I follow the Celtics and some of the NBA, but I am mostly a hockey guy so my knowledge on the details in basketball is pretty slim. So, I am curious... When I watched Brown and Simmons last night, I felt Brown's shot was a little slow, but that it seemed more natural and the ball just looked better coming out of his hand. Simmons shot seemed awkward, and uncomfortable. Does that mean Brown is more likely to develop a consistent jump shot than Simmons? I would be surprised if Simmons developed any outside scoring whatsoever, but I could easily be convinced Brown shoots 35%+ from three a few years down the line. Am I seeing things?
No, you're not seeing things. Simmons only took 3 three-pointers all year at LSU and never needed much of an outside shot to get by in college (and certainly not in high school) where he would never have matched up against a guy with anything close to his combo of size, agility, and so on. Not that it can never happen, but his outside shot is a definite question mark. It will be very interesting to watch him on a Sixers team that is already starved for shooting.
You are comparing two guys while admitting you don't know much about one of them. Odd.
Even then, James Young is at least a class below Brown in terms of functional NBA athleticism. When JY tries to drive to the hoop, he is invariably forced to throw up wild off-balance fadeaways and weird half-hook shots because he lacks the explosion to get by NBA defenders.
See I completely disagree but I'm extremely high on Brown. I feel like his floor is Andre Iguodala and his ceiling somewhere between Jimmy Butler and Tracy McGrady. But to say players are same because of age and size is almost lazy
According to the NBA Draft special, Cal was the only school that would let him take graduate level classes as a Freshman, which was very important to him.
Not to pile on, but if there are two players who play the same position and are almost exactly opposite in skill set, that would probably be Young and Brown.
Probably would have won the national championship if we had him. Very, very butt-hurt.
No 19 or 20 year old player has a floor of Andre Igoudala. Are you serious?
But you're watching a summer league game on the Fourth of July. It's ok, you're amongst friends here. The first step is to admit you have a problem.
Jason Kidd went to Cal. James Harden went to Arizona State. They could've gone to UNC or Kentucky, but they turned out just fine.
The only people who believe this are the people who dramatically underrate Andre Iguodala. It tells us less about what they think about Brown, and more about how easy it is to play lockdown perimeter defense, shoot, and pass well.
His floor is higher than his ceiling in jp2361749's world.
If "you guys" means "anyone other than jp9813", then the answer is no. If you look at the pre-draft posts here on Brown, some of us were pretty bearish. I've come around on him somewhat, mainly because I think his defensive potential and ability to get to the line will translate, but I still think he has significant bust potential for a #3 pick. Iggy as a floor is insane, but the Young comp is pretty poor too. Young will basically have to become an elite shooter to stay in the league. I think it's more likely that he's playing in Europe next year than getting meaningful minutes for the Celtics.
This seems doubtful to me. In what was well regarded as a two player draft, I don think any third pick could ever go down as one of the biggest busts.
McGrady - Based on PER, his peak came when he was 23 years old and he posted a 30.3. Career average of 22.1. His peak in win shares per 48 came the same year and is .262. For his career he averaged .152. His peak year was a pretty obvious outlier and he never really came close to it before or after.
Not that it's super salient to Brown, but Iggy grades out much better on the various advanced plus/minus metrics. For instance, here's a 15-year data set of RAPM, where Iguodala ranks as the 46th best player per minute since 2001. He's still behind T-Mac, but ahead of Butler.
I'm glad you chimed in with some more advanced stats. I started writing my post as a "gotcha" with just clear conviction that Iguodala in his prime is ahead of Butler (while acknowledging that Butler's prime still have a year or so left to change that) and that while he is behind McGrady he's not light years behind McGrady. Unfortunately crappy Win Shares and PER, the most advanced I really understand when it comes to BBALL right now, proved me wrong. I finished the post because; fair play.
I suppose Anthony Bennett set the bar pretty high (or low) in that regard. If Brown spend his first two seasons playing in Maine and heading into his third season doesn't look any better than he did as a rookie, he will be a catastrophic failure.
