Zanchief wrote:Lebron is barely 20
Melo is 20
Bosh turned 21 last week
What were there numbers when they were 19?
James is a freak. An almost unprecedented talent at his age. Using him as a comparison is blatantly unfair.
Bosh put up mediocre numbers on a bad team (11 points, 7.4 boards in 33 minutes, while shooting .460 from the field). If he played for the Pistons instead of the Raptors, he'd have been relegated to the bench.
Anthony likewise would have seen minimal minutes, thanks to the gaping holes in his defense.
Al Jefferson has drawn rave reviews in Boston, while putting up numbers that would land him on the end of the Detroit bench.
Even Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett had rough introductions to the league, and these, like the players you mentioned, played on bad teams, given a chance to play on a nightly basis.
The League just isn't kind to young players trying to get an early jump on their careers.
You can tell alot from a player during garbage time, and Larry Brown is the one who sees him in practice everyday.
No, you can tell very little about a player in garbage time. It's a chaotic mess where players try to break the shots/min record, go for the implausible block or steal, and generally attempt to generate their own highlight reel.
I'll trust his assessment...BUST!
Where did Brown say that Darko was a bust? The worst thing I've heard any memebr of the Pistons say was that he "wasn't ready yet".
Ahhh, the international basketball measurement. How's that Nocioni deal working out? After all, he was a key member of the international champion Argentinian team. Knowing a little about international basketball, I wouldn't have expected Milicic to have shown up on Serbia-Montenegro's team. International ball is far more veteran-dominated than the NBA, a kid like Darko, with essentially one year of competitive basketball under his belt would be a long shot to make a system-driven team, regardless of his talent.