stu said:
sluggo said:
stu said:
Big C said:
The topic is interesting, it's just that I'm not seeing a young guy on the roster with anything like JKS impact.
From what I've seen, JKS is not just a legit 5-star but has been ready to play from day one
and plays a crucial position. IMHO the closest comparable Cal basketball player would be Jason Kidd.
The best I can hope is Justin Pippen will make a huge jump and remind people of Keith Smith.
Agreed on the first part. Maybe Kidd was even better for his sport than JKS and Jaylen Brown would be a good comparison.
I hope Justin Pippen is more like Justin Cobbs. Smith took a couple years to become as good as he did. Still Cobbs had nothing like the JKS impact.
I thought of Jaylen Brown. Awesome talent but he came in pretty raw and didn't make the players around him better.
JKS so far has done a terrific job of making many of his teammates look better. He makes his receivers look good by putting the ball where defenders can't touch it, and throws it where it is highly possible his receivers can catch it. He makes it look easy. He helps his blockers look good by using their blocks efficiently to buy enough time to allow him to complete passes. He hasn't been tackled that often.
While he looks good doing this, we have to remember that Cal has not played any ranked teams, or any team close to that, have we? I'm very high on him, but we need to see how he does against better teams to judge him fairly. If he continues to play like this, the sky is the limit for him, and hopefully for Cal, if we can have enough key players, like JKS, along with our offensive linemen, running backs, and receivers staying healthy. A lot of things have to happen for our good play to continue.
As for Jaylen Brown, he can score almost at will, usually by himself. He is quite capable of making other players look good on offense, but I sense that most coaches may have given him the freedom to go ahead and take the shot himself, instead of looking for a teammate who might be open for a better shot. Basketball in general has become less of a team sport on offense, while at the same time, become more of a team sport on defense, with the introduction of "help" defense, and the improvement of that help defense over the last few years. And Brown excels in any form of defense, including help defense, where he is good at helping out.
JKS, of course, does not play on defense, so JKS and Brown can't be compared on that, only on offense.
