Yeah Tatum hasn't been 6'7 since before his senior year of high school.
-Fix the jump shot and have it look more like his hot streaks (where he shoots 42-45% from 3) overall
-Change his offensive style of play to look more like Lebron (with the default offensive move being to get to the rim, as opposed to just creating space for his jump shots) and just live at the free throw line.
-I don't ever see him becoming a full-time center (night in and night out that's a huge amount of wear and tear on a guy who is at least 25 pounds lighter than Bam, who is considered one of the smaller centers in the league) but in the playoffs against most centers (i.e. not Embiid), with multiple days off between games, he can be a major weapon again. Not enough people really appreciated what he did in these playoffs defensively, but if he does it again, he starts to get a reputation for being the superstar who does the dirty work, and that can go a long way.
Ant plays like a turbocharged version of Jaylen Brown. Absolutely unstoppable when the jump shot is going, and an active brick wall defensively when he locks in on a matchup. Like Tatum he's got a lot of potential avenues for improvement (his jump shot wasn't the most accurate, he frequently gets lost off ball defensively, he doesn't make the right decisions when double teamed, etc), but unlike Tatum, he's still years away from his prime. Tatum is still far better right now and has a much higher floor because of it, but it's not at all controversial to say that Ant has a higher ceiling.
I agree with Tatum's size basically cancelling out Ant's athleticism advantage, but I'm not killing a 22 year old for having a lousy conference finals, just as I wasn't going to kill Tatum for sucking in the finals at age 23. I think it's pretty clear Ant has the higher ceiling, if for no other than that the fact that he's 3 years younger. Tatum's game is closer to set in stone at this point. It's great that there are still plenty of avenues for him to improve:
-Fix the jump shot and have it look more like his hot streaks (where he shoots 42-45% from 3) overall
-Change his offensive style of play to look more like Lebron (with the default offensive move being to get to the rim, as opposed to just creating space for his jump shots) and just live at the free throw line.
-I don't ever see him becoming a full-time center (night in and night out that's a huge amount of wear and tear on a guy who is at least 25 pounds lighter than Bam, who is considered one of the smaller centers in the league) but in the playoffs against most centers (i.e. not Embiid), with multiple days off between games, he can be a major weapon again. Not enough people really appreciated what he did in these playoffs defensively, but if he does it again, he starts to get a reputation for being the superstar who does the dirty work, and that can go a long way.
Ant plays like a turbocharged version of Jaylen Brown. Absolutely unstoppable when the jump shot is going, and an active brick wall defensively when he locks in on a matchup. Like Tatum he's got a lot of potential avenues for improvement (his jump shot wasn't the most accurate, he frequently gets lost off ball defensively, he doesn't make the right decisions when double teamed, etc), but unlike Tatum, he's still years away from his prime. Tatum is still far better right now and has a much higher floor because of it, but it's not at all controversial to say that Ant has a higher ceiling.
Ant has flashed defensive potential light years beyond anything Melo or Nique ever showed. He's not where those guys are yet offensively, but he's already shown a more developed 2 way game than those guys ever did.
