Cam has a lot of work to do to make the NBA. He needs to develop his body, improve his quickness, and become a much better ball handler. He could make it, but if I were a betting man then Europe is where I think he ends up.
Pitt may have at least 4 players in NBA
- Thread starter buckage
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It really is unbelievable. I honestly couldn't believe Sam young wasn't a better NBA player, I agree marginal. Never became a viable scoring option, he stuck around because he was a great defender. Chris Taft had his injuries and never panned out. When he first came to Pitt I thought Gilbert brown had that kind of potential, same with artis.
Guard wise though, for one almost all of them were just too small for the NBA (point guards), and we haven't had too many good 2s. Ramon and Wanamaker are two guys I would think of that at one point you'd think maybe had a chance. Gibbs was a very good shooter but not much else. But yeah whether it luck or whatever, for a program to be that consistently good for so long and have so few NBA players is just astonishing.
Ramon was too short. He was barely 6ft. And average athlete at best. Aaron Gray had a nice little career.
Yeah gray, Blair was around for a little, like we said young for a brief time. I'm almost positive there was a time when they were all in the league at the same time. Now it's just Steven Adams and Lamar Patterson. I have heard though that artis has a decent chance of making the knicks roster this season.
Lamar had a 5 game cup of coffee with the Hawks and signed just over a week ago with a Puerto Rican pro team.
It's just Adams.
Dixon did NOTHING to develop Adams offensively ..did you ever watch a game that year? The criticism of Dixon's use and failure to develop Adams is legitimate. He planted him in the center of the court like a tree and told him to rebound and play D. Dumb JIGRs.....Have no knowledge of hoops.
That's not a fair assessment. First of all, it takes lot more than one season for a coach to "develop" a raw big man's offense. Secondly, Adams was getting better as the season progressed. He woudl have been a beast as a soph. Third, Jamie took advantage of Adams' strongest attributes and had him running the floor hard at both ends.
The same was true of Khem Birch. He was getting better and better offensively while at Pitt. One could make a good argument that his offensive development stalled when he left and went to UNLV.
And before you say it, I'm no JIGer, I just try to be objective.
I have no idea why nearly every one of your posts degrades into 3rd grade name calling.
I don't know which is funnier, the fact that you apparently don't have any idea how Adams was used in his year at Pitt or the fact that you don't know that OKC uses him pretty much the exact same way on offense that Pitt did.
Could care less how OKC uses him, JIGer apologist and Board crackpot. He was wasted by Dixon, a guy who never knew anything about offense.
I watched every game Adams played and it's a fair an accurate assessment. While I wouldn't expect any big man to have perfected his offensive skills in a year, I would expect a big man coached by a guy who knows what he was doing to be better offensively in game 30 than in game 1 and Adams never developed a single offensive move in the course of the season or was he ever employed as an offensive factor in the low post. Why would Adams have been any better offensively in year 2 Coached by Dixon? Dixon worked his same magic with Dante Taylor who, over 4 years, never developed a single post move. Bravo, Dixon....the proponent of 1950's offensive hoops. Good riddance.
He was wasted by being used exactly the same way that a team that is now paying him over $22 million per season is using him? You've got an awfully screwed up view of someone being wasted. Which, I suppose, is no surprise for someone who from the original post clearly has no idea how Pitt actually used him.
The difference is that at OKC he was playing with Westbrooke and Durant-he didn't have to score. At Pitt if he had been an inside scoring threat the year he played, that team would have been much, much better. He was wasted on offense under Dixon. Pitt never got him the ball in the post. If he didn't score on the break or on an offensive rebound, he barely touched the ball in the recruitinator's O.
Wow, can't believe he's not even getting a shot to make the team this year. Oh well, point is with how few guys we've sent to the NBA his brief stint is still longer than most guys we've had.
Weird thing is from what I understand the Hawks signed Lamar to a multi-year deal a couple months ago, shortly thereafter he took a "personal leave" and just a couple weeks ago signed with the Puerto Rican team. I think he saw the writing in the wall and did the best thing for his future. He was never going to be more than a marginal NBA bench player getting spot minutes and the lowest pay. He has a nice game but he just isn't the kind of athlete that you need to be to play in the NBA at 6'5:
as my young urban friends like to say, true dat. I still think he comes off the bench and is a nice addition as a role player who brings much more to the table (as far as UNC is concerned) in the realm of gpa rather than ppg.
He signed a "multiyear deal" that was essentially entirely unguaranteed. It was just a way to give him a small amount of money and hopefully land the Hawks a cheap non-guaranteed contract they could gain a ton of value (as a player, but more importantly trade filler) if he could make the team.
That's not entirely true. It was guaranteed for the rest of last season, which is what makes it that much odder that only a few days later he left the team. Since he asked them to release him they were no longer on the hook for his salary for the rest of last year.
That's part of the bigger shame. The whole Birch thing seemed to be Dixon's downfall, as the admin seemed freaked out by the circumstances (compromises... promises) that got him committed. They definitely seemed to shift everything 180 after it and recruiting and talent turned into, well, we know. But the painful irony of it all was that Birch was getting PT and was well on the way to being a good player!
Adams, I expect would have eventually become a good two way player ... I think it would have taken longer than the following year however...He was really inconsequential on offense that first season. Block shots and boards are invaluable though
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It was true. The only way (per the CBA, so literally the "only way") they could sign him was to guarantee him the rest of that season, as they had already signed him to two 10 day contracts. The rest of the contract was non-guaranteed, so it was them extending him some guaranteed money for the least amount possible and then granting themselves a valuable NG contract they could use in trades.
Because Del doesn't actually have anything of substance to contribute, so he figures if he throws around enough petulant insults people will eventually move on and he will have "won" the argument?
Well right. He got a guaranteed deal for the rest of last season and nothing more. It's odd to me that you are disagreeing with me and yet saying the exact same thing I said.
by the same silly token, neither did the Thunder in year one ...
I disagreed with you when you said that his contract was "essentially entirely unguaranteed". I pointed out the fact that it was guaranteed for the rest of the year last year. You "disagreed" with me by saying "the only way (per the CBA, so literally the "only way") they could sign him was to guarantee him the rest of that season". Which is exactly what I said in the first place.
Or to put it another way, your second post not only agreed with me, it contradicted your first post.
Well it was a $1.7m deal with less than $250k guaranteed and the lowest amount they could guarantee him by signing him then. That certainly qualifies to me as it being "essentially entirely unguaranteed".
I didn't contradict myself, at all. It was a deal made to give the Hawks flexibility to trade him and have control of his rights without any commitment whatsoever to him in the future and the smallest amount of guarantee possible.
I don't think the admin or anyone outside of the basketball program had anything to do with influencing Jamie's recruiting, philosophically or otherwise, or the direction he was trying to take the program:
Sorry, i know many like to think the sport is wholesome, and others know and admire Pitt administrators and think they're infallible ... but the observations of events during and since Birch can really have no other logical explanation than admin meddling, moralizing and bait and switch regarding assistants, policies and funding.
I'm under no delusions about the "wholesomeness" of big time college athletics. But what am I missing about the Birch thing? It wasn't any kind of scandal, it was just a prima donna kid who had buyer's remorse when his role in JD's system wasn't exactly what he wanted it to be, and when he found out nobody coddles you at that level. So he left. That stuff happens all the time. Are you saying because of Birch, JD's higher-ups leaned on him to focus on recruiting lesser prospects with less baggage? I very much doubt that.
OK, I'll keep that in mind in the future. When you say one thing it is entirely possible that you actually mean the opposite.
Those are the exact things I said and clearly meant. There was never a change or an opposite meaning.
He got a guaranteed contract for the rest of the season last year, which was what, around 25 - 30 games? It's like you are expecting that they should have paid him a couple million for 1/3 of a season. He got the league pro-rated minimum for the number of games that were remaining on the schedule. The notion that somehow that is "essentially entirely unguaranteed" is ridiculous. It was full guaranteed for the last 25 - 30 games of the year. It was, as a matter of fact, the absolute best contract that someone in Patterson's position could have expected. Had the Hawks cut him instead of Patterson asking for his release the Hawks would have owed Patterson every single one of those dollars. Because his contract wasn't "essentially entirely unguaranteed", it was "essentially entirely guaranteed" for the rest of the season.
I don't get it. Are you suggesting someone paid Birch to come to Pitt, or that someone paid him to leave Pitt and go to UNLV? Either way, I call B.S. Show me the facts that would be based on.
Except it was literally the lowest amount of guaranteed money they could give him. Literally the least guaranteed money possible and it was only "a multiyear deal" so they had a favorable contract they could control for trades and completely put his future in their hands, with no true benefit for him. The "multiyear deal" was really a 1/4 season deal with Patterson getting absolutely nothing guaranteed in the outyears and thus not really a "multiyear deal" for him with it being essentially entirely unguaranteed. In terms of it being a "multiyear deal" it was essentially entirely unguaranteed, as the Hawks gave him literally the least amount of guaranteed money possible, in order to get a tradeable outyear contract with maximum control and no risk to them.
See, Joe, you have to actually follow the conversation and the posts you are responding to. You can't just create your own arguments and claim you are right.
This is dumb.
You called his guaranteed deal last season As virtually non-guaranteed. You were wrong.
Him being released after the fact makes the rest not relevant or worth debate.
I get you're a lawyer, but your own semantics were incorrect and missed the point.
Kinda like knowing not only cam would play for unc but be immediately eligible .
No, I didn't I said the "multiyear deal" was essentially entirely unguaranteed. I said it was structured that way because it was set up to give the Hawks all the leverage and make it a tradeable commodity. I even referenced the "multiyear deal" as the subject of my post and not last year. The amount the Hawks did guarantee was the absolute minimum they could guarantee and sign him. They literally could not guarantee him less money on a "multiyear deal".
As I said with the Cam situation, it was entirely Pitt's choice. They relented.
We have had a freat program that developed alot of excellent players. I didnt get Stallings approach last year on both ends of the court. I never felt we could recruit with the top of the ACC on talent alone. Boards, defense, and offensive sets that that pounded the boards with some outside game was the formula. (PITT was UVA like). Folks want more . I'll give KS a chance with his kids. This year is huge to show he can coach. The last coach could coach.
Yes his deal was guaranteed.
You're only arguing with yourself.
Pitt was always going to lose
