AP preseason All-American team announced Options

[LegionOfDoom]

Pretty good college basketball players don't set Big East records for total points and total rebounds.

Apparently, they do.

I don't care about how he performed in ONE game against Thabeet, with whom he clearly has a matchup problem (as do most players), of course ignoring the fact that Harangody went for 24-15 in their first matchup last year. We keep track of stats to tell how well players perform. I fail to see how a guy who's probably going to average 23-11 this year is "pretty good."

College statistics aren't meaningless but there's only so much you can learn from them. The variation in pace of play, talent level from team to team, etc can be great. In the NBA, everyone plays everyone and we can reasonably use statistics to gauge value of respective players. Not so in college.

If Luke Harangody is your best player....just how many guys do you have to have that are close to him (and in reality, like Lawson being better than Hansbrough, probably ARE better) to be a title contender? Blake Griffin had Willie Warren and a bunch of very average guys on his team (I know his brother was drafted but he's not an NBA player; you know the difference...it would be like counting Robert Archibald as an NBA player on the 2002 Illini). And they were in the Top 5 all year.

Could Luke Harangody do that? No, his team missed the tournament. So how many of those points and rebounds were empty numbers, a guy getting force-fed the ball because it was his team's best chance, not because it came naturally, a la Griffin? (In fairness, I can't rationalize away the rebounding numbers. Dude clearly has a gift for cleaning up the glass.)

Also, there is no objective standard for how "good" of a basketball player someone is. Different leagues amplify or minimize certain players' strengths or limitations. Many good NBA players have been made to look stupid in international competition, because a different skill set is required.

No, they looked stupid because the teams were poorly coached, poorly put together and the players didn't take it seriously. When those problems were fixed, you saw how little the supposed differences in the FIBA game and the NBA game mattered in the '08 Olympics: the best players, and team, won, and won handily, with only one semi-close game.

Many good Euro players would probably look equally stupid playing in the NBA. Brandon Jennings was absolutely pwned in Europe last year, and he looks like a potential HOF'er so far as an NBA player.

What are you talking about? He hardly played. Terrible comparison.

Likewise, being a good college player is not the same as being a good NBA player. If I was building a college team, I might pick guys like Frank Williams, Alondo Tucker, Randolph Childress, or John Wallace over at least 50% of the NBA lottery picks in the last 15 years. Maybe 75%. And yet, Chris Duhon is the superior NBA player to all of them. Harangody's limitations do not hurt him in the college game, while they will certainly hurt him in the NBA. That doesn't mean he isn't a great college player.

You got part of that right: "Harangody's limitations do not hurt him in the college game." And in fairness, there's only so many great players in college basketball to begin with.

But let's play a game:

Frank Williams or Andre Miller?

Alando Tucker or Paul Pierce?

Randolph Childress or Ben Gordon?

John Wallace or Carmelo Anthony?



Tell me which one you pick as a college player. I purposefully picked guys who were comparable in position, size and to an extent, style of play as to not fudge the comparisons. HINT: if you think any of those are debatable or even close, you're wrong. One column was very good college players. One column was great college players. By no small coincidence, the column that were great college players? They're also all well above average-to-great pros.

And saying you'd take them over lottery picks is kind of stupid because in almost any draft, a good chunk of the lottery won't turn out to be good. And a good chunk of them are guys who were worse than guys like Harangody but were picked on their potential (remember, we're dealing with NBA GMs here, not the smartest people alive). Also, every single guy you named was a 1st-rounder! So it's not like you're making a huge differential there. Some of those guys were guys who had the talent to be good pros but for whatever reason, weren't. Those aren't the guys I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Harangodys, the Scottie Reynolds, even to an extent the Sherron Collins of the world.

[MiniDitka]

Apparently, they do.

College statistics aren't meaningless but there's only so much you can learn from them. The variation in pace of play, talent level from team to team, etc can be great. In the NBA, everyone plays everyone and we can reasonably use statistics to gauge value of respective players. Not so in college.

If Luke Harangody is your best player....just how many guys do you have to have that are close to him (and in reality, like Lawson being better than Hansbrough, probably ARE better) to be a title contender? Blake Griffin had Willie Warren and a bunch of very average guys on his team (I know his brother was drafted but he's not an NBA player; you know the difference...it would be like counting Robert Archibald as an NBA player on the 2002 Illini). And they were in the Top 5 all year.

Could Luke Harangody do that? No, his team missed the tournament. So how many of those points and rebounds were empty numbers, a guy getting force-fed the ball because it was his team's best chance, not because it came naturally, a la Griffin? (In fairness, I can't rationalize away the rebounding numbers. Dude clearly has a gift for cleaning up the glass.)

It's not really fair to compare him to Blake Griffin, since players like Griffin come around every 5 years, maybe even less frequently. Just because he's not Blake Griffin doesn't mean he's not a great college player. And if ND played in the Big 12, they would have easily made the tournament last year. They didn't make it because they lost 7 Big East games in a row: 6 of those 7 games were against ranked teams (5 against top 10 teams), and the only one that wasn't was at Cincinnatti (not exactly a cupcake). Meanwhile, Oklahoma played a grand total of 6 ranked teams ALL YEAR, including only one top 10 team (Purdue). In the Big 12, yes, Harangody easily would have single-handedly carried his team to the dance.

No, they looked stupid because the teams were poorly coached, poorly put together and the players didn't take it seriously. When those problems were fixed, you saw how little the supposed differences in the FIBA game and the NBA game mattered in the '08 Olympics: the best players, and team, won, and won handily, with only one semi-close game.

By admitting the teams were "poorly put together", you are making my point. The guys on those teams were highly successful NBA players, few of whom had the skill sets to play well in international competition. The successful international team was put together with players with appropriate skill sets, as well as the absolute greatest players who don't really have major weaknesses. But if the loser US teams played the same foreign teams with NBA rules and NBA officials, they would have destroyed the competition.

What are you talking about? He hardly played. Terrible comparison.

Wait, are you seriously arguing this? He clearly didn't play more because he sucked (witness 38% FG shooting and 1.6:1 assist:TO). Yet you're going to use his lack of minutes to attack my arguments? If he was effective he would have played more. By your rationale, we don't know whether Aaron Gray is a good NBA player, because he hasn't played enough for us to know. Meanwhile, Jennings has played only 3 games in the NBA so far and he's averaging 22.0 PPG. It's only a terrible comparison to you because it doesn't help your argument.

You got part of that right: "Harangody's limitations do not hurt him in the college game." And in fairness, there's only so many great players in college basketball to begin with.

But let's play a game:

Frank Williams or Andre Miller?

Alando Tucker or Paul Pierce?

Randolph Childress or Ben Gordon?

John Wallace or Carmelo Anthony?

Tell me which one you pick as a college player. I purposefully picked guys who were comparable in position, size and to an extent, style of play as to not fudge the comparisons. HINT: if you think any of those are debatable or even close, you're wrong. One column was very good college players. One column was great college players. By no small coincidence, the column that were great college players? They're also all well above average-to-great pros.

Frank Williams and Andre Miller were comparable as college players, although Miller was better.

Alondo Tucker was comparable to Paul Pierce as a COLLEGE player. Seriously, IIRC, Tucker carried the Badgers nearly as far in the tournament as Pierce ever carried his immensely more talented Kansas teams. You can't use Pierce's subsequent NBA success as a measure of how good a COLLEGE player he was.

Gordon was a better college player than Childress, but he never carried his team the way Childress did.

John Wallace, as a senior, was a better college player than Carmelo Anthony. Wallace single-handedly carried his team to the NCAA championship game (including beating Pierce's immensely more talented Kansas team) with absolutely ZERO supporting cast. ZERO (seriously). Anthony was the best player on his team, but that team doesn't sniff the Final Four without McNamara and Warrick. Granted, Anthony would have been better, given 2-3 more years, but he wasn't better in his one year.

And saying you'd take them over lottery picks is kind of stupid because in almost any draft, a good chunk of the lottery won't turn out to be good. And a good chunk of them are guys who were worse than guys like Harangody but were picked on their potential (remember, we're dealing with NBA GMs here, not the smartest people alive). Also, every single guy you named was a 1st-rounder! So it's not like you're making a huge differential there. Some of those guys were guys who had the talent to be good pros but for whatever reason, weren't. Those aren't the guys I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Harangodys, the Scottie Reynolds, even to an extent the Sherron Collins of the world.

They are first rounders, but not lottery picks. My point (which you are failing to grasp) is that they were better college players than most of the guys picked in front of them, yet they were not drafted higher because it was clear that their limitations would hurt them in the NBA game. Harangody will be a first round pick because he's a great college player, but not a lottery pick, because his limitations are clear. And he will likely not be a good NBA player. (although if Brian Cardinal and Eduardo Najera can be moderately effective, who knows?)