re: 50 Games Into His Career, and Zion is Tied for 6th in the League in PER

SFP, I'm telling you, Zion stans are the new Twitter Zo stans, and they're ruining Pels Talk.

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College Basketball and NBA Basketball are a universe apart.


For some odd reason this board is unaware

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100% but also, you have to be able to acknowledge that Zion is waaay bigger than he was. Maybe he stays this weight maybe not. It doesn't take away from the fact that he is still dominating.

I don’t think it’s a talent comparison as much as an athletic comparison.

That’s not to say he’s not an insane athlete right now, but his movement was definitely different then. More fluid. Played in the lanes a lot more (this could come with time, as I’m sure he’s more focused on being in the right spot right now).

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Zion stans have historic numbers to back them up tho

Zo stans well.. I'm sure they'd get on well with Senior LaVar

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That's not entirely relevant.

MJ stand do a great job ruining the MSB, and he was a pretty good ball player.

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I just ask can people stop referencing “Duke Level Zion” as he is not living up to potential.

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Especially when the one people evoke is a revisionist version where Zion was super Draymond in college and not this guy:

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WEAKNESSES

DEFENSIVE EFFORT/CONDITIONING:

- Poor effort defensively, rarely gets in stance, doesn’t play D at full speed. Conditioning questions, seems tired at times.

- Loses focus defensively at times, gambles for blocks and steals. Not always in great position, at times late on rotations

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So we have this entire cadre of people, and not just people here, but national guys, that built up Zion as a player he never was coming out of college, I.E. this Super Draymond that should dominate offensively. And because Zion in fact was never Super Draymond(hell Draymond wasn’t Draymond until 4 years of college and his third season as a pro), in spite of him blowing away historical benchmarks offensively, we still get these stupid takes about Zion not living up to expectations because they cling to a revisionist version of his time at Duke and use that to build these insanely unrealistic expectations to hold Zion to.

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That’s not to say he’s not an insane athlete right now, but his movement was definitely different then. More fluid. Played in the lanes a lot more (this could come with time, as I’m sure he’s more focused on being in the right spot right now).

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It’s a lot easier to operate vs Boston College, Notre Dame and Pitt then it is vs freak athletes in the NBA with their bulk and huge wingspans

Yep It’s a lot easier to play lanes and cheat successfully against lesser talent on a more compacted court.

And even then, if you knew how to navigate information well. and not buying into the hot take hype artists, Zion’s problem areas were always there needing improvement, and the makings of the ball handling freak we are beginning to see today always in view if you just looked.

And even in more proper context(he wasn’t super Draymond, he’s raw in many areas mechanically) the ceiling for this guy was still superstar, with the chance of being best in the league generational IF the development plays out right over time.

And to me it’s still wild that despite exceeding almost all realistic expectations 35 games in, people convinced themselves what they were seeing was actually regression and cause to lower his ceiling

But this board told me he reached his peak at Duke.

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and the makings of the ball handling freak we are beginning to see today always in view if you just looked.

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again, even this implies a progression. Zion didn't progress, this all just...appeared

it shows the 35-game sample you keep bringing up is worthless. nothing in that sample showed point-Zion, yet you cling to it as worthwhile data. nothing in that data showed a 75%+ FT shooter, either (especially overnight). if 35 games wasn't enough to judge him, then what does an extra 15 do? we're talking about a career of probably at least 600-700 games (conservatively).

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again, even this implies a progression. Zion didn't progress, this all just...appeared

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No it fricking didn’t just “appear.”

This shite was put together before he was a Pelican:

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UNDERRATED

PLAYMAKING/INSTINCTS:

- Good court vision and solid decision making.

- Solid recognition of defensive schemes, unselfish, looks for teammates. Recognizes traps and double teams, doesn’t panic, moves the ball intelligently.

- Ball handling moves and shiftiness is super high level at size/age.

- Good hand eye coordination on handle, able to split traps, keep dribble low, quick hands Very effective in and out dribble in transition.

- Has a solid spin move off the dribble and a quick behind the back dribble as well.

- Natural instincts for where defense is coming from and going to, instinctual dribble counters. Nice outlets, keeps his head up in transition

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And literally in the Lakers game and Kings game that thread existed in, we saw ball handling Zion beginning to emerge. So no, it didn’t literally come out of nowhere...unless you simply weren’t looking at the right sources and weren’t processing the situation Zion was in correctly.

And it seems now you want it both ways, you wanted to write down his future 35 games into his career but now want to backtrack and say 35 games is meaningless, so which is it? The signs for what we see Zion emerging today were always there. There was reasonable disagreement on when he would get there and he is certainly exceeding even my best and most optimistic timeline for him, but it was only a select few of you that wanted to write down his career trajectory based on 35 games.

The rest of us were trying to warn you not to start doing a Chris Vernon routine on Zion until he actually got some more time under his belt and SVG could more fully implement the offense that was starting to emerge.