Sir'Dom Pointer
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Mikal Bridges has displayed excellent shooting at all three levels and exceptional free throw percentage for three years. The college game doesn't produce many established and proven shooters like that who also have an NBA frame anymore. Be concerned with his physicality, sure... but if that guy has shooting concerns everyone not named Trae Young has bigger shooting issues.
There is no such thing as a proven shooter in College. You are not proven until you show it in the NBA.
As for your first statement; it's not true as he only shown this ability this year.
Mikal has shown improvements to his game this year, though he wasn't a complete shooter in his sophomore year, and was a bad shooter in his freshman year. In his sophomore season he couldn't shoot off-screens at all, was good, but not an elite catch and shoot player, couldn't shoot off the dribble at all and still can't shoot off the dribble(Isn't it part of shooting?), and had attempted only 3 shot attempts from mid range prior to this year.
So it's wrong imo to project success according to his 3 seasons in Nova as this season was his only season as an overall excellent shooter according to the data.
Like I mentioned above though, Mikal has definitely showed improvement on almost all areas of his game though. Whether it is Isolation, posting up(had 0 attempts last year), mid range, etc.
Though as I said yesterday, the vast majority of his shot attempts come from the wings. He is a below average to average shooter at best from above the break for two seasons. This doesn't hold value for you in the NBA? Jae Crowder is a perfect example for that.
You are basing your projection on his ability to knock down 3s on a very good efficiency in the NBA...what if he becomes only a 36-37% 3pt shooter in the NBA? i That's a dangerous game as it looks like he doesn't have an in-between game and creation abilities. And if his build proves to be a huge issue then his projection can go to shit.
There are different type of shooters obviously. I'd say that Huerter is definitely the better all-around pure shooter(be it from shooting off-screens, mid range, and shooting from above the break), Landry Shamet also definitely has a case. Then there are players that are freshman that are better shooters than Mikal was as a Sophomore. So who knows how good they are going to be in two years playing in the NBA? Mikal is as old as a senior...not a junior.
As far as Catch and shoot players, Mykhailiuk, Shake Milton and Khyri Thomas, Toni Carr are very good and are comparable and are better on unguarded Catch and shoots. As an overall shooters Aaron Holiday(Also an elite catch and shoot player) and Gary Trent are up there as well(Trent really showed promise in the latter parts of the seasons...i'd say that his consistency is still not there at this point, though he is young and is projected to be very very good imo...more similar to Devin Booker as far as a shot maker). Alonzo Trier while not up there as far as catch and shoot goes(still pretty good), is the best scorer out of the bunch(Lou Williams type?) and the best off the dribble shooter by far on a very high volume(95th percentile in efficiency on 100 possessions). There is also Trae young that you had mentioned already.
So it really depends what you are looking for for a shooter. All of those guys are far better than Mikal as far as shooting from areas other than the Wings(They also shoot better percentages than Mikal from NBA 3). I'd say that Mikal's advantage is his ability to shoot over the top, but his mechanics are still somewhat problematic as he brings the ball way too far to his left which messes his ability to shoot off the dribble...though it is correctable.
Other than Huerter, Mykhailiuk, Khyri, Shamet and Trent all the players in this list have less than perfect form. Carr's release point is very low, Aaron Holiday is short and doesn't have a high release point either, although his guarded catch and shoot numbers are very good. But if we are strictly looking at the data, then all of these guys should be on the same tier, unless that is you are trying to project NBA 3pt shooting success according to form, length, etc...which is a different argument.
I'm genuinely asking...why is Khyri Thomas being mocked in the late 1st, and Mikal is being mocked at 7-10? What justifies that crazy difference? is it length? i'd say that Khyri as a far better NBA body. So i'm curious.
I don't see the value in picking Mikal at 8th in such a deep draft. I did once, but not anymore.