Tari Eason allegedly not doing well in interviews.

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From Adam Spinella on intel that he’s hearing

“Eason is not impressing during the interview or film sessions of his meetings with teams. There’s a growing sense that his lack of feel is indicative of a fairly low basketball IQ.”

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This sounds like a team hoping he'll fall a little deeper into the first. That said, the LSU connection may keep me from melting too hard if he was picked at 8, but it would be tough. He's a potential trade-back target, but I think the chances of the Pelicans drafting him are exceedingly low.

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How do you get "lack of feel" from interviews? Nickeill could talk hoops, we saw how well that translated to the court. Dell Demps fell in love with Solomon Hill based on interviews, and Hill did talk basketball at a high level. I can't say he ever impressed me with his on court BBIQ. It certainly didn't match his off court knowledge.

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I think they're talking about "lack of feel" from game tape. I can certainly agree that he sometimes didn't seem to get into the flow of games, and he certainly committed a lot of dumb fouls, so I could see the concern there, but this seems to be combining that with his interviews to call him dumb without using the word dumb.

We screwed up NAWs development. We gave him way too much freedom right off the bat, Let him play PG/Lead Guard when he should have been boxed in, let him develop bad habits, and we put pressure on him too early on to produce when he wasn’t ready because of the need at the position.

He should have been boxed in as a 3 and D guard in the first couple of seasons and slowly given more freedom if he proved he can play his role efficiently.

I still think he can be a starting caliber guard in the league, he needs to be in a disciplined system.

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No offense to Will Wade but he’s never had a coach who can really develop talent

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This is an odd thing to say considering Eason’s development into a potential lottery pick in the one season he played for Wade.

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This guy can guard 1-4 and some under sized centers, he’s REALLY good at scoring around the basket in traffic, and even started hitting 3s last year.

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I watched just about every LSU game. He has no left hand, extremely slow/ugly release, and is very low IQ defensively.

He has a high ceiling IMO, but his floor is pretty low

I would also add while he's labeled as a guy who can defend 1-4, he's not that in terms of Herb or Sochan in this class. You don't want him consistently switching onto guards, for example.

Personally i was never really impressed with Eason. Like stated above he cant go left and commits very stupid fouls

I believe it's true also.

If you watched him play at lsu this isn't a surprise.

Does it really matter in the long run?

I agree that Tari’s game can be a bit ugly at times. Does he have flaws? For sure. For all the feel for the game comments:

6.6 fouls drawn/40, 15th in the nation
4.5 steal percentage, 12th in the nation
6.2 block percentage, 102nd in the nation

Creating turnovers as a help defender? That requires feel. Drawing fouls on your defender (especially as a 6’7” guy who can “only go right”)? That requires feel for the game. Tari does some things really well. It’s easy to focus on what he struggles with and not what he does well.

Or maybe he’s a good athlete with low bball IQ and not a top 10 pick. Anything can happen on draft day but I can’t see a surprise with guys like Eason. Teams will take a chance on the potential of Griffin, Sochan, Duren, Agbaji before Eason. That’s not including the Sharpe, Davis, Daniels, Mathurin group that is looking to be picked anywhere 5-10 right now.

I’m not saying Eason won’t crack say the top 12 but there are about 13-14 guys getting all the momentum going into this draft and the margin of error looks slim for anyone else to slide in the top 10 over those guys. I just don’t see the surprise because all those guys could go 8-15 already. IMO the biggest surprise would be Mark Williams making the top 10 and it’s really not that surprising considering his size and the lack thereof being drafted before him.