Taylor King, Tommy Mason griffin, Olyk czyz and other mcdonalds selections that haven’t worked out

Olek wasn’t a Mcdonalds selection. King and Mason-Griffin showed promise but made bad decisions. King made the wrong choice with Duke in the first place and apparently is a chain smoker. I really liked Mason-Griffin’s game and wish he would have stuck around. He could have been an all american in time.

I doubt it was duke since Taylor wasn’t that good at Billy either. He was ok

Over the years, many McDonald’s All-American’s careers get derailed, seems to be hit and miss. Olek Czyz never played McDonalds, but the other two definitely seemed to have very different careers than planned, in many ways due to their own actions. Taylor King was 6’6 as a freshman in HS, could shoot the ball, but was not an exceptional athlete, and quite one dimensional. The Tommy Mason-Griffin saga was pretty well documented at Oklahoma, and it appears like he just was not a college person. He was off to a good start, but was clearly not ready to jump to the NBA, as few small PG’s usually are. A few others to throw in would be Jason Fraser, who never lived up to his hype at Villanova and Mike Williams who was not close to the level of his two other Texas commits in 2004 (Daniel Gibson, LaMarcus Aldridge). The 2002 Roster in particular is filled with underachievers in college, Jason Fraser, Michael Thompson (Duke-Nortwestern), Evan Burns, Torin Francis, Sean Dockery, and while Paul Davis had a decent college career, he never lived up to his big expectations as being considered possibly the best player in that HS class. McDonald’s is a cool game, and the list of alums for it are full of NBA superstars (though they will occasionally not have played due to a prep year, Caron Butler, John Wall off the top of my head). But, while the game gets the top HS players, the last few choices are usually the ones that seem to be the ones you question. I think Taylor King and Tommy Mason-Griffin both fell into this, neither was considered a lock for the game, Scout.com rated Mason-Griffin 27th amongst his class while King was 56th. Some people think that the last few choices are usually made for players that have chosen a marquee school, and sometimes that seems to be the case. Duke I think has had the most McDonald’s All-American’s that have failed to live up to the hype (Nate James, Taymon Domzalski, Chris Burgess, Eric Boateng, and the aforementioned Dockery/Thompson and of course King). So, while being a McDonald’s All-American is a great honor, and it usually gets many of the top players in any given HS class, it can miss out on some good ones. So, if you have a top recruit, or even if you do not, and they are not a McDonald’s All-American, it still means they could have a big impact for your team. Evan Turner, Brandon Roy, Jamal Crawford, Anthony Randolph and Andre Iguodala are all examples of guys who were rated at least highly enough to be in consideration for McDonald’s All-American selection, did not make it, and went on to be lottery picks. Those are just a few, but I think you see what I mean about the games over inflated importance in certain cases.

Randolph was top 15 in hs

Nate James had a pretty good college career. He was never really an nba prospect, but he averaged 11-12 points in his last 2 years at Duke and played good defense. 

i played hs ball with Olek. great athlete but not a smart player at all. i hope he does better at nevada. noone could believe he went to Duke..i think Nevada is more his style. NBA? I def wouldnt think so unless he improves his bball IQ alot and guard skills

 Yeah, making the NBA is HARD! not everyone who is a top player at age 17 or18 has what it takes to make it to the pros and a lot of things can happen in time a player chooses to play in college or overseas.  Some guys make their NBA debuit in their mid to late 20’s.  Thats kinda why we are all here though, huh?  As people who love basketball, making predictions on who will make it and who won’t and why are questions people like us like to talk about.

I’m not familiar with King or Olyk, but TMG made a poor decision by coming out after his freshman year.  He still has a chance to make it in the leauge, but now he has to impress in the D-League or Europe to do so.  I think the big difference with him is, that in high school you can be a score first 5’10” point guard.  In college you can still have success, but in the NBA you have to have serious skills at point guard if you are under 6′ tall. IMO,  TMG, just didn’t have the necessary pg skills to translate into an NBA point guard at this point in his development.  If he were 6’4” he could probably get away with the combo guard label and play primarily as a 2 guard, but he’s not so thats why I don’t think he made the cut.  I still think TMG is a ways away from being an NBA player, when you look at a guy like Sherron Collins who is very similar, but better and more experienced in pretty much all aspects of their games, who is struggling in preseason and will have a tough time making Charlotte’s regular season roster, it’s not surprising that TMG isn’t on anyone’s pre season roster.

Are you stating a fact or disagreeing with what I wrote? It is very hard to tell sometimes. The only thing I stated was that he was rated highly in HS but was not selected to the McDonalds All-American game. Not that he was not and did not make it. I mean, I never mind another opinion, just do not know why you chose to add the whole "top 15" thing. Sometimes, even when you agree with something someone wrote, it is almost like, "I want to agree more than him". Just saying man, but yes, Anthony Randolph was rated very highly in HS.