1) There’s more than a few things I want to write about in relation to the 2019 draft.

How ranking Kezie Okpala over Matisse Thybulle is likely a sign of a fundamental misunderstanding of the game of basketball.

How the 2019 sophomore + junior class is as good as we’ve seen since the 2011 to 2013 drafts.

In relation to that, a point which I’ve already made twice earlier in the season, but not in detail, is how Nic Claxton’s role on offense as nominal point guard for a team without guard play is drastically warping almost everyone’s eyes with respect to Claxton’s overall upside.

How the senior class also has the potential to be surprisingly deep and surprisingly full of useful context dependent offensive players, largely because many of them play defense at a relatively high level compared to past senior classes.

How the 2019 mid-major class is as deep as we’ve seen since 2010-13 and could be as good or better than any of them if Brandon Clarke ends up shooting from 3.

That NBA coaches still haven’t realized what Nate Oats realized last year: that the best way to attack traditional bigs on switch type actions, or straight up if they just happen to be guarding Giannis or Lebron, is not by brute force, but by making them move off ball before the catch and change directions immediately after the catch, something which almost no 7-foot center type, short of KG or perhaps JJJ, is agile enough to do.

However, with Zion Williamson out, it’s time to put the hammer down on the cruddy freshman class, a class that was largely being propped up by Duke prospects, at least two of whom now seem like they are at best, very far away, and at worst, not particularly likely to be difference-makers of any kind, which would place them squarely with players like Naz Little, Coby White, Kevin Porter Jr. et al. There may be exceptions to this rule, but most of them figure to go back to school, and if they do not, I wouldn’t necessarily bet on them making it in the league, especially given how coaches treat such players.

2) Let’s start with Cam Reddish. Cam Reddish reminds me of Gerald Green. Though I could equally say, Cam Reddish reminds me of Terrence Ross. It’s not that these players have identical athletic qualities or games. Ross and Green are both actually athletic in numerous ways that Reddish is not. Reddish is skilled at getting off shots from distance at a young age in ways that neither of the other two could dream. And of course, Reddish has a 7-foot-1 wingspan, which is even at times disruptive and useful.

Rather, it’s that they are all skinny prospects of big wing height (6-foot-7 or greater) without the strength to deal with big wings on defense with less than ideal awareness for whom the hypothetical idealized version of what they could be is so much better than the actual player.

3) The part of the Reddish resume no one much talks about: 4+ turnover games.

This is over a quarter of Reddish’s games and basically every good defense he’s played has managed to turn him over: Texas Tech, Virginia tech, Virginia, UNC and Gonzaga. I don’t even want to show you the per 40 numbers over these 8 games.

Reddish’s awareness and offensive decision-making in the run of play are generally somewhere between negative and awful. People say he’s unassertive, but he’s got a 26 percent usage and he shoots or turns the ball over on 28 out of every 100 possessions he plays. Reddish doesn’t have problem with assertiveness. Reddish has a severe problem with not knowing when or how to assert himself.

4) If I’m an NBA team, am I drafting Reddish in the top ten? No. Am I drafting Reddish in the top fifteen? Probably not. Am I drafting Reddish? Given how the NBA perceives him, no. With the one caveat perhaps being if I were convinced he could put on power forward weight and strength and play out of the short role on offense.

5) One other issue to keep an eye on if I’m an NBA team: Reddish’s actual eyesight. I would not be surprised if he needed glasses or contact lenses. If that’s the case, that might have me reconsider my stance. There is defensive and shooting upside here, but in general, players who can’t make decisions in the run of play don’t have upside, even in cases when it’s assigned to them.

6) Given how Duke has struggled without Zion, it’s not surprising that we should be reconsidering the stock of Duke’s freshmen. When Duke was the number 1 team they had perhaps four players being touted as top ten prospects. Now that Zion is hurt, we’ve learned a fair bit about the other three players. And yes, even if it weren’t a natural continuation of what was happening with Zion, this small sample would be that valuable.

Remember when D’Angelo Russell struggled against UNC, Louisville and Arizona in being guarded by legit NBA players like Terry Rozier and TJ McConnell and that small sample was prescient of struggles he’d have in the NBA? It’s a little like that. We learn about players when they are in adverse situations.

7) If Duke really had three players other than Zion worthy of top ten picks would they be so mediocre now? And if the answer is no must that almost necessarily mean that we are overrating at least one or two if not all three of these players?

8) A simple look back through history can inform us here to a great degree. Teams with three top 25 picks:

Duke 2018 (Marvin Bagley, Wendell Carter, Grayson Allen), 29-8.

Duke 2017 (Tatum, Kennard, Giles, Allen), 28-9.

Duke 2015 (Winslow, Jones, Okafor), 35-4, won championship.

Kentucky 2015 (Towns, Booker, Lyles) 38-1, lost semifinal.

Kentucky 2012 (Davis, Kidd-Gilchrist, Terence Jones), 38-2, won championship.

Kentucky 2010 (Wall, Cousins, Bledsoe, Patrick Patterson), 35-3.

Ohio State 2006 (Conley, Oden, Cook) 35-4, lost in finals.

Florida 05-06 (Noah, Horford, Brewer) 68-11, two championships.

Duke 99 (Brand, Magette, Avery) 37-2, lost in finals.

9) You can see the vast majority of these teams are absolutely great, with the lone exceptions being the two recent Duke squads. You can also see there’s usually at least one pretender, if not two, among the picks, with the lone exception perhaps being 2010 Kentucky, where the players were quite good but not always as great as they might seem with respect to the NBA’s salary cap rules.

10) You can also see that the lesser regarded players here with respect to their college goodness as much or more than draft position are, in most cases at least, generally lesser. The lone major exception here being Okafor.

11) So this doesn’t say good things about Reddish and it likely doesn’t say great things about Tre Jones either. The difference is that the risk/reward for Reddish suggests that Reddish should definitely declare, being that he’s a likely top 5 pick, and that Jones should go back to school, being that he may not end up in the first round.

In order to improve as players, going back to school would be beneficial for both. The level of improvement for this type of player tends to be much greater in college than the NBA, at least if they are the kind who is going to improve.

Josh Richardson, Matisse Thybulle, Shane Battier, Brandon Roy and Brent Barry were all players who would have been run out of the NBA had they entered the league after their freshman seasons, and they are a few of the many who are good examples of this fact.

12) What Jones needs to improve is mainly his shooting. His lack of a jump shot has affected his entire game. He often looks like he’s playing scared, especially without Zion.

The thing with Jones is that there’s reason to believe, even though it comes and goes, that he has real touch with the basketball and that he should improve his jumper with work and time.

13) The ironic thing, considering Reddish and Jones, is that Reddish should declare and Jones should stay, but that risk/reward for NBA teams suggests that spending a late first or a second round pick on Jones is a much better play than drafting Reddish early.

14) RJ Barrett is very clearly the best prospect of the non-Zion Duke prospects. There was at least a little bit of a question about this before. There’s no question about it now.

15) That doesn’t mean his game is not without issues. His offense is basically limited to dominating size/athleticism mismatches which will largely disappear in the NBA. Yes, Barrett kills smaller and lesser athletic players. But without a great handle or wiggle, he won’t be able to generate switches in the playoffs except perhaps as a screener.

16) The other four more general problems for Barrett:

First, he’s only an average defensive prospect. Not bad, but not special either, despite rebounding and on-ball ability. Even if you don’t believe he’ll be a negative on defense, it’s difficult to consider Barrett being a substantial positive either.

Second, he premeditates decisions on offense. Steph and Kobe both had this habit, at least occasionally, but RJ’s not nearly as talented as either, and they might be the only great players to premeditate.

Third, though Barrett gets assists (5 per 40), I don’t believe they’ve been all that instrumental in terms of improving offensive efficiency. One example of this in the NBA is D’Angelo Russell who, despite averaging 8 assists per 40 and shooting quite well from the field, doesn’t, on average, positively affect his team’s efficiency when he is on the floor. Here’s Russell’s On/Off offensive numbers so far this season:

Fourth, Barrett is a question mark to shoot with high efficiency from mid-range and 3, while at the same time also likely being a high volume player. He’s shooting 32 percent from college 3 with some terrible misses, while shooting less than 70 percent from the free throw line, though Barrett has been decent from mid-range, shooting 38 percent on 2-pointers and hitting 39 unassisted already, per hoop-math.

17) Barrett is a hard worker and competitive. I wouldn’t bet on him to be terrible. But that’s different from betting on Barrett versus athletes who are often enough going to be bigger and stronger than he is, to be the type of high efficiency killer that NBA teams need to be highly successful.

Players without high efficiency and with high volume are team killers. Look at John Wall and the Wizards inability to get beyond mediocrity for evidence of this fact.

18) That’s not to say Barrett is a bad player or without value to a team, but in the salary cap era where teams must make good decisions on who to sign and who to let go, Barrett’s main value is likely enough to be trade value.

19) The counterargument for Barrett is that his best role is as a secondary creator and switch-advantage killer ala Jayson Tatum. And if Barrett is able to mostly limit 3s to shots off the catch and mostly able to limit drives to switches generated by the offense, especially those in which he’s matched up against smaller point guards to drive given that his lack of wiggle will probably make it difficult for him to generate these switches in high leverage playoff games by himself, he could be quite successful.

True enough.

20) Here’s the problem with that argument. Secondary creators tend to be overrated in terms of just how valuable they are. Yes, that’s right. Secondary creators are largely overrated and overpaid.

Note, I’m not talking about legit primary creators in secondary roles. Those guys are valuable and necessary to win championships. But as far as pure secondary creators I think only a handful have been featured on championship teams as one of the three most important players on the team and all of them were hugely, hugely valuable on defense.

I’m talking Joe Dumars on the repeat Pistons, Vernon Maxwell/Mario Ellie on the first Rockets championship teams, Richard Hamilton on the early on Pistons, late career Jason Kidd on the Mavericks, and lastly Draymond Green/Andre Iguodala as the second and third best players on the first Warriors championship squad.

So if you’re making this argument, buying big on Barrett might come down to what you think about his defense.

21) This points to a flaw we have when assigning upside to players. Even the best scouting reports for Barrett question his shooting efficiency, his on-the-fly decision-making and his max level defensive upside. Not that they think he’s bad, but they all question the degree of his goodness. And yet they talk unequivocally about upside.

Yet, players who are without high level efficiency all essentially lack upside. Efficiency is the currency of today’s NBA.

And we can find similar issues and inconsistencies with the scouting reports about Ja Morant relative to the way people speak about his upside. It’s a major problem in terms of logical consistency, and one way to fix a lot of issues with regards to ranking draft prospects is simply to make sure your thinking is logically consistent.