I think Luka > Trae. Stats and eye test don’t lie. I think as they continue to mature and grow into their roles, it could be harder to compare the two though. Does Luka continue to be a small forward playing more like a combo guard/true point guard? Or do they get a FA PG which changes his role? Does Trae continue to be a point guard playing more like a shooting guard whose shot volume needs to decrease proportionally to his shot quality increasing? Does that change via the draft or an FA in 2020? As of right now one is a true point guard who likes to shoot it from anywhere but is a better passer and the other is a true small forward who plays like a combo guard because he kind of has to. Maybe Brunson grows a little more into the PG role but I still feel like he’s more of an SG. Either way it will be fun to watch.
I'm willing to admit Trae Young ended up finishing the year pretty good after beign miserable to start out, but give me the Mavs core over the Hawks core easily.
John Collins ranked 456th out of 514 qualified NBA players in defensive real plus-minus, and that stat very much is biased towards big men as 35 of the top 40 overall are bigs. He ranked 96th out of 100 for power forwards, 167th out of 172 for all bigs. Trae Young easily ranked 514th out of 514, of course that means he was also easily the worst at his position. So the Hawks core features two players ranking in the bottom five defensively at their position. Luke didn't exactly kill it either, but he ranked 401st overall, 77th out of 91 at his listed position of SF. Porzingis ranked 35th overall last year, 53rd the year before.
He’s a shorter PF that’s left handed and plays very bullish. That’s about the end of the comparison to Randle imo.
many expert scouts agree with my player comparison. can't tell you how many times i have heard from a scout who says "i went to scout zion and was wondering why julius randle was allowed to play for duke"
At our last Mensa meeting, someone said, “Zion Lateef Williamson compares very favorably to Julius Deion Randle at the NBA level,” and everyone else said, “Yes, we know, we aren’t morons.”
Trae was the worst defensive player in the nba? I knew he was historically bad but didn’t know THAT bad
Unless you were expecting the Mavs to get in the lottery again soon getting a pick in this draft was the best case scenario and #9 was the best pick we could hope to get from Dallas. Not sure what the funny part is here?
Trae and Luka were the only two unanimous picks on the all rookie team. That'll probably help to stop the constant comparison of them.
Imagine championing Trae Young as the ROY and then seeing him get only two first place votes out of 100