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but gobert, dirk and giannis werent so narrow and didnt run like they just had learned how to walk. Imo hes a 2-3yr prospect
Cause it needs to be done
[img] https://www.thestepien.com/wp-conten...7.18.36-AM.png [/img]
Aleksej Pokusevski
College: NA
Position: PF/c
Age: 18.48
Height: 7 foot
Weight: 201 pounds
Draft Range: 4 to 20
Why: If the Spurs want more rings, they need a ring-worthy centerpiece. Picking 11, that’s challenging (there is a serious chance, IMO, that he will be gone before 11). Poku has that ceiling : Poku’s a unicorn prospect – very young, physically under-developed, but very promising. The following comparison is IMO instructive : http://www.tankathon.com/players/com...taps-porzingis . Note who gets the most rebounds per 36, blocks, steals (and assists). He’s a 3 pt shooter (.505 attempt rate), and his FT% (again, the best of the 3) suggests he will shoot a good 3FG% in the long run…
Why Not: He's too skinny to deal with the NBA right now. The question is, do you think he will fill out? How soon? I will note that Gobert, Porzingis and Giannis all came over roughly as skinny as he is now, and managed just fine in the long run… Young men don’t tend to fill out until they stop growing vertically, and he’s only 18 and a half.
Spurs Fit: Welcome to Austin … for at least a year, and maybe 2. It really depends on his development after that, but even if he remains skinny, there have been twigs in the NBA before. His current skills are enough to be a decent perimeter 4, with some shooting, playmaking and acceptable perimeter and help (but not post) defense. Even limited physical improvement will make him Keith van Horn.
Comparison - Ceiling: Dirk (with D!)
Spurs Comparison - Floor: Ryan Richards
Statistics
Scouting Report
but gobert, dirk and giannis werent so narrow and didnt run like they just had learned how to walk. Imo hes a 2-3yr prospect
You need to watch more video of this kid. My guess is you have not watched any at all. The dude can go coast to coast. Not sure I have ever seen a 7 footer bring the ball up the court like a PG, before.
Unicorn table,per 36 pre-draft numbers.
How tf can you be 7 feet tall and only weigh 201 lbs? Is that a mistype bc that is unhealthy. It's not simply about oh he needs to put on weight bc he is waaay underweight to begin with. I'm 6 foot on the dot and my doctor told me my ideal weight is 175. But a dude a whole foot taller than me weighs only 25 more pounds?? Paaaaaaassssss
I have a hard time analysing poku as he was playing in a really low level compe ion with olympiakos B.
In youth tournaments with serbia u17 and u18 he had completes statistic lines but did not score too much.
Lots of guys come into the league skinny. Your growth has outstripped your food intake. He’s still 18.
The guy who wrote the article where I pulled that table from said that if he knew for sure that he would put on 15 lbs during the g-league season next year, he’d draft him at #3.
Psst. Giannis played in that exact Greek league, and was drafted based on that performance.
The dude is a Unicorn in that if he can overcome one thing he should be a Great Player - most players have to improve on defense, rebounding , passing, dribbling, offense , or defense. This guy has only one thing to do and that is add about 20 pds of muscle. He has amazing skills his handles are probably better then Murray, and Forbes right now and he is the youngest cat in the draft.
He is fast and runs fine as some mentioned he can cost with it all the way and do a nifty pass or take it to the hoop his handles are that good. I would say that at 18 he is way more skilled then any player we could draft at 11 but he is the skinniest player. If you looks at his stats and vids he can shoot, he can rebound, he can pass, he can block shots and a good level.
Now the bad as mentioned he is real skinny he has problems making layups when contact is made, he can’t guards bigs down low, and his passing is like Manu was his first year as in know one knows where or why he passed to no one. Lol. If drafted he will take a minimum of 2 years in G League to be ready for NBA.
So it’s a risk but he is only 18 and he is such a skilled player that maybe we take a chance on.
Not only weight but character, work ethic and feel of the game.
Big men almost always need 2-3 seasons to grow into the role - physique and skills. Jokic was pretty good in his second season, but even he really didn't show until his third year (and probably some chemistry in the off season). That Stepien article is pretty damn good. (A lot of Stepien articles are pretty damn good.)
He's got a pretty good chance of being viable in the NBA, IMO. Big men really need to be efficient to be effective, and his 2P% is pretty pathetic for a guy 7 feet tall. He obviously has to get bigger, but that will probably make it impossible for him to defend even athletic 4's.
If the Spurs are committed to taking a couple of years to rebuild, he's probably worth a shot. If the Spurs take a shot on him, it SHOULD be a sign that they are committed to taking a couple of years to rebuild.
Thats not skinny bro. That’s unhealthy. There’s a difference. It means he has like zero muscle. He weighs 10 pounds more than Steph Curry. Even with 15lbs extra he is still underweight for his size.
His stats are actually better than what Giannis put up in the same league at roughly the same age. Obviously everything depends on his work ethic so it's hard to speculate, but I think it's a really good sign that he already puts up good numbers in assists, rebounds, steals, and blocks. He was named to the all Defense team in his league and was the MVP of foreign (non Greek) players... my favorite scenario is that he evolves into a taller version of Andrei Kirilenko, the player I wanted most for the Spurs from the mid 2000s until about 2011.
Last edited by R. DeMurre; 08-23-2020 at 01:41 PM.
This year's Bol Bol?
Do It
Maybe you don't understand, i just think it's difficult to evaluate a player in that kind of compe ion, plus he did not dominate some youth tournaments but he was complete.
Nobody knows how poku will pan out.
I'd rather have Precious, who might have the lower ceiling but has the much, much higher floor, but if he's off the table by the time we're picking then Aleksej is certainly worth the shot. I haven't really seen anything negative in regards to his work ethic, as some posters here are saying, but if that's true then it might be a hard pass. The thing about Giannis is that not only did he have the frame to bulk up (and access to every PED money can buy), but also an insane work and growth ethic from his background. I don't know if Pokusevski has that drive... Hopefully the Spurs scout him out good if that's who we're taking. But the bottomline is always to try and get BPA, and this guy could very well end up being the best player in the draft in a few years' time.
Man two players I always wanted the Spurs to get was Kirilenko and Barkley ahh what could have been. So looking back at some skinny player who did Ok in the NBA.
Draft Express
Kirilenko HT: 6’9 Weight: 217
Giannis Ht: 6’9 Weight: 197
This looks like the type of player that will be drafted high because one team really reaches. I'm looking at you, Knicks.
Then again, their Porzingis pick was rather prescient.
I dont want to hear Spurstalk on him after one year and call him a bust, when it's clear he needs two years. But who am I kidding... That's what happened with Luka even though we knew from the beginning he was a project...
Man, all the tools are there... But I'm still too skeptical that he can ever put enough muscle/weight/strength on to be viable at the NBA level. Seems like the kind of player that absolutely eats out lower compe ion, even G-League maybe, but just can't match the bodies of the NBA. I think he's still worth a shot though, especially if the Spurs trade down with Boston to get multiple picks and he's still there.
Hopefully, the Spurs should get some insight into his physical question marks.
If that checks out, he's the guy.
You swing for the fences in a crap draft like this. You have nothing to lose but maybe a rotation level player. If you look at all of those guys on the unicorn list, really only the two Americans, Embiid and JJ jr, were at all known quan ies. Kristaps generated some pre draft buzz, but a lot of people thought the Knicks were crazy to draft him where they did. This is how you stumble across a unicorn: you draft unafraid. You don’t think floors, you think ceilings.
It's not that I'm afraid of the possibilities of a bust, and I certainly agree with your philosophy; it's just that the Spurs have already "swung for the fences" to draft a unicorn-like player in Luka last season, and we still don't even know whether he'll work out at the NBA level, and probably won't know for at least another year. At a certain point, you have to start drafting known quan ies, if not only because San Antonio isn't the best FA location and we've already been spurned in the past. There is a real hole at the 4 and less so at 5 in our team, especially moving forward, and I would probably rather have a player like Achiuwa, who not only fits the bill from day 1 but also has quite the upside both offensively and defensively, than someone like Pokusevski who has the higher ceiling but is just as likely to cap out as a role player in 3 years than he is of being out of the league in that same span. Giannis-like transformations are the exception, not the rule, and I'd personally prefer the Spurs to keep their project drafting to a minimum at a time.
Having said that, I'm also on board to trade down with our pick, get two mid picks, and hope Aleksej hasn't gone off the board by the time our first pick is up. I haven't seen many drafts have him in the top 10 at all, so I wouldn't say it's unrealistic. More than anything, I don't want our sole pick to be a multi-year project, even in a ""weak"" draft.
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