Brogdon wasn’t on the top 100 draft prospects board(s) in February of his redshirt senior year where he was dominating, and uva fans by and large were only giving reasons he couldn’t make the nba (tweener, not young enough, not enough upside, not athletic enough, not good enough 3 pt shooter with a little bit of a push shot, may not make the transition to the longer 3 point shot, etc). A few months later he was drafted early second round, which was a steal for the ROY. I believe he was also first nba rookie of year to ever not be drafted in first round.
Reece and kadin are both gonna get drafted because they are 2 of the top 5 most naturally talented players we have had under CTB. And a lot of our guys who aren’t that naturally talented still end up in nba. But up until the few months prior to that draft they will be underrated by anybody who follows draft articles and top 100 lists etc. just like every other uva player who is in the nba now including hunter.
Malc’s done really well for himself (obviously) compared to the expectations he came into the NBA with. Awesome for him, and good for our program. I don’t remember those top 100 lists as well as you, but I do remember that he mentioned in his senior year that he had considered the draft the year prior (i.e., got that official feedback form), and also that his foot injury was a concern for some teams.
As far as Reece/Kadin, I think they’re tremendously talented and think an NBA future would be awesome.
I actually miss playing Maryland, even shutting down their fans when we would go into College Park and regulate on them fools. Starting with Sean Singletary yoking up John Gilchrist, through Justin Anderson dunking all over them, to Dre dunking all over Bruno Fernando, and Three-hei shutting down and defending their point guards…Those Maryland games were legit fun.
I believed Malcolm would eventually make it in the nba as a rotation point guard and expressed that on the Sabre a number of times his senior year and got mostly laughed at and mocked. Oftentimes the rationale came with reference to the fact that ge wasn’t on any of the nba draft boards. I would not remember it otherwise.
I also was following draft boards his senior year hoping to see his name and did not see any brogdon nba draft buzz until April/may 2016 and then did an analysis of how wrong those earlier (but still fairly close to draft date) draft boards were on the Sabre a year or two later.
I get mostly laughed at here, but I enjoy it (as long as it’s funny).
I was probably a Malc NBA skeptic, tbh, but I have been happy to be wrong. I thought NBA upside was much easier to predict for Joe and Dre. And TM3. Because of size at their positions.
Credit to you for calling Malcolm stocking in the NBA. That wasn’t an obvious one and he didn’t have the reputation of UVA players to help him out (believe it was only Mike Scott and a rising 2nd year JA at that time) like the guys coming up now do. That was a good call.
More to the draft boards in general I would argue they don’t mean much, at least outside of the lottery, until after the NCAA Tournament. Until that focus begins post-tournament those mocks and big boards are usually months behind the conversations actually going on around NBA circles.
I kinda think it’s a bit the opposite: the NBA front offices don’t really get around to serious business w/r/t the draft until around the tourney or so. I think the changes in draft boards around that time reflect that attention. Also, there are a ton of “my editor is making me do a draft board” draft boards out there. I hate to feel like I’m Vecenie’s agent, but the thing I like about him is the draft is job 1 throughout the year, not the fifth thing some Gannett editor is asking him to take on, after he’s done with his primary beat.
Predictions in general are hard, because life is hard to predict. But that doesn’t mean it’s a fruitless endeavor, either.
Also, last (obvious) point: things change as performance changes. Reece and Kadin are (mostly) out of the conversation because they are not OAD lottery types, they are not even frosh–>soph jump guys. They are guys who have mulitple years in a major college program where they haven’t been able to emerge as even tertiary options. If that changes, then the stock changes.
In the abstract, I don’t really know – or, really, it can mean a lot of things, I guess – but in this specific case it was Brogdon’s broken foot, and how it had healed. Tbh, and this is a fading memory, but I don’t even know if it was an injury, so much as an issue he had from birth. Hopefully someone remembers better than me, b/c I don’t trust my own memory here.
