As Isaiah Thomas leads Bos...the higher Mason gets drafted
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Just a thought that I bet many of us are thinking, but after watching the celtics play the more optimistic I feel that Frank can be a late 1st rd/high 2nd rd pick. Being that Frank and Isaiah have similar games as in the way they take contact on drives to finish at the rim, both are proven scorers, and their floor vision. But I will say Isaiah at this time is probably a better passer. Back to my point, here we have Thomas showing NBA executives what true point guard play used to be and how it can be a weapon as opposed to a crutch. I feel Frank is more of a leader though, with experiences he has indured; hardship leading to salvation, being a father, Floor General for KU, & a KU Grad as of late. He has that never quit attitude and as Isaiah is showing these executives on TV in the evening, Frank has shown last week & will show here soon at individual workouts…Even though Frank measured taller then Isaiah he will still be compared to him size-wise and with all that said hopefully they will also see enough potential & maturity in Frank Mason III to take chance on this young man! I promise that team will never regret their decision!
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He’s probably going to be a bit stifled by Cleveland’s length on D. We will see tho…
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IT has nothing to do with Frank.
Frank is not IT. IT was Senior Frank as a Junior. IT has fluidity to his game Frank could only dream about.
With that being said, Frank is better than a Matthew Dellavedova or many of the other 3rd Tier PG’s sitting on benches getting paid $8-$10M a year.
But comparing Frank to IT just blows my mind. He isn’t IT.
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@Kcmatt7 My point if it got lost was not compare the two side by side who is better one v the other but just state they have a similar as a foundation but yet are different. So my point is maybe those obvious similarities (height, grit, ability to score over bigs…(i.e. -Joel Embid)). Seeing some similar qualities in Frank at the combine/workouts yesterday & tmrw, as they are seeing what maybe someday potentially Mason could be in IT who is leading his team in the playoffs. No argument just clarifying my statement which is… “The success that IT is showing in the playoffs can only HELP not HURT Frank’s draft status at this point in time”
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It was a fateful decision by Self or someone in the KU lockerroom at halftime vs Oregon. Mason could have been leading his team in the final four, if he had been, in fact allowed to continue leading in the 2nd half.
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Speculation: In the NBA, would Mason be better than Chalmers was/is in the NBA?
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@JhwkrRedLegs So tell me more … what do you suggest happened in the locker room? Sorry if I missed something posted on another thread on this topic.
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@HighEliteMajor Just my speculation that Self possibly told Mason to involve his teammates. Charles Barkley during the halftime break said something similar, I felt odd about it.
Or, it could have been Devonte or Landen that spoke up, asking to get the ball, as they wanted to help and do their part.
So, whatever happened in the lockerroom, what we saw was a different Mason the 2nd half. Only 4 pts out of that stud is unfathomable. How ironic that nobody all season stopped him, not even Oregon in the first half, yet he only goes for 4pts. I recall him feeding Lucas and feeding 0pts-Devonte, who specifically was the focus of Altman’s gameplan.
Nobody helped Mason 1st half. Josh didnt get much help the 2nd half. And none of my speculation is blaming Mason. At all. I’ll blame Self for switching his soldier (Frank) to an alternative task.
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You don’t think that going 1 of 15 from 3 in the second half after hitting 4 of 10 in the first half had anything to do with it? Had KU hit 40% of its 3s in thebsecond half like it did in the first half that is an additional 15 points and KU wins the game. Oregon outscored KU by 11 points in the first half but only by 3 in the second half…so much for that.
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@JhwkrRedLegs The trouble I have with your half time statement is you no idea whatsoever. It looked to me like he ran outta gas and couldn’t hit shots in the second, just like the rest of the team. When you play that tight you are doomed, I’m just as disappointed as the next guy but we have to learn how to loosen up in E8 games we looked scared to play the last 2 years. Their bigs being 10x more athletic than LL hurt a ton too.
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Oregon was juiced to play KU. KU did not look as juiced to play Oregon…
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@kjayhawks As stated twice in my post, mine is pure “speculation”. You can, however, add the actual fact that we just really didnt see a “tired out” Mason as a senior (other than his flu game), compared to when he was a junior. Plus, due to the TCU debacle v2.0 in the BigXII Tourney, KU, a 1-seed, got way more rest than almost any other March Madness participant, didnt they?
So to call Mason tired out, when we just didnt see that all season is also speculation, isnt it? Never seen him lack “juice”. He did have the banged up elbow as a junior. But he had more help as a senior.
Agreed on KU 3s being off. This is where Devonte really had just a bad game.
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@JayHawkFanToo Agreed on the 3%, and that’s a team fail, and especially a bad outing for Devonte, but Altman created that specifically with his gameplan on Devonte. Devonte couldnt find another way to score, while Frank has many ways, and was not stopped the first half.
We also had odd, weird 50/50 balls that all seemed to go to Oregon.
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Did you miss the part where KU was outscored by 11 in the first half but only by 3 in the second half? Obviously KU adjusted and played better in the second half, clearly not enough, but it did get within 6 points with almost 3 minutes left but failed to score the rest of the way; Mason missed a layup and 2 three pointers in this interval.
Your premise that whatever Coach Self said at half time hurt the team appears to be demonstrably incorrect and with no facts whatsoever to back it up…very unfair to Coach Self, in my opinion, of course.
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@JayHawkFanToo “with absolutely no facts to back it up”. Ok, I’ll bite–> 1) Let me first ask you if I really need to quote Webster’s Dictionary on what the word “speculation” means? I used that preface and postface to frame my post. 2) Isnt armchair QB’ing what fans do, after the fact of a loss? But that is not acceptable to you, fan behavior and fan speculation? 3) Only someone actually in the lockerroom can attest to whom spoke what, and what the game plan was, right? That info would have constituted ‘fact’, and we all would welcome such knowledge, as it would literally end the speculation. 4) So, short of those facts, that leaves us to speculate on what might/might not have been said, based on the play we saw in the 2nd half. 5) Yes, closed to within 6pts, so that means any number of combinations of shots made by anybody or coming up with a couple of extra 50/50 balls, or Ducks just missing a couple of shot clock 3s would have meant a possible different outcome for KU, right?
Sorry, but if I’m left to speculate, then I believe more in the grit and the proven unflappability of Frank Mason, and the oft-witnessed facts of him simply not being able to be stopped by anyone all season, so I cannot believe the Ducks stopped his production the 2nd half. Do you actually believe that? You would be assuming something out of Frank, we never saw, and a kid trying to get a shot at playing in a Final Four. If you take the pains to post Frank’s layup miss and 2 x trey misses in those final minutes, what then is your own theory of why KU lost that game? It is fair to say bad shooting night by key players, as we all saw that happen vs Nova last year, I dont have a problem with that.
My speculation (sorry, there’s that word again…hard to digest for some…), isnt about the last few spinchter tightening minutes, although even that is peculiar, since this team had won the majority of their 1-2 possession games, and even some games requiring big comebacks, so the spinchter thing is a bit harder to swallow (but could still happen, who knows?)…but more about what Frank was doing for the first majority of the 2nd half, not the last minutes?It just begs the question, which has a natural by-product of speculation, especially by some of us fans/alumni. Self isnt infallible. And Mason isnt infallible. Watch the entire game again, see what you think. And give us your speculation. You have mine, which isnt changing.
The lynchpin to my speculation, is that there was way more to Mason than just 4pts in a half. Any half. Any game. Especially that game. So I’m left wondering what happened. Speculating. Nothing more. And nobody is here to insult Bill Self, god why, hall of fame level coach. But even if 2 royalty programs play, with a great coach on each sideline, somebody’s gameplan will work, and someone’s wont. W/L.
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I understand what speculation means and while it does not require facts or proof it’s normally based on something, anything that would lead to said speculation, right?
Your “speculation” indicates that it must have been something Coach Self said at half time that caused KU to lose the game since there is no way Mason or the rest of the team could have done anything wrong. I showed you the scores, the shooting percentage not only from the 3 but also from the field for each half, how KU came within 6 points with plenty of time left and failed to score afterwards including 1 missed layup and two 3-pointers by Mason and overall crappy shooting by all players…these are cold facts…and yet you choose to ignore all of this and speculate away that it was Self’s fault. Had Mason not missed those last 3 attempts in the last 3 minutes alone he finishes with 12 points for the half and above his scoring average.
Again, there are a number of very knowledgeable and astute fans in this forum and I don’t believe you will find anyone that agrees with your speculation, not because Coach Self is a Hall of Famer…or God, but because the facts do not support that conclusion…or even speculation.
The members of this forum and other KU related forums as well as every sports writer and analyst in the business have done extensive post mortem analysys ad nauseam on this particular game and you are the only one with that out off left field speculation.
There is nothing much I can add to this discussion so you can have the last word.
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@JayHawkFanToo Its a worthless discussion. Twist what I said some more and see how fruitful that is. Hmm, no where in my post(s) did I say no one on the KU team did no wrong. Fact is, I actually posted that Self isnt infallible, and nor is Mason. The KU players are exactly the ones that didnt execute, so how can you speculate that I said or even insinuated that they did “no wrong”. In fact, that game is full of KU mistakes.
Ha, at least we now have your “speculation”, speculating on what I must be assuming. The only thing I was wondering, I can summarize in 1 line: was there a halftime adjustment by somebody, Self or not, that created the result we saw? And then there was Charles Barkley’s observation on the halftime booth show about Frank “needing to get his teammates involved”, and that got me wondering what would happen in the 2nd half–before the 2nd half was even played… Then I saw the 2nd half unfold, and simply watched Mason’s production, and what he was trying to do.
I dont need the last word, man. But you can run from the discussion if you want, free country. Truth is, your last post is now speculating on what I “must have” assumed–at least we now have your speculation, but its a cheapie, since our discussion really doesnt matter. I’m more interested in what my fellow KU alums & KU fans think, especially if they gave any thought to what Barkley said in the half-time break. That’s precisely what got me thinking, and only because Frank went more distributive-PG, compared to the 1st half (same game, 2 different halves).
What I dont buy is the “tired legs” assumption on Frank, of all players to suggest that on. Maybe he simply went cold, that’s an OK assumption. It happened to Sherron vs UNI, and the whole team last year vs Nova. But to suggest KU was more tired, especially after the early KC conf tourney exit, simply is with little merit.
I was prepared to live and die by Frank Mason (&Josh). And we died. Of course there’s many explanations for that 2nd half? But isnt this also where we CAN discuss additional speculation? (seen many discussions on petro-shoe-oligarchy, Calipari smoke-there’s-fire discussions…). Eh? What say ye? Did you at least hear Barkley’s comment? Thats what got this idea started, and none of this matters if KU won, and Devonte hit 3 threes, etc. But we didnt. So, not being blessed with alpha dogs every year, what were our alphas doing in that 2nd half? One of them had 4pts. Too good to only have 4.
Again, probably shouldnt take my speculation for actual explanation. Explanation is like reporting on what happened, vs, what I was doing is wondering why/what may have happened, simply to foster discussion. What happened to Frank’s production 2nd half? And why?
Maybe it is unanswerable.
