Shabazz Muhammad ceiling could be D Wade

 That’s putting a lot of expectation on a kid going into his senior year.  I like the kid and all but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  But I’m curious how he plays with his team? Is a good distributer and does he make his teammates better? 

D wade? Your joking right?

CodySLC

There’s a reason only one person replied.. This thread is completely useless..  LMAO

I see him as more of a Rip Hamilton type.

No McDirk-in!  NO!

No basketball talk for you!! 

I have to…these few..what has it been? umm months? without the point system made me actually watch a few games on ESPN Classics…i kind of like it…what team is that Robert Horry guy on these days? He is kind of good whenever the game is almost over. I bet he won MVP like 5 times right? right?

Ahh McDunkin, you never cease to make me actually laugh out loud hahah

He doesn’t really play that much like Wade. I think he will be a good NBA player, but Wade is not a good comparison.

Wait shooting isnt his strong point? He might have the best mid-range game in high school right now..now if you mean out to three point range..then yeah his shot gets a little streaky

His ballhandling isnt where it should be though (He does do his best work going to the left…nearly every time) his right hand/one on one moves going right need work still.

I have been big on him and have been saying he should be #1`since Drummond was called the next D. Howard.

I wasnt knocking you for your opinion but i just dont think he has a D-Wade type of game( i also have read differences in opinions on just how "elite" of an athlete he is) If he works on his right hand i say he could be a more athletic Rip

Rip Hamilton is a horrible comparison. I’ve seen him compared to D-Wade a couple times, so  I don’t know why everyone is so shocked to see it. He’s got the potential to be a superstar in the NBA. It’s always premature to compare high schoolers to NBA allstars but this kid is on the right track now to be that good.

I want to know who else has compared him to D-Wade? Ive seen everything from Mayo, Harden, Iggy, Xavier Henry with and even Elliot Williams with a better jump shot..but ive never seen d-wade.

Like i said He is the top player in 2012 and maybe the best high school sg in the nation…but the problem is..as you can seein this video… he doesnt finish with his right hand a single time..that is the only thing in my opinion holding him back from being one of the best sg prospects we have seen in years

Cward, I think that guys are learning to do that very early on, and that he is probably not confident doing it yet. He is getting by on his athleticism at this level, but the NBA is a whole different story. Shabazz is a great prospect, and has a very nice looking stroke, but I think to be Dwyane Wade his quickness needs to be even greater than it is right now. His handle needs to improve greatly, and I do not know if he will be relied upon to bring the rock up and set up the offense. Great HS players tend to dunk everything, but by the time you get a little older, you are not doing that as much. I am fairly sure Dwyane Wade’s dunks are probably in the single digits per game at this point.

Shabazz probably will be a guy who plays more off of the ball, and that is not at all a bad thing. In fact, it could make him a much more effective and dangerous scorer. He is built differently than Rip was, way stronger, but the way they are used could be very similar at some point in the NBA. Remember that he is killing his peers right now, but he still has to prove that he can kill at that next step. I think he will be great in college, and is even a potential NBA All-Star, but I think he should model his game more after Rip than Wade, because I do not know if he has the velocity to do the things Dwyane Wade does on a consistent basis.

So did Ray Allen. They were dominant at both levels, than later on became better at playing off of the ball. Kurt Thomas lead the NCAA in scoring and rebounding when he was in college, but he obviously had to tailor his game for the pro’s. Shabazz will be given the ball a lot in college, but we are a site accustomed to talking about NBA comparisons, hence the idea that he might want to become a player that utilizes his mid-range shooting to become more of an off the ball player. You have given no evidence of rivals or scout comparing him to D-Wade, and I have heard that about Rodney Purvis being a D-Wade TYPE (emphasis on type), but I do not know if I categorize either of them in that class as of yet.

Of course the ball will be in his hands and he will create shots, great players always do. But, it is also good to find a niche for yourself, and Shabazz may want to look at what has made Rip so successful and duplicate it. Rip averaged 20ppg in college and is around 18ppg in the NBA. That is a much more realistic comparison than a player who might be one of the 30 best players of All-Time. It could happen, but he still has a long way to go to get to Dwyane Wade stature. Shabazz is a great player, and a very explosive athlete, but will his quickness and speed allow him to do what Wade has done at the next level? He is off too a good start, but he is far from the first wing to dominate these camps and dunk on everyone in site. It gets harder as you get older, and I think the Wade comparisons might be lofty, even if you are talking about a ceiling. I could say most players ceilings are much higher than the person who is most realistic to compare them too. Darko Milicic’s ceiling was Dirk Nowitzki with a post game. Well, I guess that is just how you do things, it is like you work for SLAM, except without any of the basketball information necessary to really tell us much about these players.

Sha-who Who?

ProudGrandpa = a homeless mans Dale Worthington

He never calls, never writes…

Hey McMarkBlount, do you think I’m another Nomoney profile?

I really hope you are not a profile of anyone I know. If you are, I don’t get it. 

Scout.com? The same Scout.com that said Gerald Green was the next t-mac(with 9 fingers) or that said Rober Swift was the best true center in a draft that inluded Dwight Howard? Because they are never wrong over there

And cward if you really did play against him and he got by you and your teamates with ease…yet nearly every scout knocks his ballhandling…then maybe that just tells you the level of defense he was going against.

Nearly 90% of players in the NBA (and to a lesser extent NCAA) were the "offensive focal point" of their high shool or AAU team

If you must compare a high school kid to a pro atleast try to be realistic about it.

Lol why is no one getting knocked for calling him a Ray Allen/ Rip Hamilton type player. I have never seen anything to indicate that he is going to be a catch and shooter. Dwade comparisons arise from the fact that he is a great slasher and attacks the rim with avengence. And bringing up scouting services track record is pointless cause there isn’t a single one out there that hasn’t made a mistake at some point. The concensus by pretty much every scouting website is that this guy has mad potential. My perfect hybrid comparison would be James Harden crossed with Dwyane Wade, cause his style does resemble James Harden a lot but he’s got loads more potential and gets to the rim more like Wade.

Shabazz is 17 years old and will not even go to an NCAA team until next autumn so to compare him to D-Wade is a very lofty comparision. D-Wade was 21 years old when he was drafted so even then had 4 years on where Shabazz is now. I can see some likenesses on their overall game especially when you look at the work D-Wade does on defence and how much potential Shabazz has in that part of his game. But as I was not following the NBA as much as I do now during D-Wade’s college years, I did not see a lot of D-Wade play then so I’m unsure how his game in say 2001-03 compared to where Shabazz’s is now even if D-Wade was a couple of year’s further on then.

Has anyone got any further info on which college this guy might go to as that will be his next big decision?

First of all, Ray Allen and Richard Hamilton are far from being catch and shoot players exclusively. Not to mention that in HS, they were doing many of the same things Shabazz Muhammad was doing as well. Ray Allen was known more as an athlete than anything when he entered the league in 1996. Plus, how is comparing him to Harden all that different than basically saying Hamilton and Allen? Harden is that much better at handling the ball and passing? Not really. Basically, while his game may be more like D-Wade right now, he could turn into more of an off the ball player at a certain point. Not only that, but Ray Allen and Richard Hamilton still have the ability to slash as well. The thing with both of them, is that they are not the head strong drivers and ball handlers that Dwyane Wade is. So, statistically and even as a liner note for the future, they may be better people to follow than Dwyane Wade as far as Shabazz Muhammad is concerned. These guys all got to the rim at this level though, Hamilton and Allen did in college as well. The NBA is a different thing, and while he may have more potential than either All-Star with a fabulous career (yet to be determined), does he have the potential to be doing the things Dwyane Wade is doing in the NBA? Well, he, like Wade at the same stage, has a lot to work on, but I do not see the same speed, ball handling and ambidexterousness that Wade has, which leads you to possibly question the comparison.

Hitster, I am hearing UCLA (possible favorite), Arizona, Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and Louisville.

Cheers mikey – the usual suspects amongst the major colleges as I pretty much guessed. Any top college team would surely make a pitch for a player rated a consensus top 5 player or better in his age group.

I agree that when people see the D-Wade comparision they often think of the current D-Wade 7 time All Star, Franchise player, 2009 scoring champion etc but you have to consider what the likes of D-Wade were back in their college days. Even MJ wasn’t Air Jordan in his college days!

But he showed flashes, both of them did things in college that made you think they would be on different levels than anyone else. Shabazz is doing that right now, against a group of wing players that is not exactly stacked and nearly as talented as he is. Dwyane Wade developed into a brilliant All-Around player in college, and if Shabazz does the same thing, than obviously he has immense potential. He should be fantastic in college, and I think he is a fantastic prospect, but does he have the extra gear Michael and Dwyane Wade had? People were comparing Harrison Barnes to Kobe Bryant last year, and we saw that when he moved up a level, that was not a fair comparison. Thinking along those lines, is Dwyane Wade a fair comparison for Shabazz Muhammad at this point? Probably not. He needs to work on his ball handling, and while he is an incredibly high caliber athlete, is he in the class of a Wade or Jordan? Time will tell, but as I pointed out, Ray Allen was an incredibly high caliber athlete who changed his game to best serve a niche in the NBA. Shabazz is one of the more exciting wing prospects that has come along in a while, but that is no precursor to becoming Dwyane Wade.

Ray Allen was not always as great a shooter as he is now, and Richard Hamilton was not always running around making people sweat on defense trying to get open looks. Ray Allen was a great shooter early on, but he became truly dangerous over time (which is why Mark Jackson is a moron with his "Great shooters are born" garbage. Might want to discount him saying he was a leader as soon as he came out of the womb business too.). Could Shabazz fall into this category? Well, James Harden is seeming too. Does not mean they never handle the ball or slash, just means that they do not do it as much as would one Dwyane Wade.

I just kind of find those comparisons to be a bit strange because, even though yes Rip Hamilton and Ray Allen are both decent athletes and can score in the paint, you’re talking about two guys that are primarily known as off the ball shooters who like to work off of screens, so I just get why those two are being singled out as comparisons when Shabazz hasn’t displayed any off the ball work or coming off the screen shooting skills.

Basically I think the conclusion that is being drawn is that it is way too early to compare high schoolers to NBA players considering they haven’t finished developing yet. So I’ll just say that yes, Shabazz Muhammed has a long way to go before he is at Dwyane Wade’s level, but I think he has all the potential to be that kind of player.

He is fairly impressive.