06-25-2022, 03:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-25-2022, 03:30 PM by hakeemfaan.)
(06-25-2022, 02:34 PM)MrGoat Wrote: It's his improvement during the season that makes me not hate the pick. He face planted hard right out of the gate in G league.
Hardy got me looking more closely at the G League. G League Ignite is a very new thing though, founded in 2020. The Ignite is the specific team designed for elite NBA prospects (no one dared take the G league route for 5 years after PJ Hairston in 2014). In 2018 the NBA introduced Select Contracts of $125K for elite prospects starting in 2019-20. No one bit so they raised the amount and soon the top recruit in the nation, Jalen Green, the top ranked player in the 2020 high school class signed with the Ignite for $500k. Soon after, Kuminga, who was the top prospect in the 2021 high school class reclassified to 2020 and also joined the Ignite.
The Ignite is specifically the team meant to poach top recruits from the NCAA
I am aware of the money part. At least at that time with how college pay rules were. Still there is a vast difference between the G league and the rock star treatment you get on a major college campus.
So this guy has already navigated some things that other high rookies haven’t:
He has already got major money and that didn’t distract him from putting in the work to improve. A lot of rooks lose their way at the first flush of real cash.
He was competing against older guys in general with more developed bodies and more pro attitudes as far as preparation and laying it on the line.
Regardless of the pay he is now used to the G league and if the Mavs devote a heavy portion of his first season there he already knows how to handle that situation in more ways than one.
As KL wrote I am more excited today than when they first drafted him.