[B-ball fanParticipant]

It is generally acknowledged that this is a weak draft class overall, but the pg position in this class has seemed to generate more esteem than most other positions, with Marcus Smart, Trey Burke, CJ McCollum, and Michael Carter-Williams all projected to be lottery picks in different places, and guys like Shane Larkin, Nate Wolters, Isaiah Canaan, Erick Green and Lorenzo Brown all standing as potential 1st round picks, at least in the eyes of some.

I’m wondering what everybody thinks about the strength of this class, as I must say I am not particularly impressed. Marcus Smart seems to have the most upside potential, but he also lacks the mentality of a pure point guard, not consistently making the easy passes and taking a lot of bad shots. He has supreme physical tools and can look like a man among boys at times at the college level, but he just plays with a scorers mentality too often for a player with limits on his SG ability.

Michael Carter-Williams is another rather overrated prospect, in my opinion. He has a very high dribble and I worry about his ability to handle pressure in the NBA. He has seemed to struggle at times against athletic defenders, such as when Syracuse has faced Louisville. And while he does drop a lot of dimes, he also can be prone to making very unwise passes.

Burke has impressed me the most of any of the pgs in this year’s draft class, but I do see that he has somewhat limited upside, especially given the overall level of explosive talent at the pg position in the NBA.

McCollum is very intriguing as a prospect, given his impressiveness from a statistical standpoint and his all around offensive game, but there are legitimate questions regarding his ability to score efficiently versus more athletic defenders. Also, it is unclear how effective a distributor he can be at the next level, as his assist to turnover ratio last year was very uninspiring, as it has been his entire college career, during which he posted just one season with substantially more assists than TOs.

Damian Lillard had similar questions last year, but he averaged over twice as many assists per game his senior year as McCollum did in his (although not twice as much as McCollum did in his Junior year). He played sg, unlike Lillard, so McCollum’s less inspiring assist numbers are to be somewhat expected, but McCollum may have a long way to go before becoming the kind of passer you would want at pg. It is also to be questioned whether his huge spike in 3 point shooting efficiency this past season, which made his numbers much more impressive, was a fluke or significant, considering it came over only 12 games (but over quite a few attempts in those games).

I am wondering what everybody else thinks of this pg class. Is it a mediocre class, buoyed by the overall weakness of this year’s draft class and of last year’s pg class, or is it a strong class that could be a boon for the teams that lack a top tier pg? Are there any sleepers whom I did not mention who could become impactful NBA players?

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