He’s partly right here but what he doesn't talk about is going to really imposing.
As you know, former Duke Blue Devil Kyle Filipowski is getting ready for the NBA Draft in a few weeks. He’s going to help whoever drafts him. At 6-10 and 229 officially, according to the NBA, he can step out and hit threes. And as we saw in his freshman year and more effectively this past season, Filipowski has a dazzlingly quick spin move that you don’t really expect to see from a guy his size.
In this article, he talks about spacing and how the college game kind of limited him and he’s right in some ways. The traffic is much denser in college, partly because the lane is 12 feet wide as opposed to 16 in the league.
But what he doesn’t talk about here is the other end of the court.
He won’t be double-teamed nearly as much but the athleticism in the NBA is pretty surreal. You see guys like Zion Williamson, Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James and they are just off the charts. Then look at guys like Bam Adebayo, Domantas Sabonis and Julius Randle who, by comparison are relatively pedestrian athletically - but still in the top 1⁄2 percent in the global population. And then there are guys like Draymond Green who compensate for more average - again relatively speaking - athleticism with intelligence.
In the long run, Filipowski is going to have to lean more towards that camp. He’s a good athlete, he’s big and strong, but in terms of his run/jump ability, he’s not going to be elite.
But that’s not necessarily an absolute limitation, at least on offense. Look at Nikola Jokich, who is not particularly athletic. Neither is Luka Doncic. When Kyrie Irving and Jayson Tatum left Duke, one of the knocks on both was that they weren’t overhwelmingly athletic. For that matter, there are probably at least two dozen guards in the NBA who are more athletic than Stephen Curry, maybe more.
What matters most is how you understand the game. It’s possible to overwhelm it with athleticism, as Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain did (although both were very well grounded in fundamentals). It’s also possible to play with the sort of genius guys Jokic, Larry Bird or Magic Johnson, who understand the court and how the various pieces move and where they will be, have shown. Wayne Gretzky said that ”I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”
Same idea.
You have limitations on your hands and feet and strength. Everyone does. But the limitations on your mind are largely self-imposed.
Here are some mock drafts to get you prepped.
