in slayr’s camp on this: if Wigs devoted himself monomaniacally to turning himself into the next Kobe, I could see him achieving that IF he could ever become a great jump shooter. Kobe was a great, great jump shooter from the beginning. Wigs is an average jump shooter.
What Lebron proves is that the greatest perimeter athlete in basketball at least since Jordan, and maybe back to Oscar Robertson, and arguable of all time, can make himself into a proficient NBA 3pt shooter.
Players like Robertson, Jordan and Lebron can do super human things. They have super human want to. They have super human abilities to improve at what they are weak at. They are so good throughout their careers that noone finally can handcuff them.
I still have seen no sign of this astronomical level of drive. It may be there, but I haven’t seen it. Robertson showed it from the start. Jordan took a few years before it showed. Lebron showed it from the start. Maybe Andrew will be like Mike.
The only reason for going over all this is response to your cursory remark about Lebron making himself into a good trey shooter, and Andrew starting out significantly better, is that a variety of factors enabled Lebron to make the improvement.
Lebron is so fricking strong that no one can really afford to get out hard on him, or he will blow by them and then finish even against the biggest baddest big in the NBA.
This meant that Lebron had a built in 3pt shooting cushion from the git go. Lebron HAD to be left open, whether you thought he could shoot, or not, because of how bad he could hurt you on the dribble.
Andrew seems unlikely to ever have that kind of cushion to shoot treys freely from.
Andrew seems like he could have the kind of cushion that Kobe creates and that slayr wrote so perceptively about mid season, when Wigs was bogged down.
Andrew has the kind of awesome, Kobe like combination of length and quick bouncyness that could allow him to create a space most anywhere on the court. Kobe, a great natural shooter, learned to create that space and he was deadly. If Andrew can become a great shooter, then he most definitely become as deadly as Kobe.
But the difference between Andrew and Lebron, and even Kobe and Lebron, is that Lebron does not even have to create the space. It is there the minute he catches the ball. because of what he can do to even the best NBA defender, on the dribble.
My point here is that it is easier to turn yourself into great open shooter, than it is to turn yourself into a great get yourself open shooter.
So: I’m not confident in comparing Andrew’s shooting prospects with Lebron’s.
And I think Kobe was so much better of a natural shooter that Kobe never had to make the huge improvement Andrew will have to make.
Frankly, I like comparing Andrew to Michael Jordan, because Jordan was not a great natural shooter and in fact was not a very good NBA outside shooter for several years. Andrew could do alot of what Jordan did. He had a similar college career to Andrew’s. Plus he’s probably a little taller than Mike and maybe has an even longer first step. What we have to hope for here is that Andrew has the kind of mental drive that MJ had; and that we will not understand for another few years. Jordan seemed pretty calm and centered in college when I watched him. I did not see this fury in tennies appear until the NBA. He did it, so Andrew might be able to. But a lot of other guys with great athleticism have not. Nothing is written. Either way.
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@jaybate 1.0 Acutally jaybate, I couldn’t agree more that Wigs is nothing like Lebron. If Wigs does become a great player, I agree that it’s more likely to be in the mold of Jordan, rather than King James, but really, the point I was trying to make was that his success in the association doesn’t depend so much on being the most polished player coming in, but that it depends on his ability to get better. Clearly, Lebron has done that. Julian Wright never did and also didn’t get along well enough with his coaches that they were willing to stick it out with him. I think Wigs is a lot more coachable, and even if he’s never the best player in the league, I think he has some legitimate all star years ahead of him.
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@jaybate 1.0 By continuing to reference lists of shooters as “anecdotal” I can only assume you mean to diminish them in so much as providing the data for the shooters on the list really doesn’t prove my point (or disprove yours). Which is fine, as you are right, we can surely come up with lists of players that shot well their freshman seasons and got worse, or that stay the same, or that abandon being a perimeter shooter, etc. My only response to this would be, it wasn’t “my anecdotal list of shooters”. You provided the players, therefore it was your list. You included them to compare them to our current group of shooters. I know this because you used the word “compare”. The obvious intent here was to cast a pall on our current players. When you singled out Wiggins & Selden for being predestined to flounder in the NBA because of their supposed weak 3-point shooting, I only used your list to illustrate that the players you were holding in so much higher regard did not have as much out of the box success as Wiggins & Selden are having. It was not meant to be indicative of predicting future success/improvement.
In reading your response to konkeyDong, I would agree the more apt comparison for Wiggins is not Lebron, but rather Kobe. But in the context of the 3-point conversation it should be noted that Kobe is not, and has never been, a great 3-point shooter. Great jump shooter? Absolutely. But he is a career 33.5% 3-point shooter. He has never shot it above 40% in a single season, his high being 38.3%.
Anyway, my point here is that I don’t think anybody is expecting Wiggins (or even Selden) to have make or break NBA careers based on 3-point shooting, which is what you seemed to be inferring based on your “how do these guys expect to play in the NBA…” musing.
I do think it is within the realm of reason to wonder about Selden’s NBA career, especially if he should decide he only needs one year of college. But again, I’m not basing that off of his 3-point shooting.
And finally, to answer your question, according to the Big 12 website KU is shooting 34.5% from beyond the arc this year. This is not statistically the worse shooting 3-point KU team under Self’s tenure. During Self’s first year, '03-'04, the team shot 33.5%. Now perhaps we are inclined to give Self a pass given that this was a team comprised of Roy Williams players. However, during our run to the national championship in the '11-'12 season, we shot an identical 34.5% from trey that season.
184-533 this season
222-643 '11-'12
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@icthawkfan316 rock chalk!
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So, if I understand you, we agree that your anecdotal info was not proving anything, but that you think Kobe was not a great, or even good three point shooter in the NBA. I actually thought Kobe was a very good trey shooter relative to other starting 2s in the NBA. I thought that average three point percentages among starting 2s were not sharply higher than what Kobe had shot over the years, given his level of 3Pt attempts. But if you say that his trey average as a pro in comparison to other pros at the 2 position shooting the same amount as him puts him at average or less, well then of course I trust you. Is that what you are saying about Kobe?
Yeah, I was definitely thinking that anyone that drafts Selden to play the two in the NBA would need him to shoot outside much better than he has shown. I was thinking why would someone gamble on Selden at 34% in D1, and hope he would get better, when they could take a a guy coming out of D1 shooting 40%. I was thinking there surely must be 10 NBA bodied 2s in D1 shooting 40% from trey each year, so I was was asking myself, "why in the world would a team want to draft a 2 that would not be appreciably bigger and stronger and shot 34% in D1.
Similarly, I was looking at Wigs and thinking how many times Julian Wright had beasted for probably as many big games as Wigs has had, and the pros thought they were going to teach Julian to shoot a long ball and be a 3, or short 4, but he never could shoot a lick, and never got better shooting it. And Julian seemed more physically mature than Wigs and appeared about as mentally mature than Wigs, and so I thought, wow, how many guys there are that get in the NBA with Julian’s and Wig’s height and weight, and numbers, but without quite as much athleticism as Wigs has, and crash and burn. I mean, every year, guys 6-7, 6-8 come out like dimes out of a dime slot. They are called tweeners and most of them become journeymen, or just wash out. And the ones that do hang on and make all start teams tend to be able to drill the long ball in the NBA and are pretty damned mentally aggressive. I just kept looking at Wigs and thinking, “As much as I like this guy, he hasn’t lived up to his billing in D1. This guy plays on a 25-8 team that really hasn’t gotten it going very well whenever Embiid was out and Wigs has had to take over. What is this guy gonna do in the NBA without a trey if they lay off him this much in D1 with a 35% tray?” That is exactly what I was thinking, ict. When you wipe away the 40 point performance in the game that didn’t matter, and the 30 point OT performance and the 29 point performance early, a supposedly great player has lead a team to a 25-8 record with what is supposedly Self’s most talented team ever. When you wipe away the hype, Embiid, who had only played, what, three years of college ball, is more crucial to a college team than Wigs is. And I thought, “how is a guy that is basically a highly publicized tweener without a great outside shot, going to dominate at the NBA level?” I want him to. I want him to be great because he seems such a good person. Maybe because he seems such a good person I AM worried as much as I am about him.
Next, to address your very informative stats on trey shooting of national champions, if I understand you correctly, Wiggins and Selden being the teams starting outside trey shooters have lead this year’s team to shoot better from trey than only one of Self’s other teams, is that correct?
Hmmmm. This was a little worse than I expected. I had said when I asked you and others if any other Self team had shot worse from 3pt land, that surely there must be one and you proved there was. But just between you and me I thought there would be 2 or 3. Thanks for digging that out.
Amazing to think that two OADs could drive our trey percentage that low, relative to other Self teams. I wonder if going into this season that anyone thought to draw a comparison between this team and Self’s first team? I don’t recall that team’s record. I wonder if it was similar to this ones?
Well, wait a second. I will look it up. I’ll be darned, I just looked it up and they went 24-9. Alas, they only finished second in the conference, but they got to the Elite Eight. Pretty good for having no OADs and the first year under a new coach. Looking at Syracuse and Florida in KU’s bracket makes me think an Elite Eight finish would be a pretty fair accomplishment for this year’s team with these particular OADs, too. But maybe they can catch a break if Embiid bounces back.
Now the most interesting season average for trey shooting that you did not mention IMHO is that 39,7% figure for the '08 ring team, especially when you compare it with that team allowing opponents only 32.8%.
Hmmm. I wonder what this year’s team with the OADs compares with the '08 ring team. Lemme see. Uh, ah ha, here it is. This year’s team with Wiggins and Selden leading the charge is shooting 34.5% and allowing 35.9%. Very interesting.
Let’s go back and check out the '11-12 runner up team. Bear with me. Let’s see. The team without any OADs and without any Mickey Ds shot 34.5%, from trey, or just about the same as this years team with the OADs, but the '11-12 runner up team allowed 34%. So: if I get this correctly, the '11-12 runner up team with no OADs and no Mickey Ds gave up a slightly lower percentage of treys, and made about the same percentage.
Well, this is very fascinating.
Let’s summarize.
With Wiggins and Selden leading the 3pt charge only one KU team, Self’s first with no OADs, has shot worse from trey.
Next, with Wiggins and Selden leading the 3pt charge, the '08 ring team with no OADs shot way better than the Wiggins and Selden lead team and held the opponents to shoot a much lower percentage with no OADs. Hmmm.
Lastly, with the Wiggins and Selden led 3pt charge, the '11-12 runner up team with no OADs and no Mickey Ds shot about the same trey percentage, as the Wiggins-Selden lead team, and actually held opponents to slightly lower 3pt percentage shooting than did the Wiggins-Selden team.
Now, I am starting to be able to get a much better insight into the Wiggins-Selden lead 3pt shooting accomplishments vis a vis these three other exceptional KU teams.
Even though one might expect otherwise, the reputedly most talented team in Self’s tenure, and the team with the most OADs (including two leading the three point shooting charge), only shoots treys better than one other of Self’s teams, but shoots about as well as a ring team and a runner-up team, though this Wiggins-Selden lead team cannot guard the trey nearly as well as the ring team, or the runner up team, despite neither the ring team, nor the runner up team having a single true OAD.
And to put this in still more context, the '11-12 runner up team had a first time starter at the the 2, Elijah Johnson, that shot 34%, roughly the same as Selden, and Conner Teahan swinging 2-3 and putting up 150 3PTAs, as compared with about 125 a piece for Wiggins and Selden so far, was shooting about the same percentage, at 33.6, rounded to 34.
Now, I have to say that realizing that Wiggins and Selden are able to shoot the trey ball about as well as first time starter Elijah Johnson and the legendary Conner Teahan did puts into meaningful perspective about how well Wiggins and Selden have handled trey shooting chores. And what does it matter if the likes of EJ, Travis and Conner combined to guard the trey only a little bit better than Wiggins and Selden, right?
This has helped me get a lot more insight about this, ict, so thanks again.
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Great, I like agreement where ever I can get it.
And I agree again that the key is the getting better gene. If Wig’s has got it, then he should be gold, because even though he can’t dribble much, and he can’t trey ball much, and his protection concentration seems weak, and his arm strength seems a bit less than necessary for finishing against D1 LSAs, if he were to become proficient at all of these four, well, then this guy would be all pro because of his stride length and hops IMHO.
My question for you, Master Konk, is this: having watched Wigs a season now, would you say he has the get better gene, or is he just a monster talent without the gene?
Does he seem to you to be getting better at dribbling, trey ball percentage, turnovers, and arm strength this season? I am not asking if he has optimized at any of these things, just if you think you have seen marked improvement?
Much as I love watching Wigs play, and do the things he does, I cannot yet honestly say I can tell that he has gotten better at any of these things than say in November.
And part of the reason I am wondering is that a lot of folks have said that the big games that he has had recently are something that he could have done anytime Self gave him the green light, which suggests to me that, well, maybe he hasn’t gotten better. Maybe he just had all this towering talent coming in, but maybe he really hasn’t developed it this year.
Sam Mellinger’s recent story talked about Self finally stopping asking him to change. It also hints that Self thinks Andrew has attaind some new level that allows him to get out and really mix it up finally.
But no one I read says, “See? His dribbling is better. His trey balling is steadily getting better. His turnovers are falling. Etc.”
I really don’t know the answer to this “getting better gene” question.
He is so good that I kind of assumed that getting better was just part of his package.
But when I stop and consider his play this season, it doesn’t leap out at me. He just seemed pretty damned good from the beginning and Self has been asking him to do different things at different parts of the season. Can’t tell if he is getting better or not.
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@jaybate 1.0 Well, if you understand me, it is that your anecdotal info originally provided of players from ISU & OSU doesn’t prove anything. Also, it is not for me to say what is a great or even good NBA 3 point shooter, just that Kobe over his career has shot 33.5% from beyond the arc. I’m really not going to do the research on average NBA shooting percentages for 2s, but my own personal opinion is that no, 33.5% is not great. I will also say that I don’t think Wiggins will have any trouble shooting that percentage in the league, but we will see. After all, Ben McLemore, who I think we can all agree was a much better three point shooter than Wiggins in his lone season with KU, is shooting a lowly 31.4% in the league from 3.
I’m not really sure where or why you keep driving the bus to the Julian Wright comparison. I mean, yes they were both phenomenal 6’8" athletes. Julian Wright had a completely different skill set than Wiggins. Both players are NBA 3s, but the difference is Wiggins has the skill set to be one now, whereas Wright had the skill set of a very gifted post player, which is why he was a tweener, and as @konkeyDong has pointed out was never developed. When Julian beasted at KU, it was in the post. Time will tell, although I’m sure should Andrew have a successful rookie season, second season, etc. in the NBA and I bring this up, you’ll drown me in a mountain of non-sensical anecdotes or qualifications on this performance or that performance. I mean really, all your “if you wipe away this performance, and this one, and this one…” reads much like the old “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
I’m trying to get an understanding of what your point is regarding the comparisons, but I think that it is that a team led by OADs Wiggins & Selden, in a vacuum with no other considerations given to the players surrounding them, no returning starters, strength of schedule, injuries, strength of the league, rule changes severely hampering perimeter defense, and before seeing how the remainder of this season plays out, that this KU team is not as good as '04, '08, or '12 and that is a referendum on Wiggins & Selden? Again, if I’m understanding this last bit of your post correctly. To that I would say, again without seeing how the NCAA tournament this year plays out, that no, this team is not as good as those teams. However, I don’t view that as an indictment of Wiggins & Selden. After all, the three teams you mentioned returned some big time parts from a team that lost in the national title game the year before (the '04 team that returned Miles, Langford, & Simien among others), and from two teams that lost in the elite 8 the year before (the '08 team that returned everybody except the much maligned Julian Wright and the '12 team that returned Tyshawn, EJ, TRob, Releford, & Withey).
Let me just end this by saying that regardless of 3-point shooting, I have every confidence that Wiggins will have a successful NBA career. Not sure about Selden, but I hope he comes back because I don’t think he’s ready. And regardless of any future NBA success, I think that it speaks volumes that they led this team to another Big 12 title in a year that the league was as tough as it has ever been and that they did so by 2 games (many titles won during the streak have been shared), that they accomplished what they have so far while playing what has statistically been the most difficult schedule of any NCAA team over the past 20+ years, that they have done so while having to start from scratch with team chemistry, that they have done so in spite of playing alongside the worst PG during Bill Self’s tenure, that they have played considerably better defense than the junior point guard or the sophomore McD 4. Kudos to Mr. Wiggins & Mr. Selden. Good luck in the league.
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Here, here, to hoping Wigs and Selden are huge in the League.
I for one am am very grateful that they came to KU. They are certainly among the best freshmen I have seen play at KU in Self’s years.
Rock Chalk!
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@jaybate 1.0 Jaybate come on man. Wiggins > JuJu. Not by a little, by a lot. A lot a lot. Though I haven’t gone to look, Im betting that Julians Frosh #'s are not as good as Wig’s are. Everyone has seen him shoot 50% from trey in more than one game. He can do it. He’ll do it in the tournament, Im betting on it. Not literally though. Wiggins will be a stud in the NBA. Have you seen that Basketball science bit on him!? Its sick! He can do things like CP3 or Lebron! Just wait until he bulks up some. Imagine a 220 lb Wiggins, what would he do in the League? For gosh darn darn he has a 10 ft stride going into the lane! That’s one whole foot longer than Durants! He can drive into the lane just as fast as CP3. Could a rookie JuJu do any of those things? I doubt it. As far as his trey gun is concerned. Yah it needs work but like I said, we all have seen him get hot and shoot lights out. With more games and more practice in the NBA, he will get better at the long ball.
Now, your point about Selden is a valid one. The kid is good, real good. But he needs to develop more. He needs to come back to KU for another year, if not 2. He has the NBA body of a 2 guard but his skills need refining. I think he will be ok too if he gets more time in at KU. With that, he wont wash out of the L in his first contract like JuJu did.
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Julian had very similar athleticism to Wigs and the same weaknesses at the time both turned pro.
And if you consider only Wigs games with Embiid, Julian actually probably had as many, or more beastings. Wigs has only scored huge without Embiid. Julian never had to play without his other impact men. Julian could easily have hung 40-50 in meaningless games down the stretch if Rush had gone out down the stretch and Self decided to force feed Julian 18-21 FGAs per game. People are forgetting how awesomely athletic Julian was that last season. I’m comparing them on the years they left.
The ability of either player to have good NBA career hedges on their long jump shooting. Julian never could get better, even though NBA GM’s believed he would. Wigs future depends heavily on the same. Maybe he will shoot it better. But if he doesn’t, the NBA IS WHERE YOU FINALLY HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT IT, unless you are a rebounding and defending freak!
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@Lulufulu85 you should have left this alone! Jk
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