Before the NBA Draft, and after being taken by Memphis with the #3 pick, Cameron Boozer made it clear that he didn’t understand why he wasn’t seen by many as a likely #1 pick.
He has a point, but let’s look at the other side of the argument.
Boozer is seen, somewhat unfairly, as not highly athletic. By conventional measures, AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson are more athletic. They do jump higher and run faster.
But as we learned during the run-up to the draft, Boozer rated better on his athleticism than
many people expected. In some metrics, for instance, he surpassed UNC’s Caleb Wilson.
But athleticism is not always the ultimate metric. The gold standard there is still Michael Jordan, but that guy refined his game endlessly, and he became a great scorer, great defender, and great ball handler.
He mastered his craft, in other words.
Arkansas’s Darius Acuff has mastered some of his craft, but not defense. We’ve talked a lot about the importance of going to a solid organization, and Acuff, unfortunately, went to Sacramento. He won’t get what he needs there, so if he becomes a good defender, it’ll be because he wants to, and so far, he’s shown no desire to defend.
You can’t measure athletic intelligence by measuring athletic ability. Tim Duncan is widely regarded as a better player than Karl Malone, James Worthy, Charles Barkley, or Clyde Drexler. A quiet presence on the court, Duncan was called the Big Fundamental, and he rarely made foolish mistakes.
He mastered his craft.
Of all the players in the draft, no one has mastered his craft to the level Boozer has. That’s been called a high floor, with the implication that his potential ceiling is not that impressive.
But this guy walked into his first college event, an exhibition game at Tennessee, and scored 24 points, pulled down 23 rebounds, and handed out 6 assists.
Keep in mind that Tennessee regularly beats opponents into the ground. It’s a Rick Barnes trademark.
As an 18-year-old, Boozer consistently dominated older players while at Duke, and his consistency was ridiculous.
But can that translate into success in the NBA?
Well, we won’t know for sure until we do, but you can look at some precedents. You can start with a whole cruise ship full of guys who were drafted over the years who were far more athletic than Boozer. There are hundreds of guys like that who never made a dent in the NBA, and often didn’t make the league at all.
On the more positive side, you can point to Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokic, Reggie Miller, John Stockton, Steve Nash, Andre Miller, and Shane Battier, to name a few, who all managed to thrive in the league despite perceptions that they were not “athletic.”
If you’ve never seen them, YouTube is just full of videos of 1980s players who were vastly more athletic than Bird who just marvel that they couldn’t stop him, even if he told them exactly what he was about to do to them.
Realistically, there’s what you might call a graph between athleticism and intelligence. You could be the most brilliant player in history, but without at least minimal athleticism, you won’t get to the NBA.
Conversely, if you have superb athleticism and a low basketball IQ, your chances of making it are pretty minimal.
We don’t want to pick on Sean Stewart, but the former Blue Devil is a good example, because the guy is physically gifted beyond most people’s dreams. But at Duke, we watched his teammates physically shove him into position on defense multiple times. For whatever reason, he just didn’t get it, and it cost him.
You don’t get that with Boozer. And what you see with him is that if you take away his drive, he can step out and shoot. He is also a brilliant passer who (and this is important) has strong wrists. He can zip a pass through two or three defenders before they realize what just happened.
On a break, if he’s up against a guy who could block his shot, he has a sweet Euro Step, and that’s just one example of his superb footwork. And if that fails, well, he can pass his way out of it.
The point is, you can deny him certain things, but you can’t deny him everything, and he will gut you. He’s just too sound. We haven’t really talked about his rebounding, but watch him work the boards. He gets great position, and he’s strong enough to hold it.
So while the proof is in the pudding, we’ll see where the points on the lines on the graph intersect. Our guess is that Boozer’s athleticism is more than acceptable, but his IQ is off the charts. And as others before him have proved, it’s better to be reasonably athletic and smart than it is to lack game smarts and be highly athletic.
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