Good move Time to sink or swim He’s ready Don’t really think another year w/ Valencia will do him much good Been there, done that It helped him. It developed him Now it’s time to try & make it in the nba Should be a 1st round pick A guy w/ his positional size, ball skills, feel & to do what he has done at age 19/20 vs the competition level he has faced between EuroLeague, ACB & FIBA eurobasket literally playing against Giannis I’d be pretty surprised if he’s not a 1st rounder

Poor spacing. Yaxel is a big dude pressuring the hell out of him. And as soon as he starts getting closer to the paint, bodies cave in on him Aka really tough circumstances. Many players, especially freshman would crumble under that type of pressure vs eventual national champion But I like Wagler’s poise here. How he doesn’t get rattled, didn’t get sped up, doesn’t just try & hurry up & pass it off to a teammate to defer to them so he doesn’t have to create vs the pressure He doesn’t back down. He goes right at Yaxel, goes right in to the paint, even as the bodies cave in, w/ the poor spacing And just dis his best to create a clean look. Using good positional size, good handles, change of speed, change of directions, using angles, body control and solid touch, ability to draw fouls Obviously his strength & burst & vertical pop are limitations. But he makes up for them in other ways Best team in the country clearly had him at the top of their scouting report. Again, most freshmen would have handled it worse than this if we watch bama vs Michigan, Philon was pretty good but also had more favorable spacing. And Michigan wasn’t throwing this level of pressure, extending their defense this much or throwing this many bodies at Philon if he got near the paint Michigan extended their defense way out on Wagler b/c they were terrified of his jumper. And they wanted to wear him down so they pressured him full court game. Teams weren’t scared of Philon’s jumper. Which is partly why his 3 FG% jumped this season. He had open looks.

Let's look at Darius Acuff's shooting numbers As we all know, he shot the ball really well this season at Arkansas. Was he always that good of a shooter, like in HS? Not really.. -He's probably improved his shooting a bit so he's better than than the 30% he shot pre-NCAA -But the pre-NCAA sample tells us he's probably not as good a shooter as he was at Arkansas -As it often works, the answer likely lies somewhere in the middle But if he's not great at getting to the rim or finishing at the rim. And his struggles on D are well documented And he's not the nuclear shooter he was for the Razorbacks, then how high do you draft him? Maybe top 10. I'm not sold on taking him in the top 10 Top 20? Absolutely Maybe somewhere 11-20 range. Maybe 8-10 range Personally I wouldn't take him higher than 9 or *maybe* 8 The passing is really good, though

FWIW, Acuff is currently at 9 on my board 🤝 (2)

Damn, Giannis was only 6'8", 196 lbs when he was drafted 🤯

Interesting article: espn.com/nba/story/_/id/1492… (3)