Thompson twins are a bit different in that scouting reports more or less recognize them as extremely dedicated students of basketball, and are practically savants of the game. If they were displayed to be of lower IQ, it's almost a certainty they drop below 5th pick. With that said, the Thompson Twins are unicorns themselves, the league/media is just picky about who to call a unicorn. Practically all scouting reports compare Amen to Ja Morant or John Wall, but Amen is much bigger and longer than either of these two guys yet these two players were considered the best players of their draft and picked at 1st and 2nd pick. If NBA teams believe 6 ft 3 John wall or 6 ft 2 Ja Morant is worth a 1st and 2nd pick selection, what does that say about a guy who is compared to them, but is 6 ft 7?
definitely mind blowing if put in that perspective at times I think we lucked out not being in the top 2-3 picks
. Yeah but what I'm saying is what sold people on the Twins is their combination of size length athleticism and not really the OTE, in Fact I think the OTE hurt their stock which is what happens when you're the oldest guys in your league. 4 and 5 star recruits aren't anything special imo. I dunno what kind of stars the Twins had but the Scoot and Wemby were the only prospects in this class people knew 6 mos before the draft.
Playing in the OTE is what hurt their stock, like you said if the intangibles weren't there they would be like GG Jackson imo.
Playing in the OTE probably didn't hurt as much as their jump shots. Everyone acknowledged Amen's playmaking abilities as a huge selling point, but it's hard to not have a huge question mark on shooting for a PG
My guess because of the OTE uncertainty he would have gone somewhere around where Sharpe went last year as Shapre had similar uncertainty concerns and the year prior somewhere around where Giddey went. But in reality he's another level of talent ahead of Sharpe because he's a more effective athlete with far better playmaking and ball skills. If OTE wasn't a factor he probably goes top 3-4 in the past few drafts.
One thing to keep in mind is that Amen and Ausar were not highly ranked coming out of HS (4 star recruits IIRC). And even as recent as a year ago (or so), I think a lot of mock draft people had them mid-to-late lottery: Spins had them 12 and 13 in this one. OTE has its issues, but it does seem these kids benefited in some way by going to OTE. For sure some of their improvement is based on the Thompsons themselves (with their ambition, they would have gotten better even if I trained them). But I think a lot of this could possibly be attributed to OTE as well. There's a reason they seem much better making reads, handling defensive rotations, have NBA-ready bodies, etc. Think they even improved their interview skills thanks to OTE. The competition is what it is (though I don't think it is as bad as many make it out to be), but I think overall, the OTE experience was probably a good thing for them. In comparison, I don't think the Ignite are really helping out their prospects much. Guys like Scoot and JG were already highly touted (and that didn't really change), and a lot of other guys who went there ended up not really improving their stock (e.g., Nix, Leonard Miller, Sidy Cissoko). I'd probably put OTE on par with the Ignite at this point, though both could use a lot of work.
Agree generally. Empirically, prospects generally leave OTE as better players. Arm chair GM's can say what they feel about competition level blah blah blah, but that has never been the main factor in improvement of young players anyway. There's a reason players generally improve in the off season, even at the NBA level, and rarely during the regular season.
I also think "level of competition" is overrated in terms of actually improving a player. NCAA level of competition makes it easier to scout players, but I'm not sure if it really does all that in terms of improving a player unless they stay within a good program for 2-3 years. As you said, drills and workouts in the offseason is typically when a player make the most improvement. So you could do that anywhere if you have the right trainer, whether it's college, OTE, Europe, Australia etc. I am leaning that basketball IQ, vision, passing are more or less god given. People made this argument that Amen's passing would not translate to the NBA, which doesn't make any sense. It doesn't matter whether it's pickup ball or the NBA, the right pass is the right pass. I don't think I know any player that have great court vision in lower level competition suddenly lose it in the NBA.
Incredible defensive discipline at 0:34, guarding 2 guys off the ball and consistently looking at what both of them are doing, whilst also watching the ball handler to anticipate the pass.
