He would have made $100-$250 million playing hoops so no. He chose the wrong sport AND wrong position
I often lament and outright confusion on the lack of local basketball talent here
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There is absolutely zero proof he would have made the $ you’re talking about above playing basketball. He was a great athlete with no jump shot. Sound familiar? It should because there are a million of those guys out there and 99% of them never drew a NFL paycheck either. Guess we can agree to disagree.
He never played ONE SECOND of college BB let alone pro. So don't "stop it" to me. We have seen much higher rated recruits not get drafted. Just because he abused a bunch of white boy hill jacks like you, doesn't make him Air Jordan.
He had superhuman athleticism AND basketball skill. You simply cannot have that type of world-class athleticism AND size and not play in the NBA.
And what kind of "proof" do you expect me to have? That's a stupid statement. Its hypothetical. This guy never played WR in his life and went on to get 1000 yards. He's a generational athlete....but one who chose the wrong sport.
There is a reason his AAU team was ranked #1. Yes, Blair, Baldwin, Kennedy, Kane, Pope....but he was the DUDE on that team. So he played against more than AA white kids.
That team to be ranked #1 despite Blair and Pryor being the only Top 100 recruits tells you just how good he was.
Again, how many minutes did he play at Ohio State? What NBA team drafted him? If he was that good, some team would have drafted him, because the NBA draft is all about projection. Sorry. there is just no evidence. It is like a kid who hit 3HR's in a HS baseball game but chose to play football in college and you are arguing he was the next Barry Bonds.
Pryor is a decent height for a combo guard in today's NBA, a little small for a wing. His freakish athleticism would have made him about the norm for most NBA players. A major question would have been could he shoot 38-39%+ from three? Who knows, he never tried. His wingspan was a little small for a basketball player too, though some guys make that work.
Here is what NBA draft express said:
"The major weaknesses in terms of Pryor's potential as an NBA player lie in his lack of ideal height for a small forward. At 6'6, he is a little on the small side and is not blessed with a freakish wingspan that would downplay that. Also, Pryor struggles a bit with consistency in his outside jump-shot. His form is solid, but the Pennsylvania prep star has had very mixed results when shooting the ball from the perimeter. It is highly doubtful that we will talk about Pryor as a draft prospect once he hits college, due to the fact that many recruiting analysts are tabbing him as the next Vince Young. He has openly expressed his desire to play both sports in college and has narrowed his choices down to Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, LSU, and Oregon"
http://www.pahoops.org/b1000.htm - here is a list of the 2000 point guys in PIAA history. As you can see, most of the players around Pryor never got close to the NBA, especially the few from WPIAL. I'm not saying he couldn't have been an NBA guy, only that once again SMF's tendency towards hyperbolic statements and inability to check his notions is really annoying.
Here is what NBA draft express said:
"The major weaknesses in terms of Pryor's potential as an NBA player lie in his lack of ideal height for a small forward. At 6'6, he is a little on the small side and is not blessed with a freakish wingspan that would downplay that. Also, Pryor struggles a bit with consistency in his outside jump-shot. His form is solid, but the Pennsylvania prep star has had very mixed results when shooting the ball from the perimeter. It is highly doubtful that we will talk about Pryor as a draft prospect once he hits college, due to the fact that many recruiting analysts are tabbing him as the next Vince Young. He has openly expressed his desire to play both sports in college and has narrowed his choices down to Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, LSU, and Oregon"
http://www.pahoops.org/b1000.htm - here is a list of the 2000 point guys in PIAA history. As you can see, most of the players around Pryor never got close to the NBA, especially the few from WPIAL. I'm not saying he couldn't have been an NBA guy, only that once again SMF's tendency towards hyperbolic statements and inability to check his notions is really annoying.
You expect an NBA team to draft an NFL QB? That's your argument? Any NBA GM who drafted an NFL player would have been fired immediately. He was 100% all in on football and the NFL. That's your answer.
I do think that Pittsburgh, as a city, is a bit shorter than average just anecdotally since I seem to qualify as tall here but at the end of the day there's not nearly enough data to support that as being a reason that this region doesn't play basketball. Instead I agree with you completely that it's a cultural issue, more kids in western PA play football and are pressured to do so by adults (Lance Jeter comes to mind as the most absurd of these examples) and the ones that do play basketball tend to be very poorly coached and don't have a basketball culture around them.
I hate to agree with SMF ever but the only difference between Terrelle Pryor and Dion Waiters is that one of them grew up in Pittsburgh and that the other one grew up in Philadelphia.
I agree he "may" have chosen the wrong sport. w/have loved to see how good he would have been in college hoops. certainly has NBA athleticism. you never know if that would have led to true NBA talent, bball IQ etc. we will never know.
we do know he was ranked the number 1 football recruit in the country. hard for him to turn down the sport he was supposedly the best at.
I think there is a lot of truth to this. I'm just thinking of my experience and I know I am older and things are different today, but my 7th grade travel basketball team made up of kids from my school district entered several tournaments and won them all. In 8th grade, I think we won every tournament except one that we lost in the semifinals. So we had to have been one of the better hoop teams in the region. By the end of high school, only three kids from my year were still playing basketball here. The only kid who grew up to be college basketball tall (6'6"-6'7") transferred after 9th grade to play at a prep school out of state. The majority of the rest of the players from those basketball teams went on to play football for my high school and we ended up as WPIAL champions my senior year. For those of us that played both sports, we spent our offseasons training for football first, and basketball second (and baseball a distant third). If you asked us in 7th grade what sport was #1 we probably would have said basketball, but that definitely changed in high school.
The other thing I'll add is that there is probably so much tradition with football in this region. I do not know if there is a way to verify this but I bet western PA churned out a relatively large number of elite college football players prior to WWII. It has churned out lots of good pro players ever since the NFL rose to prominence. Football just seems to be in the water here. I bet in many other cities you do not have as many families that can say "my uncle played in the NFL," "my dad played D1 football," etc. I had a lot of kids on my high school team that could stuff like say that. And I get that there are way more football players than basketball players in the USA, but relatively speaking it just seems like the number of people you hear say stuff like that is huge in this area.
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This is regression?
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Interesting point. I'd even say that everyone who grew up here has less than 2 degrees of a separation from an NFL player. We all either went to school with someone who played in the NFL or knew someone who had a brother/cousin/uncle who played in the NFL.
Both Herb Pope and DeJuan Blair (though he was in the City League) were rated higher a year earlier. http://www.espn.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/playerrankings/_/class/2007
That said, I'm with you on Pryor being the most talented HS basketball player from the WPIAL in the last 20+ years.
After McCauley were Herb Pope and then Mike Young.
This is Top 5 on the all-time SMF Hyperbole rankings.
Maurice Lucas, Schenley 1971, was an NBA champion with Bill Walton and the Portland Trailblazers.And as a reminder of this, the Suns are two wins away from the NBA finals. If they make it, Cam Johnson will be the first WPIAL player in 50 years, FIFTY, to play in an NBA final!!!
Again, this has always blew my mind, not that no WPIAL player has played in an NBA final for that long, because I didn't realize it until the article below. Just how? How is that possible. For the past 50 years, Pittsburgh has ranged from the 20th to 30th largest metro area in the US. Granted, it is probably one of the whitest. But we do produce many black football players. (I am just using this because it is an unavoidable demographic in trying to figure out why this would occur, so let's not turn it into anything but that..) But why? Again, we have had some players come through, and you would think by luck of the draw. I guess Maurice Lucas being a Schenley grad wouldn't count. But still that was like 1977. So still 40 years!!
Why? I just don't understand. Lack of grassroots and AAU programs are oft cited, but that doesn't account for the dearth of athletic, 6'8" or taller kids that this region has not produced with any regularity whatsoever.
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I think what he means is that a City League player is not actually part of the WPIAL.
I'd love to know who had all the free time to comb through the entries to be able to narrow it down!
So I am and have been in Cleveland all week. And it struck me, an answer to this question. These are just statistics, but they do mean something.
56% of Division 1 basketball players are black. I suspect when you go "high major" it creeps up to ~66%.
75% of the NBA is black. 17% is white.
I am not getting into a sociological analysis, just sheer quantitative analysis based on facts, numbers.
Driving around to all parts, not just "in the city", but surrounding areas, Cleveland has a much higher black population than Pittsburgh. It is that obvious.
The Cleveland metro area is actually smaller than Pittsburgh. Cleveland has slightly over 2 million, Pittsburgh 2.3 million. But Cleveland has 21% black, Pittsburgh 8.6%. In sheer numbers, that is 416,000 versus 197,000. So more than double.
Columbus, 2.1 million, 16.5% black, or ~275,000 blacks. Same situation with Indy, or Milwaukee.
I am not saying this is THE reason, but I do think it is a significant factor. When you then combine this with the lack of NBA franchise vs Cleveland, Indy, Milwaukee having them, it also contributes.
Pittsburgh is not the whitest area, but it is one of them. Like I said, just driving around up here it was very noticeable the difference.
56% of Division 1 basketball players are black. I suspect when you go "high major" it creeps up to ~66%.
75% of the NBA is black. 17% is white.
I am not getting into a sociological analysis, just sheer quantitative analysis based on facts, numbers.
Driving around to all parts, not just "in the city", but surrounding areas, Cleveland has a much higher black population than Pittsburgh. It is that obvious.
The Cleveland metro area is actually smaller than Pittsburgh. Cleveland has slightly over 2 million, Pittsburgh 2.3 million. But Cleveland has 21% black, Pittsburgh 8.6%. In sheer numbers, that is 416,000 versus 197,000. So more than double.
Columbus, 2.1 million, 16.5% black, or ~275,000 blacks. Same situation with Indy, or Milwaukee.
I am not saying this is THE reason, but I do think it is a significant factor. When you then combine this with the lack of NBA franchise vs Cleveland, Indy, Milwaukee having them, it also contributes.
Pittsburgh is not the whitest area, but it is one of them. Like I said, just driving around up here it was very noticeable the difference.
It was 1974. That was the team with Billy Knight, Mickey Martin, Kirk Bruce, Jim Bolla, Keith Starr and Tom Richards. All were local kids and the idea of the photo on Mt Washington was that they all could see their hometowns from that one spot.
They were undefeated until late in the season and made it to the NCAA Elite Eight where they had to play NC State with Tom Burleson and David Thompson in Raleigh, NC. Nice neutral court. It was close until about the 15 minute mark of the second half, by which time the refs had pretty much the entire Pitt team in serious foul trouble and had also made it clear that (1) there is no traveling ever by an NC State team in Raleigh and (2) it’s not a foul by NC State if it doesn’t draw blood. David Thompson was a great player, but being allowed 4 steps on every drive made it impossible to stop him.
I was in law school in at George Washington in DC at the time, and a group of Pitt grads who were in various grad schools at the time made two trips to see them play. The first was a great trip to Williamsburg to see that historic town and Pitt slaughter William & Mary. The second was a short trip across the Key Bridge to the Fort Meyer Gym in Arlington, VA to see them beat George Washington and the two refs. The refs called two fouls on Billy Knight and Mickey Martin within the first two minutes, but Pitt won anyway.
That was a good team, but Knight was the only NBA caliber player. On the other hand, the NBA was far fewer teams back then, so perhaps some of the others would have stuck in a larger league.
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Incredible? He wasn't even 1st team all conference. He was outplayed at home by a true freshman qb from USC (Darnold) in one of O$U biggest games ever. Yes, he made decent NFL coin, but when all is said and done I bet James Conner ends up with more money/stats and no one is rushing to call Conner one of the all time greats.
Now if Pryor had signed with Chip Kelly or Rich Rod, things would have really been interesting.
Early 80s had a nice run of talent. Bill Varner, Larry Anderson, Marc Marotta, Lloyd Moore. All big guys who played D1 (and all left the area, surprisingly some things never change). But I've posted before that is the number one reason a school like Duquesne can't break through their mediocrity, they are literally in the backyard of a neighborhood that should be churning out talent left and right
At this point it seems really unlikely that Connor will have higher career earnings than Pryor. According to Spotrac Pryor made a little over $14 million in his NFL career. Assuming that he plays out the season for the Cardinals, at the end of this year Conner will have made a little less than $5 million.
For Connor to catch Pryor he's going to need to have a really big season somewhere along the line that gets someone to give him a longer term deal for a lot more money per season, or he is going to have to play on contracts like his current deal for a long time. Both of those are possible, but I'm not sure how likely either of them is for a running back who gets hurt a lot.
