JR Smith never had the handles or iso game of KPJ. The only reason JR ever came back is because of the maturity concerns and poor FT percentage. I agree Harden and TMac are ridiculous comparisons. Ricky Davis is the closest thing I can think of and someone else made that comp when listing bonehead players.
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2019 Draft, Pick #30 - Kevin Porter Jr., USC
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JR Smith never had the handles or iso game of KPJ. The only reason JR ever came back is because of the maturity concerns and poor FT percentage. I agree Harden and TMac are ridiculous comparisons. Ricky Davis is the closest thing I can think of and someone else made that comp when listing bonehead players.
But...we don't want KPJ's iso game, right? Sexton and Garland are almost certainly better bucket-getters, and I'm not even that high on Garland. The first step with KPJ is to make him stop forcing up low-percentage ISO shots, and once you've accomplished that, you hope that he can be a competent enough 3&D energy guy type to have some value.
Silky Smooth
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Excited to see how he pans out. Really think he could be a potential starter for us and one of the better players out of this draft. I think he could be our starting SG in a couple years with Garland
In today's game you need more then 2 players who can get their own basket at any given time. We want KPJ to be a 3 and D player yes but we also need a long term 3rd option and bench guy who can run things if both Sexton and Garland need a breather. With the system Beilein apparently runs he wants multiple guys who can play on or off the ball. He ran it that way at Michigan.
Also when was Smith ever more then a 3 Player. I never saw the defense with Smith.
Eh...I agree you need multiple guys who can initiate offense, but the point isn't to simply have them take turns going ISO. KPJ's poor court vision separates him from guys like Ricky Davis, and prevents him from being a viable #2 option. Not much of a place for microwave scorer types in the NBA unless they're really elite shooters, and I don't think KPJ is.
The Oi
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Looping back...
I don’t think Kyrie is dumb. I actually think he’s very intelligent and he got stuck in a situation where he was overshadowed by LeBron and from what I understand his dad may be a little wacky. Additionally, dumbfuck sports media is set up in such a way that they don’t take advantage of intelligent guys like him and mine their intelligence. Instead, they take their worst moments and splash them on twitter and run them through the 24 hour news cycle.
Kyrie could actually be a goldmine for guys with podcasts if he’d loosen up a little bit. He has his guard up a lot, presumably bc he keeps getting burnt.
I don’t think Kyrie is dumb. I actually think he’s very intelligent and he got stuck in a situation where he was overshadowed by LeBron and from what I understand his dad may be a little wacky. Additionally, dumbfuck sports media is set up in such a way that they don’t take advantage of intelligent guys like him and mine their intelligence. Instead, they take their worst moments and splash them on twitter and run them through the 24 hour news cycle.
Kyrie could actually be a goldmine for guys with podcasts if he’d loosen up a little bit. He has his guard up a lot, presumably bc he keeps getting burnt.
I think your mistaking poor vision with KPJ with plain old selfishness. He's never gonna be a first option. He may never be an elite shooter. But he can be above average in every aspect of the game if he works hard enough. If anything he has the desire to be a defender which Ricky and JR never had. If he can get the defense his tantalizing offensive potential will keep him in the rotation.
I'll believe it when I see it, I guess? Not many wings are blessed with good enough court vision to be leading offensive players. Porter's shown no signs of that ability so far, so I'm going to assume he just doesn't have it until he proves otherwise.
Being the third guy on the court is being one of the leading offensive players? Going iso in some situations when Sexton/Garland aren't on the court? Nah I never said leading offensive player. Being the 3rd guy in the pecking order is easily possible for Porter Jr. He was a consensus top 10 to 15 talent for a reason. He has massive attitude issues but that doesn't take away from the talent he has. But to me the biggest thing he needs to do is become an elite defender which he is capable of. He was a gritty man to man defender at USC. I don't know why you don't see the talent are so quick to just label him JR Smith 2.0 when their games entering the league are vastly different.
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I think it's going to be really hard to convince a guy like KPJ that his role is not to control the ball and iso, but just be primarily a 3&D supporting player.
When I say "leading offensive player" I'm going with your argument (that I agree with) that a good offense should have at least two creators/leaders on the court at any time.
And, on what basis are you saying he was a "consensus top 10 to 15 talent"? ESPN had him the 40th-ranked recruit in his class, just behind Brandon Williams and just ahead of Joey Baker, and that was before his rocky year at USC. Maybe a top 10 to 15 iso scorer in his class, but that's not really the same thing.
I am talking about draft rankings. Draft Pundits. Have all said he was a top 10 to 15 talent in this draft class (Was ranked lower because of Character concerns I am talking Talent wise not necessarily where they ranked him). Not recruiting class. What about his game do you not like? Did you like Cam Reddish or Nas Little as prospects? Both of them were worse then KPJ in much better situations. And you never answered my question why do you keep comparing him to JR Smith despite their games being nothing alike when entering the NBA?
Soooo...what's the plan then? Say we give KPJ the ball and let him go 1-on-1 for five possessions a game the whole season. He produces some highlights, naturally, but he's pretty inefficient (as 99% of rookies are when they try to go 1-on-1 against NBA veterans). Then what? We do it again next year? At what point do we decide he's probably not the next Kobe/TMac and phase him into more of a supporting role?
We already have two great 1-on-1 scorers as our "core" ... what are we doing adding a third 1-on-1 scorer type, who's clearly worse than the first two? This is like a reductio ad absurdum case of "draft BPA!" except that it's actually happening to the Cavs in reality.
Reddish in particular was pretty bad, and I didn't love him or Little as prospects. But they were top-5 recruits, and they were important roleplayers for top-10 teams, while KPJ was roughly a top-30 recruit (some had him higher, some lower) and an important roleplayer for a fringe top-100 team. Plus, I think there's reason to believe that Reddish and Little's roleplayer skills will translate to the NBA more readily than KPJ's roleplayer skills (because as I said before, there's just not a big market for decent microwave bench scorers).
I don't think KPJ is too similar to JR right now, but I'm trying to imagine what he'd look like if he gave up his chucking ways and tried to mould himself into a useful team player. He's certainly more similar to JR than to any of the other comps that've been thrown around in here.