Hasheem Thabeet

Well his issue is that he isnt a great rebounder for his size, and his offensive game is non existant, right now he is more of a one trick pony with shot blocking, and even then he is really easily bullied by aggressive, strong post players.
If he can develop a reliable go to move, add some muscle to his frame, and play with even a little intensity he could become a half decent player IMO. Perhaps like an 8pt, 10reb, 3blk kinda defensive oriented center.

I agree with flibbenmcg as far as his stat predictions for Thabeet in the future. The #2 overall pick averaging 3 points and 3 rebounds per game isn’t very impressive, but he has improved significantly this season, and its way too early to close the books on him. He has had a couple 9 rebound 5 block games on a couple occasions when he has gotten significant minutes. He leads all rookies in blocked shots with 1.2 in only 10 minutes per game. Right now you guys are right he is kind of a one trick pony, I think worst case scenario you have the next Shawn Bradley ( another #2 overall pick ) but I do disagree that because he is almost 23 he doesn’t have as much room to improve. I think he has a lot of room to improve, a lot of your MIP players are in their mid to late 20’s, and judging by his improvement this season he is willing to put in the work.

Usually it takes bigs longer to develop than a guard, for example a Player like David Lee, look at Bynum hes now rounded into a pretty dependable big and this is his fourth or fifth year. Remember at UCON he started along the same way, extremely raw offensively and very stable defensively. Besides at the time most draft sites compared him Mutombo, he took a long time to develop his offensive game. I do agree with the rebounding for his size he should walk into the gym with 10. He’s still green in a few years we’ll really see.

lol..not much room for improvement. hes a raw rookie. im sure the team didnt expect much from him. i know i didnt, not this soon. takes big men time to develop especially someone like him who didnt grow up playing basketball. give him time. if hes doing the same thing by year 3 then you gotta start questioning him

Mutumbo’s highest scoring average in his career was his rookie season where he averaged about 16 points per game.

mutombo was probably 30 in his rookie year..lol

You can work around a guy who has no offence but thabeet can’t rebound either which makes it hard to get players to fill his weakness. zbo rebounds a lot and if rudy gay picked his rebounding up that probably be enough. memphis’s offence isn’t great as is so taking out Gasol would only hurt.

he only plays 10min a game and gets 3 reb compared to blairs 18min a game and he gets 6. you can teach rebounding just liek you can teach offense. anything skill wise can be teached ben wallace averaged 2 reb a game his first year. 5 his second year. thabeet has time. its tough to say for sure what a ROOKIE cant do as far as there career since they are just rookies and still developing and getting used to the much higher level of comp compared to college

I think his improvement in is 2nd year will be key. A lot of guys fall in love with how rookies are their first year but in reality the second year is a lot of times the most important. Durant went from being a solid player to a star in his second year. Lebron and Camelo both turn it up a notch in their second years. Kobe got more key playing time off the bench his 2nd year. Jason is another guy who looked not that great and then his 2nd year came and he has not looked back. Once a guy goes through a season and has time to work on areas he is weak and has time to add the right amount of muscle and spend the summer working with assistant coaches and what not on moves. I like what I am seeing in Thabeet and I can no longer say it was a wasted pick because if he can continue to develop they will have a great defensive player to come off bench. He can be like Tyson Chandler. His age is what it is but he is still young basketball wise.

I believe his career numbers wont be very impressive and he will alway come off the bench…maybe 6pts 6rebs and 2blks for his career.