No but Whitmore definitely has star potential. On the Lakers jesus: a SG/SF with that 3 point shooting and athleticism.
Reaves has been more than fine: malik and walker are journeyman players. they did not succeed with other teams and were let go. Schroeder/Caruso/KCP/Kuzma all did well here too in this era. Whitmore has just elite athleticism combined with a very nice jumpshot - pretty good combo on a 6-7 frame.
The potential is at least there with that shooting touch and out of this World athleticism unlike slo mo Junior JHSthat block on Tatum was fantastic, JHS would have needed a trampoline to be able to do that
Will JHS get in the NBA nightly top 10 plays ever in his career? Looks like Whitmore is there every time the Rockets have a game this week
you know who was there to start the year? cam christ. despite the rhetoric in this thread, we have good talent evaluators, but we're also a decade into being bad at developing young talent.
19 points (again) 5 rebounds 1 assists/6 turnovers 7/14 FGs 2/3 3pt Pip has moved on and JHS only gets one assist as the starting PG is not good. Turning it over 6 times in the process is worse.
i'm not worried about the turnovers right now, as the one part of his game that seems the most solid to me is passing/taking care of the ball. teammates and system are new, and the g league can be a bit ragged. by a similar token, i'm not too gaga over the scoring, other than it proves that he's not the total hack some insist he is. i think the only thing that worries is me is that he finishes so far below the rim and has a low release point on the shot from almost any distance. it negates his size advantage at some times. what i really want to see from him is bulldog defense (send him marcus smart tapes) and simple offense where he uses his strength to get into the paint and find people. i don't think he'll ever be a dynamic scorer. but again, that's not what we drafted him to be. anyway, he needs to be down in the g league for the rest of the year to work on his game. he's under contract for as long as it takes to learn if he's going to stick, but we need to get more serious about this process, imo.
Turnovers in general don't worry me in the G-league, I look at it similarly to TOs in summer league. BUT the ratio does raise an eyebrow. First game with the only set of keys and he puts up a 1:6 game... that's not great. I'd have to watch the tape to see how much of that was on him vs the teammate and I find it really hard to bring myself to watch a G-League game. YouTube airs most of ours. I watched the final 4-5 minutes two games ago... it wasn't fun. Yeah that's kind of strange with his physical profile. Nearly any guard or forward his size could block that at the next level. That's what will eventually earn him minutes or keep him on the bench. Just how good can his NBA level defense become? When? And what team will he be on by then?
g league is definitely tough to watch. i think he has the tools to be a plus defender at the next level, but he has to decide that's going to be his calling card. not sure if that's how we've planned for him or how he's planned for himself. i mention smart because while smart was a much better finisher/penetrator in college, that's not a skill of his in the nba, but he's been valuable anyway. jhs is slightly bigger, and i think they're similar athletically. smart may be a little quicker, but not by much--a lot of his defensive success is from strength, positioning, and tenacity. and yes, there's a decent chance that by the time jhs carves out an identity, he'll be elsewhere. but if you draft 19 year olds, you sort of need to plan on them not being useful for a couple years, imo. it's pretty rare that they are.
I know how much folks love Whitmore, so I know this will sit well. Irwin mentioned on his podcast yesterday that he asked around recently (recently because I think his network/rolodex has grown in the past couple months) and from what he heard, Whitmore was not on our board. Reason being was medical red flags. They were troubling enough to our evaluators, scouts, and front office to not have him on our board. We'll see if their concern was justified as the next few years play out.
What the f*** are we doing here? Went to check on tonight's stats to see how the JHS grooming is going and I see that Mays is down there doing work (18 on 8-9 in 1st half). What. Why?! He's a NBA player and our backup pg. JHS can't even get away from him on the JV team. How inept are we at this?
Just watched the second half of today’s game and Mays looked really good- even had an explosive dunk. JHS looked “meh” until he hit the game winning drive in the paint.
JHS is no way ready for the majors: they should play Mays who looks comfortable and looks like he can find a permanent roster spot someplace as the backup PG with the big boys and keep JHS in the G league
