NBA talent

[thebluestripes]

The goal wasn't to win championships, it was to get a certain number of players drafted.

 

[Oboro3]

You can say that with all the talent in the NBA. Very few of the best players in the NBA won a NCAA championship.

 

[JDHoss]

I've been making this argument forever. One and done (at least pre-Covid) seems like it was a really good strategy to just out-talent teams and get to the Elite 8, but once you were there it was a really bad way to win a title. K didn't even make the Final Four with that stacked Zion team.

Bart Tovik has coaching efficiency rankings based on how coaches perform in the tournament taking into account their teams' seeds, players, efficiency, etc. His first decade here Cal was ranked #1 in wins above expectation. The metrics gave him a 62% chance of winning just 1 title over that time span based on the teams he had. Coach K was ranked 18th.

Coach K was maybe the best college coach of all time, but if Cal underachieved with his one and done talent then K did so even more.

Not only did that stacked Zion Williamson team not make a final four, but they also had to hold their breath as shots by UCF and Virginia Tech danced all over the rim before falling off or they would have been eliminated before the Elite 8.

 

[TopCatCal]

Watching how good Maxey is now, how great KAT is, SGA, Booker, Fox, Murray, Davis...how in the hell did our bum coach win one championship with all this amazing talent in 15 years??? These guys are incredible ball players!

There's a Bible verse that fits any basketball head coach at UK.

Luke 12:48 To whom much is given, much will be required.

John Calipari who had 10 future NBA All-Stars Wall, Cousins, AD, Randle, KAT, Booker, SGA, Fox, Maxey & Bam while at Kentucky and produced only 1 national championship in 15 years. With that kind of talent much was given, but very little was produced.

Never was so little done with so much.

 

[TyCatPrice14]

Lmfao. The spin here..

Grayson Allen is one player, not two. And he didn't take over for the two main playmakers, Cook or Jones. If I recall, he mostly took over for Matt Jones, who was clearly outmatched at this point. He wasn't very good, certainly not like the Twins were. Coach K played Grayson because he was getting nothing from Matt Jones, it wasn't some keen coaching foresight.

The hilarious thing here is that if Cal did play Ulis and Booker, and lost.. the same people would be dragging him for taking out proven players for two guys who wilted in their first game.

It's also hilarious that Cal did the one thing that everyone here wanted him to do: not favor his freshman, and stick with proven and experienced players.

But don't let facts get in the way of agenda.

The problem wasnt the Twins or Booker/Ulis, the real problem was trying to take the air out of the ball too early like Cal always did.

 

[LineSkiCat14]

The problem wasnt the Twins or Booker/Ulis, the real problem was trying to take the air out of the ball too early like Cal always did.

Yeah that's probably a bigger issue than who got minutes.. or the biggest issue, getting something like a shot clock violation right. You get that call right and none of this might have mattered.

 

[Cold Stout Beer]

Another pedestrian Phoenix team.

 

[52T]

You can say that with all the talent in the NBA. Very few of the best players in the NBA won a NCAA championship.

I've been watching a lot of NBA playoffs. I never heard of 2/3/ of the players in college

 

[HeismaNole]

Maybe.. MAYBE there was a case to be made in hindsight, that you play Ulis and Booker at the start of the year.. but in no way do you just give them the keys just for the Wisconsin game. Harrison twins were 38-0 and had just went 9-1 over the last two tournaments. You don't go away from them. No coach would have done that. Booker was also in the midst of an awful shooting slump that had him around 30% from the 3 for the prior 15 or so games.

This is classically bad take that sometimes gets spread around here. You just don't go way from the two guards who had tremendous chemistry with the team, and who were good in their own right.. just to see if Freshman Booker and Ulis could get it done better.

Look at it this way.. just how bad would the optics have been, if Cal takes out the twins, who again just went 38-0, just to play his freshman (something we all hated this year, didn't we?), and they lose their first game, in the tournament, with a chance for a perfect season, and go home because of it.. It would be considered one of the worst coaching moves in sports.

Just a horrible take that I wish would be put to bed.

Yeah, if it was the 2016 version of Ulis and the early NBA version of Booker then it's a no brainer. But Booker was getting destroyed.

The end of that game is what most of us remember because of the terrible sequence of shot clock violations- the shot that shouldn't have counted- flop, etc. But want to know who the biggest failure on the floor was that night?

Willy Cauley-Stein. Played 33 minutes, grabbed five boards and only scored TWO POINTS! Kaminsky went for 20 and 11.

 

[cats#1again]

I didn’t say they sucked, I said they were nowhere near as good as they are now, which is accurate. How many nights was Devin Booker knocking on the door of 50 points at UK? KAT wasn’t misused. Maxey is playing an identical game.

The difference is an added 4-9 years, a shitload of muscle, and a whole lot of experience playing against the best players in the world.

You won't stop an agenda. NBA talent and great college talent are two completely different things.
18 year old freshmen struggled to drive through a zone defense but a senior Darius Miller knew exactly how to do it. That's all you need to see

 

[GonzoCat90]

I can’t believe after 15 years some of y’all still pretend not to understand.

Why wasn’t Tim Tebow a Pro Bowler in the NFL?

 

[Elliott Tim]

I've been making this argument forever. One and done (at least pre-Covid) seems like it was a really good strategy to just out-talent teams and get to the Elite 8, but once you were there it was a really bad way to win a title. K didn't even make the Final Four with that stacked Zion team.

Bart Tovik has coaching efficiency rankings based on how coaches perform in the tournament taking into account their teams' seeds, players, efficiency, etc. His first decade here Cal was ranked #1 in wins above expectation. The metrics gave him a 62% chance of winning just 1 title over that time span based on the teams he had. Coach K was ranked 18th.

Coach K was maybe the best college coach of all time, but if Cal underachieved with his one and done talent then K did so even more.

You are correct. Neither to a final four post 2015.

 

[Elliott Tim]

Exactly. Which is it? Cal can't be some giant failure with it, while Coach K did well with it. Doesn't work that way.

What did Coach K have during his 1AD time? Like 2 final4s? 3? I know it wasn't 4. And I know it wasn't as many Elite8s.

A definite sword with two edges.