CAN DEVONTE REPLACE NIC?
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@JayHawkFanToo Totally agree that one should seek multiple sources for information in order to determine the real facts, quotes, circumstances or context. I certainly try to. Especially in this day and age of “media,” where there can be a lot of misinformation and out right lies on the internet . . . like this one: “The problem with internet quotes is that you cant always depend on their accuracy.” -Abraham Lincoln, 1864 LOL
And yes, sometimes we can draw different conclusion given the same facts, so it’s all good. I have no problem agreeing to disagree, and am always open to info that may debunk what I thought I knew.
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…and on that, we agree.
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@hawkmoon2020 “You can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true.”
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@Texas-Hawk-10 said: Some dumb B in Portland…
Really? Dumb B? Perhaps you should get out of the south a little more.
Also, read the original article again and try to find two brain cells to rub together to understand the point she was making. (hint: it’s not about the pb&j)
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I sure am glad that we stuck to the topic on this board! CAN DEVONTE REPLACE NIC? Can we all move the stupid bickering about PBJ somewhere else? Maybe you can find a comment section on a Jiffy web site and talk all day about creamy or nutty?
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@Statmachine well, to keep it on topic, it’s like this.
Nic Moore grew up making a kick ass peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and Devonte Graham comes from some place where they don’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He grew up making breakfast burritos. Bill Self has a choice to make about leadership… should he judge Devonte Graham’s leadership abilities by having him lead the team in peanut butter sandwich making or… (this will blow your mind!!!) find another way to judge his leadership skills based on what he knows? Keep in mind that this is an exercise in leadership (or writing capability in the original case), not actual peanut butter sandwich making.
What’s really great about this assignment if you’re a teacher is… wait for it… both Nic and Devonte have a unique opportunity to learn about leadership by contributing their own life experiences and talents. Everyone wins.
Except overly-sensitive people who got their fee fees hurt, thinking it’s about sandwiches. And neanderthals who refer to a woman as a “dumb B”.
The end. See you in a few months.
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@DanR When you try to please everyone, you please no one and that’s what that principal is trying to do. If I move to another country, it is a realistic expectation that I adapt to that culture and learn their ways, including learning styles, but it’s apparently not okay to have the same expectations of those who move here?
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Ladies! You’re both pretty!
Now to the real issue, I have a tough time buying into Graham will be great this year. I believe he will be solid, but to expect anything more than a Sophomore still learning to lead and become more consistent might get disappointed.
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Marital bliss?
I have always believed that it is akin to “the pursuit of happiness”–an ideal that inspires us to get better, but which is in reality always just over the horizon.
Be strong. Being the daddy to a family and a relationship often requires admitting another human being cannot be fixed and is a deeply flawed person momentarily battling the ghosts of their parents by substituting their mate momentarily.
Go fishing.
Or substitute savaging my post for further conflict amidst the quest for marital bliss.
Fishing is more fun, though.
Rock Chalk!!!
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Not to long in a travel out to the west coast. I visited a Cuban family. Not fully aware of the in’s and outs of their culture, I made the mistake of eating IN and Out Burger before stopping by. Huge mistake for you see the man’s wife insisted that I eat dinner. I realized my situation right away. It would have been disrespectful to not oblige her. So with my gut busting I eat some of the best Cuban food in my life. And damn near puked.
My point is you don’t change you’re way of life or pass laws to change ones way of life to keep peace. What they did in Portland is dumb. A PB&J sandwich is like apple pie it’s part of the American culture as anything.
You know as adults we can go out to eat and if we see something on the menu we’ve never had or don’t like we don’t ask the owner to change the menu. Yet we want to ban PB&J’s because some kids with a foreign background never had them? Really?
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Ah, ok. Thx 4 clarifying.
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“A PB&J sandwich is like apple pie it’s part of the American culture as anything.”
I like what you said there.
The last time I checked my watch, this was still the United States of America. It is a country built on diversity. PBJs are an addition to our diversity, not a statement about race. I’m sure some people didn’t grow up eating PGJs… so let them eat breakfast burritos or apple pie or whatever. But in a public place, something has to be chosen to be on a menu. Truth is… kids of all ethnic backgrounds tend to like PBJs. We can replace PBJs with Haggis, to please some of the Scots. Let’s see how successful that will be…
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@drgnslayr : You just reminded me of the SNL sketch about people eating at the new, trendy restaurant that served Scottish cuisine: Dan Ackroyd was the server (“That’ll be two Haggises.”) Don’t think I could “stomach” the dish, but hey, I’ve never gone hungry for more than a few hours at a time. And maybe, back in the day, Scots may have learned to like it if it was readily available; it does have oatmeal in it, right?
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@jaybate-1.0 Absolutely can Devonte Graham replace Nic Moore: Devonte was rock solid against WSU in crunch time (just didn’t get much help other than from Mason.) And that’s as a frosh. He is 6’2, more athletic than Nic Moore, and has a WAY better shot than Nic Moore. Not to be too critical of Moore, but Devonte in Yr2 will surpass Nic as a Sr.
Mark my words.
Mason + Graham certainly equal Tyshawn + EJ, and may possibly surpass them. Watch! If their collective and individual D can improve, then they may get near the duo of Chalmers and RussRob. But those '08 guys were incredibly efficient players. The standard was set by them.
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@ralster I agree!
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mmm. I’d like a PBandJ sandwich now. Unfortunately my child is deathly allergic to Peanuts so no PBJ’s here. Guess I’m not a racist, whew.
On an aside when shown pictures of a Mexican girl and black girl and a white girl and aked the difference between them, my 5 year old says the Mexican girl is wearing a bracelet, the black girl has a red shirt on, and the white girl has a pony tail…
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Devone has the size that Nic will never have. Will Devonte demostate the leadership qualities of Nic? KU Needs the deadly tandem of disruption on the perimiter (think RussRob and Chalmers feeding off of one anther). I’d love to see the perimeter defense ratchet up this season and Devonte is the key.
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I agree. From a pure basketball skill perspective Devonte is more that capable of replacing Nic, as I have posted before; he is not only the better athlete and shooter but considerably taller as well. However, the biggest asset that Nic brought to the table was leadership …and that comes not only naturally to some people (and not others) but also takes experience to develop it.
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Wasn’t Dg the proven leader from last summers boot camp?
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From a pure basketball stand point, if I recall correctly, Nic is a first team all conference player his junior season at SMU.
From a pure basketball stand point, Devonte has to first get to where he can start.
Next he has to get to where he can be a starting point guard on the team, so that he can bring that level of skill to sharing point guard duties with someone like Frank Mason.
Next Devonte has to make third, or second team All Conference.
Next, Devonte has to make first team all conference his junior season.
And all of this is BEFORE he can even get a chance to be BETTER than Nic.
I like Devonte.
I like that he is taller than Nic.
Other things equal, it is better to be taller than shorter in basketball.
Alas, Devonte is also taller than Nate Archibald and Calvin Murphy.
Devonte might also be taller than Steve Nash and John Stockton.
Jason Kidd was taller than Nate Archibald.
I think Jason Kidd was a helluva ball player. But I would take Tiny over Jason regardless of era and regardless of height. I would take Stock over Jason, too, though they might have been the same height.
As @drgnslayr says: about 80 percent of the game is played from 6 feet 6 inches or so on down to the floor on the x-axis. And a really good x-axis player is good at forcing an even higher percentage of action down onto that x-axis.
We ought not put Devonte Graham behind an eight ball. He can sure be a good replacement for Nic. We are fortunate.
But as I wrote above some time ago now, Nic is going to have to be replaced in bits and pieces by the contributions of several players.
And by the time Devonte were a junior, wouldn’t we all be thrilled, if he were first team all conference, like Nic?
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@jaybate-1.0 Nic Moore was American Conference POY as a junior if you really want to set the bar for Graham’s development in 2016-17.
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Being a leader at boot camp and being a leader at game time are not quite the same. Much like in the military, many officers that are good leaders at boot camp are not very good leaders in combat.
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First team All Conference in the Big 12 >>> First team All Conference in Conference USA
Third team All Conference in the Big 12 = First team All Conference in Conference USA
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Thanks for the clarification. And I do.
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First, I guess we both have to stand corrected by @Texas-Hawk-10 and start saying “American Athletic Conference.” (AAC)
Next, this conference is significantly better than I realized, when I took a look. It includes: Memphis, Temple, 'natti, and UConn. The last three would have been tough match ups for KU last season and the 'Natti had a darned good team.
Nevertheless, I am down, as some Alphabet generation used to say, with valid indexing.
My thinking is your formalization of indexing is helpful, but probably needs a little fine tuning for the anomaly of last season, when Nic was AAC POY.
Most years, your AAC < B12 inequality holds strong. But to be fair in indexing, I have to admit that I watched the 'Natti last season and they were VERY tough. Likable? No. Tough? Very.
And I watched SMU late last season and they were certainly good enough to have had a better than even chance against any B12 conference title threat team. They likely would have finished nearly as high, give or take a rank or two in the B12 last season, as the two teams finished in the AAC. This at least suggests to me that maybe the differences between the conferences were a bit less by the conference seasons than the pre conference comparisons of the past might have suggested. And in particular against the B12 conference champion, KU, it seems either 'Natti, which showed so well in the Madness, or SMU, which got bum whistled out of it, would have had a good chance of winning the B12 last season, or at the very least upsetting KU at least as often as ISU. Those were two very good AAC teams. And Temple was tough. And frankly, the B12 basement has been nothing to write home about for the last few years, despite the roughness of the game permitting them to win a few games by catching top teams injured or on emotional let downs in conference.
The Big 12 turned out not to have been quite so good as some thought last season. I mean, KU’s weakest team in a long time won it outright. And Big 12 teams did not show well again in the Madness against non conference teams, when such competition counts most. And though I have hardly studied it closely, I recall someone saying the NBA draft was one indication that the Big 12 teams were apparently not uber talented.
So, when one gets out the indexing logic and tries to apply it, while the AAC tends to be less strong than the B12 most years, last season what appears to have happened was this: The Big 12 was still relatively more talented, especially through the middle, than AAC, but the B12’s usual two top teams–KU and Texas–were far weaker than usual, even though early season expectations ran high for Texas (and were disproven). ISU seemed to come on strong, but like most B12 teams, it was a doughnut with a hole in the middle. And it gets sharply more difficult to assign a huge edge to the B12 when it is a conference with few bigs. ISU and KU last season held no huge advantage in bigs over mid majors like 'Natti and SMU in the AAC, or for that matter WSU in the MVC. And the B12’s usual large edge in coaching was diminished at least some by LB being at SMU a second season. LB, Ollie, Dunphy, and Pastner (based on his winning percentage anyway), stack up pretty evenly with any four B12 coaches right?
So AAC < B12 is subject to significant variance last season bringing them much closer together than usual, at least in my anecdotal assessment.
It follows then that while in most years your equality of “3rd team All-Con B12 = 1st Team All Con AAC” would tend to hold, last season it probably was more like: “2rd team All Con AAC = 1st team All Con B12.”
And when one adds in that when Nic was added to KU’s WUG team the team promptly appeared to play sharply better than it had in the past, even without a lot of its players, well, it seems Devonte has some significant shoes to fill.
Further, when you stop and think about it, Devonte has a long way to go to develop into an indexed equivalent of Nic being POY of AAC which might index to "1st or 2rd runner-up POY in the B12.
There is really no way around this: Nic is pretty damned good and Devonte, while he sure seems within striking range of developing into as good of a player over time, has a ways to go.
Without putting too fine a point on it, Devonte has a long way to go-- having not been a starter as a freshman on one of Self’s most injury riddled teams, then having gotten injured to point of not being able to play at all at the WUG, and so now having to start his sophomore year having to come back from injury.
Again, my point is not to knock Devonte at all. It is to put him in a reasonably indexed perspective of what he has to replace.
I am very confident that–injury recovery permitting–Devonte will this season be able to replace a piece of what Nic brought and for that we are most fortunate and it may be enough with the other pieces that we will hopefully add–BG, Svi, and Diallo–to make us a very good team in our own right without Nic–maybe even a better one. There is no doubt the Devonte, BG, Svi, and Diallo all operating as D1 capable 20 mpg men would turn this team in a huge force in D1, regardless of the short and medium stacks apparently placed strategically around D1.
But we will need them all reaching solid 20mpg men to really stand out IMHO.
Rock Chalk!!!
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It really isn’t fair to compare POY from the AAC with POY of the B12. I think Nic is good, but I don’t think he is capable enough to be POY in the B12.
Sticking with the x-axis theme… I put execution skills above height. But of course, if two guys can equally execute, I’d usually take the taller player, and in the this case, Nic’s height (or lack of it) really does play out as a negative, because almost every guard out there is going to easily shoot over him. Nic isn’t a big leaper, either. Frank, on the other hand, might be short but he gets up over the rim on many of his rebounds. He can go up and fight with some bigs for boards.
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“You just reminded me of the SNL sketch…”
Anything about food usually reminds me of Monty Python and Mr. Creosote. I wonder if mentioning fine dining is racist?
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I posted this before…
From a pure basketball skill perspective Devonte is more that capable of replacing Nic, as I have posted before; he is not only the better athlete and shooter but considerably taller as well. However, the biggest asset that Nic brought to the table was leadership …and that comes not only naturally to some people (and not others) but also takes experience to develop it.
I am not sure I can add anything else…
