The Ringer NBA Show - Duke Dudes Paolo Banchero and AJ Griffin

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

J. Kyle Mann and Jonathan Tjarks return to discuss young prospect Paolo Banchero, how size and defense can be a well-developed asset for a young college player, and what comparable players like AJ Griffin can do. Hosts: J. Kyle Mann and Jonathan Tjarks Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every day is a beautiful day to talk about basketball, especially when I am joined by my co-host, Jonathan Charks. John, how you doing, bud? I'm feeling good. I'm excited. You look good. You got your little fidget thing there. You're squeezing.

John's a big fidgeter. We've talked about in the past. He kind of has like the, you know, like poker players fidget their chips. He has to have like a stress ball. Has that been, is that like lifelong for you? There was a phase where I had the fidget spinners. Then I had a phase where I had playing cards. And now I had this thing.

You did fidget spinners? Oh, I love that. I had like 10 of them, man. Are you kidding me? Yeah, we were at the G-League showcase and Charks was just sitting on the sideline with this just like rubber football, just squeezing it.

So he just has a lot of pent-up energy. Anyway, here's the thing. If you're at popping, that's me popping. Steve explicitly told you not to do that and you just did it in defiance of him. And he's going to be mad. We can't upset Steve. Folks, my name is Jay Kyle Mann.

Saying folks a lot today, but this is a show called Upside High where we zero in on the youth movement in basketball, specifically young players in the NBA and players heading into the NBA. We want to talk today about a player, maybe a little bit about the team, probably going to be more player-focused here,

but somebody coming into the draft that is going to be a mega-focus, I think, as we sort of figure out who's going to go first, who's going to be at the top, the most important players here. And that is Palo Bancaro from Duke. And if you don't know, let's give sort of like a bio, quick jogger for people, because I know you ding me a lot for that last time. Let's start with the small and we'll go to the big, you know, we'll do the pyramid here.

So Palo Bencaro, a lot of talk about how to pronounce his name. Apparently it is Palo. It is Bencaro. Six foot 10. Would you say, I'd describe him as a big forward? I'm not sure he's a true 610. We could talk more about that. Place for Duke.

what would be the elevator pitch for Palo Bancaro's game, in your opinion? You've been really studying him lately, Charks. Yeah, I would say, I mean, the thing to start with is like, picture Carmelo Anthony, then picture him like on a 12-month football strength and conditioning program where he just, like, jacked up. Like, he has like a, Palo has like a Hulk-like physique almost. He's 610, 250. He's this weird hybrid where he has the, he's a true purpose.

perimeter player. Like he has handles, a pull-up jumper, he crosses guys up, he has spin moves. We were talking about he loves like the rip-through stutter move. Like he's got the whole bag, but he has the size of his center. So he's like somewhere between Julius Randall and Carmelo Anthony. That's probably the easiest way to pinpoint him on like a map of basketball players. Yeah. And physically, son of a, we were talking about this yesterday. I always enjoy doing this detective work, son of a football player who played at the University of Washington where he met his, Palo's mom, Ronda Smith, who was drafted into the WMBA, the all-time leading score at Washington. So a football player marrying a basketball player, and we have Palo now. Italian descent,

it's going to be interesting to see if he plays, do you think he'll play with Nico Mannion for Italy? I'd love to see that. So it was cracking me up. I was doing this research. His dad's name is Mario Boncaro. And I'm like, how is a guy named Mario Boncaro playing D1 football? It doesn't really make sense to me. But it's just because Paulo, I think, his grandparents, or his great-big grandparents immigrated from Italy to Washington. And Paulo's dad growing up worked at his dad's butcher shop. So I was like, this guy is as Italian as it gets. Yeah, I just imagine a big hulking dude. But yeah, you're right. Like, Palo has really impressive physical tools. He doesn't strike me like he doesn't seem enormous, but he's another

one of those players. He has such a fluidity for his size that sometimes it can be hard for your brain to kind of your reptile brain. You know, when you just quickly size people up, the way they move. And I've talked about that a lot. I mean, that's a necessary thing for big guys who want to play on the perimeter. You talked about his game a little bit, I think that's interesting. And at the top of the draft. We've got two guys that are pretty comparable. We talked a lot about Jabari Smith. I can't remember if his last week of the week before, but Jabari, floor spacer, big guy with a lot of skills. What do you think the thinking would be if someone was to say, I have Paolo ahead of Jabari? Because I was telling you, I feel like this draft is kind of tracing some philosophical

fault lines for people, like what you value, roundabout way to say. what do you think the pitch is for taking Paolo over Jabari? Well, I mean, it's pretty simple. As Paulo can score easier than Jabari. Like, there's just no question. If you had those guys play one-on-one, Paolo would beat him, I think, pretty handily. Why do you think that is, though?

He just is a deeper bag. Jabari's a pull-up shooter. Like, it's weird because sometimes the guy like Paolo, you think, oh, he's an inside-outside guy. But he's really an inside guy who can go outside. Jabari is an outside guy who goes inside sometimes. So Jabari's a guy, he wants to raise up and shoot more often than not. Paulo, he's trying to get to the rim.

He's trying to go downhill. He's trying to get, like, get two feet from the basket and score. So what Paolo has over Jabari is he has this size. So when Paulo shoots a jumper, he's almost bailing out the defense. So it's like, I'm not going to do that. Like, I'm bigger than you. You can't stop me from going to the basket. So that's what I'm going to do.

Jabari does not get to the basket as easy as Palo. That would be the big difference between them in terms of Palo's strength over Jabari. And I have some numbers for you, I think that can help out with this. So I have a piece on Palo. It will probably come out sometime this week. They'll never really know what the editor is, how they want to do things. I think the key to understand about him, I compared Paulo to all of the one and done wings from Duke over the last decade. So like there's four guys.

So that's Jabari Parker, Jason Tatum, like the three fours, Bram, R.J. Barrett. Yeah, you're 666, 6, 6,7, 6, 8, one undone wings. And when you look at their numbers, what really stands out is Paolo is way more efficient than all of them. So this season, Paulo is shooting 56% from 2-point range.

None of the other guys shot above 52. So Paulo is shooting 10 points higher than Brandon Ingram from 2-point range. range. And it makes sense when he break down his numbers further because Palo don't shoot a ton of jumpers. Palo's getting right to the rim. He shoots way fewer threes than any of those guys as a percentage of his total shots. And he gets way more fouls. And it all kind of follows logically, right? Like you've got this big tank of a guard. He's going to the rim. So you call him a guard. So, I mean, do you see him as like a primary ball handler going forward? Like, I mean, Duke uses him

that way, I think because they kind of lack a true initiator that you would lean on, like a true kind of point guard type. The way they're using him, I mean, you called him like a handler. Do you expect him to be that going forward, like somebody that will initiate offense for an NBA team? Yeah, I mean, I expect him to be a primary score for sure. There's a big difference, though, if you can get into now if you want to. Well, I was going to just put some texture on some of those stats you were talking about. You were talking about threes per game. He's averaging like 18 points basically per game. game, 33.3% from three on only three attempts.

A decent foul shooter, 75%, which could, you know, figure in. The shooting, I think the thing that you were talking about, like, with the, he and 2.7 assists, that's another part of the conversation I want to hit on in a little bit, that he and Jabari are interesting sides of the same coin in that, like, we don't, you know, draft to draft, it'll be like, this is a big guy draft, this is a guard draft, this is a wing draft. It's odd that we have two guys at the top like this that have these two skill sets. Their comfort zone and how they like to operate is similar because, like, Palo really, really loves, you're right. He loves to face up and size people up from that elbow or sort of like ISO high to mid post kind of range.

But he does. He like, he destroys people with that stutter rip move at his size because Biggs can't stay in front of him and he can just muscle guards. 30.8% of his field goals at this point are in the paint and 27.8 are at the rim. He is a really even kind of distribution of how he gets his buckets. I mean, the numbers bear it out. He really is like a, he shoots more jump shots. I think we said that on the last show. He shoots more jump shots than he does at the rim.

So Palo kind of has this like inside rippling out effect where with Jabari, we're like fantastic shooter. going to be probably a better shooter for his whole life than Palo. He's not going to catch up with him because he's elite. But, you know, we kind of are hoping that Jabari is going to physically mature. I was going to ask you, you know, coming into the year, I saw there's just endless footage of Palo catching the ball, like, in the short corner and, like, facing up and just throwing a couple fakes and just going and just, like, thunder dunking on people. Like, Jabari does not do that ever.

Like, it's almost like, it almost kind of like invokes visions of like younger Blake Griffin the way he would do that, like just so much quicker than the guys at his position. What do you think the athletic gap is between Paulo and Jabari or is there one? I was curious to ask you about that. Well, I would, I think Jabari's probably quicker, longer, a little better jumper. But then Palo is just way, way stronger. I would love to see them guard each other in a game. Be pretty fast and see how that would look like. I think they guarded each other in the Pango's game.

I would say that I think Palo might have a little more pep vertically. I think his hands might be better because when you see him finish at the rim, he's leveraging his strength and athleticism a lot better than Jabari. You see Jabari go to the rim. He doesn't really dunk unless he's like open. You don't see him and he's kind of like physically compromised. I know it's an audio format. I'm kind of like contorting.

You don't see him powering through people. That was very elegant though, Kyle. it was too bad that people can't see it oh dude i was played pickup yesterday and you the patheticness of my of my finishing at the rim i just i hope it never is seen by anyone out in the world look like a corpse out there uh anyway but like palo can like contort and kind of like his just wiggle and bend i feel like overall with the ball is a lot better but i kind of came into the year thinking that there was a huge gap i still think palo is a better like overall athlete but i don't know i could be, I feel like the gap's smaller than I initially thought. You had some thoughts about, you said

you wanted to go ahead and go on to this, but you had some thoughts about how he's going to be used at the next level. Is that what you were saying? I mean, I think the thing with Palo, and kind of I talk about in my piece a lot is ultimately, I think his ceiling is just going to be how good of a pastor he can become. Because no question about it, the man's going to get buckets. he's going to get buckets pretty consistently at a pretty high level. I think that's what like, I remember the first time,

you remember, obviously you watched opening night when Palo gave Kentucky the business, I'm sure. You had a good seat for that. Thanks for bringing that up. But I kind of compared it to, like it almost reminded me

his opening night of, so Duke's had a lot of great players over the last decade. But I feel like Palo's opening night, it reminded me of Kyrie and Zion, where I said, these guys are too good for college. Like I remember the first position of like the first season,

Paolo's like crossing dudes up, getting to the rim at 610, 250, playing under total control. He's jane up the Kentucky big men. He's spinning around them and like getting foul at the rim. And it was like, this guy could be in the NBA right now. Yeah.

He doesn't necessarily need college basketball to become a better score. But the thing he needs to work on is just passing it. Because I think to go back around. I know I'm like 100% sure Palo is going to be an elite score in the NBA. But we know we've seen elite scoring on its own is never enough. You've got to combine that skill with something else. And to me, the obvious area for growth for Palo's game is as a passer. Yeah, elite scoring needs a pressure valve. Like it has to have some kind of a pressure release.

Because if you are even, I expect them to be a pretty elite score at the rim. I think that, like, I do believe in the shooting. He even did some like dribble, pull-up shooting against Gonzaga that was like, I was like, if he's going to shoot, if he's going to dribble shoot from three, like, it's not bad. That's what people should know. And I don't think that he's like, do you think he has any kind of dis, the most frustrating players to watch are the ones that have like disillusions about who they are as players? Do you think that he has like a good handle for how his bread is buttered? Like when you watch him or is he like, is there much wastefulness in his game, I guess is what I'm asking? That's funny. Because I think I lose that line in the piece.

like he knows where his bread is buttered. He knows what to do. He's like, I'm getting to the rim. He doesn't, I don't feel like he settles for jumpers. I think a lot of times the big guy, his size, like the defense wants you to shoot a jump shot, right? When you're as big as Paolo and he has his kind of handling an explosion, you're like, okay, shoot a jumper, make it or not. At least I can test you.

What am I going to do? You don't want you going to the rim, but he knows that. And yet he, I don't think he has a ton of wasted. He's trying to get baskets every time. He's not messing around. So this is, I hate to keep it in this compartment, but I think this is what NBA teams are going to be doing. Like they're going to be looking at these two guys and Chet.

And I think that, I mean, if Shaden Sharp comes out, that's another one. And one more player we'll be talking about on the next segment. Right. And I guess the passing craft is a thing that when you're comparing those two, I personally think that Paolo's upside as a passer and his like craft tools. And specifically when I say that, I mean like his ability, his touch, his ability to make passes with either hand, his ability to, like, see windows, make plays happen. We talk about, like, pressure valves, pressure releases within systems,

offenses, but, you know, within players, too. Can he see things that are coming his way as a result of that, like, really potent? You talked about him being an elite score, which we expect him to do. Is he going to be able to see, you know, help coming when it comes? I feel more confident about that I told you like I felt a little less confident about like the gap of athleticism. My optimism for him as a passer as a playmaker has grown. I feel like in the past few weeks. Like watching him, I think he's averaging like 2.8 assists or something like that. Nothing crazy.

But where did you kind of land on his playmaking upside? How do you feel about that right now? I would say if you put Chet in the conversation, I think Chet's the best passer of the three by a pretty substantial margin. But I think Paolo has more room to grow as a passer than Jabari because he's a more dominant interior score. I think it's easier to pass that a double team's, you're scoring near the basket.

Defense collapses on you. You just pass to a shooter. I think there's an easier path for Paolo to improve as a passer than Jabari. And you're seeing kind of what you're saying, in Paulo's non-conference game, so that's the first 11 games of the season. And like he's playing Gonzaga and Kentucky. but he's also playing like Elon and, I don't know,

some really small schools. So less competition. He was averaging 2.1 assists on 2.0 turnovers. Then you go to ACC play where the bars being raised. He's actually averaging, and as you said, it's not a big guy. I think it's like 3.6 assists to 2.9 turnovers. So we're not talking huge passing numbers,

but you are seeing a marked improvement. And I think he has plenty of room to grow as a passer. It's just kind of more about his mind. mindset. I've always used passing as a mentality more than anything else. It's how you look at the game, how you approach it, what you're trying to do. And there have been examples of great scores who've become great pastors in the NBA. Biggest one to me, Kevin Durant. I was at Texas when he was there. At UTKD was just like Carmelo. It was all buckets all the time. And he developed as a pastor over time. Kauai Leonard's same path was more of a defensive player in college,

became a great score, then became a good passer. And I think the guy I'm always thinking of with Palo when I watch him is just Tatum. As a Duke wing, it was the same kind of thing with Tatum at Duke. It was like, are you going to pass the ball, bro?

And it's been the same thing in the NBA with him too. Yeah, and Tatum, I think, leans a little more towards, like, the archetyte. His archetype, I think, is more where Jabari leans. Like, Tatum has some of that, I was noticing some of that stuff with Jabari when I was watching him, that he has a lot of that, like,

face-up, jab, but ultimately once would, would rather take a tough two than like the tuxedo approach that I've joked about in the past that like he the tuxedo the tuxedo score that would rather face up and keep their keep their lapels clean than get in there okay palo's not like that palo is like he's going to try to get into the lane I think what you were what you were saying about the fact that if you're going to be just like a guy who settles for face-up jumpers if you just think about literally like playing basketball imagine yourself doing it.

If the defense knows that you're going to settle for a jumper, you're going to see less movement in front of you, whereas if you're driving, bodies have to physically get in front of you and move. There's just more movement from the defense happening. And when Paolo is driving, kind of you were talking about comparing him to like Kyrie and Zion, like something that was immediately true is you've got this guy who's huge, who can get to the rim, who has a pretty decent handle for his size.

But the difference between him and Jabari is that he can get really low with his dribble and hold his space. And Jabari just can't really do that. I talk a lot about big guys who have bend when they're dribbling the ball. He can get low and that's just not a super common thing to see. I think the Durant comparison is really interesting because, I don't know, it was probably around whenever you really started to notice it when Russ was out. I think it was probably like 14. That was the MVP season. Yeah, Katie would have been.

have been like what 24, 25. If you think about where Palo is now, I don't get like a greedy, this guy's like a selfish, you know, SOB type thing from him when I'm watching him. I mean, how do you feel? I kind of like when Duke runs like their offense through him in the post.

Have you noticed much of that when you're watching them? And then it was nice. I like to look at for big, big wings. So they played Syracuse over the weekend. and he had four assists in that. And that to me is always telling because a two-three zone, how do you be a two-three zone?

You pass the ball out of the high post. So like to go back, that's one for me when I was breaking down Patrick Williams two years ago at Florida State. When I was like, this guy's for sure a player, I think he had like five or six assists against Syracuse. And I said, okay, they're playing him out of the high post.

He's making the quick pass. He's finding the big man at the rim. And I think that's what, important for Paolo too. So his career high in assists was seven against Florida State. They lose the game, but in the last two minutes, Palo threw two lobs

to their center. And why that's so important, we haven't gotten to this point yet, but Palo, they tried for a while to play Palo at center and it didn't really work. And so they're playing these big men more often. It means Palo's got to find ways to hook up his

big man for lobs because the defense will collapse on him otherwise. And, you know, Kyle, here's what it ultimately comes down to. I'm going to turn it all back around. What all the commonly comes down to is this, for a guy as great as Paolo, is the son of man came to earth to serve and not to be served. Oh, my. I mean, I think that there's wisdom in that.

I think that there's wisdom in that that comes through in basketball. If you live to serve, also true in marriage, charks, I think you could attest to this. Here we go. Let's go, baby. If you live to serve. if you live to serve, you're going to have a happy and selfish existence. There's a balance of life. I always talk about the level here. I don't know how we're getting on this, but there's a balance.

I'm glad I squeeze that out of you. You know, if you can get the level, if you can keep that bubble in the center, you know, that's the way to be. Before we move on, and we're going to talk about AJ Griffin, who's a fascinating prospect. I want to talk to you a little bit about comps for Palo. but before we do that, we're going to take a break. So, Charks, you know, we were both just joking. I have this tendency. I'm such like an offensive guy.

I've grown up as a guy who likes to score the ball. I can get a little tunnel vision. I've grown to appreciate defense, though, more as I've aged. I feel like I've become a better team defender. I'm dog shit on the ball. I don't know anything about you as a team defender. We've never played together. But defense is important at the highest level, at the highest levels, plural.

Where do you see, Powell, projecting, is he an on-ball, like defensive kind of guy? Like, is he going to take tough assignments? Is it going to be more of a team defender? Where does he fall in your view? I think that's kind of where Duke is figuring out, too, because Duke doesn't really use him a ton on defense. Like I said, right before the break, they tried him at five for a while. It didn't really work. He didn't we have the instincts for it. He doesn't really want to stay there, anchor the defense, call-out coverages, you know, bang the low man, box-out. all the dirty work.

He wants to, you know, guard. He's a guard. Like, I think that's something to keep in mind, too, with Paolo sometimes. He's not a big man who has guard abilities, which you see a lot. He's purely a guard who happens to have a big man's size. So to me, like, he's a perimeter defender, but they usually use A.J. Griffin and some of their other first round picks in the perimeter guard the top guys. So Paolo just kind of floats a lot on defense, I feel like.

He's not really doing a ton. I see him standing up a lot. You were talking about calling things out. I always talk about mental motor. Jabari's mental motor on defense is eons ahead of Palos at this point. Jabari is very actively calling, talking. It's not that Palo can't be a great defender, but at this point, he's pretty far ahead of Palo, in my opinion.

I see him just kind of standing a lot. He's used to kind of being on the perimeter like you were talking about. And that point about him being a guard in a big guy's body, I think is really key for his mentality of how he plays and sort of his instincts. I want to talk about comps here. We love to talk comps because I think it's a way to kind of dial in for people who haven't watched and maybe give him an idea of what to expect. Who's your chief comp for Palo Vincarro at this point?

It's hard to find them. It's really, he's such a unique player. I think he's breaking the mold in a lot of ways. To me, the closest comp I could really think of is Jabari Parker. but before the knee injuries. Big body guard wants to score, get to the rim. Like that to me kind of, that's who I, but I see a better version of Jabari Parker

is probably hit my comp for him. That's, I think his, that's an interesting one. When I think, when I think about Jabari, I feel like my memory of him is that he was like a little bit more of a nasty finisher than people remember when he was at Duke. He tried to dunk everything around the rim. It's hard to remember because he had those two knee injuries. It's hard to even keep track of it anymore.

It was so long ago. Duke's had a few guys like that. It's like hard like Harry Giles. Of course, he was already sort of a, you know, a faded image of himself at the time he got to Duke. That's one to go look up. If you've never watched Harry Giles pre-injury, but pre-injury for him was like 16 years old, he had such horrible luck. If I'm going back and I'm kind of just like dialing in what I think, what I expect from Paulo, I expect him to be a big score, a lot of points like you talked about. like ISO.

I expect him to be somebody that's probably a pick and roll man more than a pick and roll creator. He'll become a decent spacer, I think, over time. He's somebody that I could see operating out of the high post and developing some kind of ball skills where he can see doubles, see rotations, things like that. Guys that kind of fit that mold, he's a lot better than Julius Randall, but these are like inefficient type players. Jeremy Grant is another guy in that size. Blake Griffin is the one that I keep thinking about.

I texted you about that. Like if you think about some of the younger shades of Blake Griffin, what he was like in college, more of a dominant post player, I think. Where do you fall on that? I think our two examples kind of paint both sides of it because Blake was inside and kind of came out. And you were talking about Jabari.

I often think about Jabari as like love to face up more when he was younger. See, I've always looked at Jabari more as like a Richard Lewis. type. And that's where it gets into philosophy that you were saying. Like, who's a better player, Richard Lewis or Carmelo Anthony? Like, I don't know. It's just complicated, right? You're going to get some people mad at you for saying that.

Well, it's like, how many finals did Carmelo Anthony play in? None. How many Richard Poulouse play in one? I mean, Richard Lewis is a better player? No. But he fit easier with Dwight Howard than Carmelo would have. So it's just very complicated. And that's what makes the draft so interesting. it's not just evaluation.

It's also philosophy, team building. I think when I break it down ultimately, I feel like Paolo, Paulo has the one skill you can't teach, and that's getting buckets. Like, he's got that. He's getting his bag in a way Jabari doesn't. It's like, to me,

I was telling you, Paulo's kind of like the anti-Kade Cunningham, where Cade, the one thing he couldn't do in college, which was I was a little lower him the most people was he just couldn't consistently get his own shot efficiently. Palo's got that. He just got to improve. And the stuff Palo's got to improve, it's just stuff he can.

That's defensive effort. That's passing. That's like spot up shooting. Those are all things you can coach and can be developed and can learn at. It just do you want to do it. And one more point, I think. As someone from Dallas, I'm a little more aware of this now. Powell's a very, very big guy.

and he plays in the perimeter a lot, what that means is he has to be in really good shape. He has to be in tip-tock physical condition. That's what kind of the Carmelo thing, I think, becomes important. Because sometimes it's not just you got to want to play defense. You've got to have the energy to play defense while still get in buckets, and that just means being in great shape. And you made an interesting point.

I thought you were going to go towards this about like where, what sort of influenced him to play. It's sort of immaterial to it. But just that like the Seattle culture has a lot of those guys, has a lot of those like bucket getter, like the value said. Okay, we should talk about us for a second. You pointed something out interesting about him where he's from. Maybe it's something.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but it is interesting. I don't think so. Okay, okay. I think to understand Paolo, like the Duke stuff, it's interesting because it gives you statistical baseline to compare him to, the other Duke players. To understand Paulo, though, you got to know where he's from, and that's Seattle. And people don't think of Seattle as a basketball hotbed, but it 100% is. they put out a ton of NBA players.

And to get to your point, here's a list of some of their most notable players. Tell me if you can find the pattern. Jamal Crawford, Zach Levine, Isaiah Thomas, Nate Robinson, Jason Terry,

Brandon Roy. I mean, I told them the pattern. For our serious basketball fans, they know. But I mean, if you haven't watched those guys, some of our people are a little younger,

I've noticed, too. Bucket getters. Yeah, creators, guys who create their own. shot. Roy was a better passer than history gives him credit for, I think. But I think that that's true. And some of the points that you were making, basically, I think the crux of this discussion about is, is Paolo like the guarantee? Because if this was more of a certainty, I think he's probably certainly the number one. If we saw this and we were like, okay, this guy is for sure going to be

what I call like a gravity flipper. He's going to be able to exploit the attention he gets. His compatibility, and the fact that you brought up Cade is interesting because the pistons are going to be up there. His compatibility with other stars, I think is going to be the difference between is he going to be a guy who puts up insane production in terms of like raw counting stats in a not so conducive to winning environment or is he going to be compatible with guards who have the ball in their hands? Like his ability to do that is going to make a big difference, I think, at the top. Another player on their team, you talked about this, a question that I asked you, are you ready to unveil this idea that you had about like him we got to sneak this in now but i demand that we do it

as we have like a j griffin on this podcast at some point well let's you're all about the cockamamie you've talked about this a lot i heard you say on another podcast uh um what's his name chad uh chad poe chad poe we know each other hit me up uh you forgot about me anyway we know each other Chad Po. Anyway, so that's a big time. No one is fine. We'll move on. We'll move on. I was blown away by that. I was like one of the all-time small world things I've ever heard my life. So anyway, AJ Griffin, you said something cockamamie to me that I was like, oh boy, but the more I thought about it, we're talking about philosophies. Are this certain type of player always more valuable than this certain type of player?

A.J. Griffin, if you had to go and someone said, what is the percentage chance that he ends up a more valuable NBA player than Paolo someday? What's your opinion on that? 50-50. And I'll expand it. More valuable than Jabari Smith, too. So let's back it up a bit. You're being conservative, though. That's not what you said to me. You said something stronger. I did more research. Now I'm like kind of backing down a bit as a research Paulo. So AJ Griffin, he is the other star freshman at Duke. He started the season really. slow coming off a knee injury, didn't play a ton the first two months of the year. No one knew much about him. He was really highly thought of, but not as high thought of as Paolo. And he was kind of in like the middle, late first round, the most mock start the season. He's been gradually rising as the year goes on. I think now most places have him about 10. I'm going to say right now, this guy's going to be a top five pick.

AJ Griffin is the absolute truth. I absolutely love watching him play. I was watching Duke to watch Palo, but honestly, I like watching AJ Griffin play more. I just love him. So the elevator pitch, AJ Griffin is like 6-6-2-20, absolute freak athlete.

Like we were talking about Paulo and Jabari. AJ Griffin is a way better athlete than both of them. He, I mean, and he is built like a freaking Mack truck as well. He has incredibly long hands, physically dominant wing. To me,

when I watch him, he kind of reminded me of OG An Anonobi in college. We're like, this guy is just a better athlete, everybody else out here. And he's a really, really, really smart player. He's an elite shooter. He makes great things with the ball all the time. 46.6% from three. To me, I think of him is he's OG and and OB, Jalen Brown, Miles Bridges, elite all-star

wing, almost guaranteed, not almost guarantee, but I think he's as blue chip as blue chip gets. I love his game. The creation thing, plus six wingspan, by the way, crazy, crazy physical. traits for, and Duke, Duke has, like, four, like, big, like, beefy guys. They have, like, they're, like, the weight room team. Like, they have an unusually beefy team for young players. I'm just saying it's, they have a lot of really strong, like, six, five guys. But you brought something up that I think's really interesting.

Like, OG was a little more, like, quick explosive. It seemed like he kind of had his physicality together, his coordination. His sort of, he has a similar gait to athletes. athleticism thing going on dynamic that reminds me of Jalen. Jalen, when you would watch him when he was younger, he just kind of had this saunter, like the way that he would move. He kind of seemed clumsy at times. But then he would do something where he would go to like the top of his athletic,

his like, we'll say athletic meter when it powered up. He would do something explosive. AJ is like that. Like he just kind of has this ambling way that he moves around the court, but he has to be a pain in the ass if he's guarding you. I'm not sure about, like, the catch and shoot stuff has been phenomenal. And there's an interesting dynamic between when guys are coming out of high school. There's, like, the high school eval crowd.

Maybe people can observe this if you ever get on social. But, like, there's the high school, like, eval crowd. And then there's the draft prospect crowd, the people who are thinking about them, like, long, long term, less what they are, like, right now. And AJ has been beloved by those people, by, like, the prospect people. He was very highly regarded. I think they had him, I think ESPN had him ranked pretty low. in their top 25. I think he might even been in the 20s.

It was very low. He was 29. Yeah, yeah. And so you think he's going to be a top five pick? I think so. So the number I'm also looking at a lot. There's a couple numbers to AJ on top of just the way he plays. So this is a guy who takes most of his shots from three and he still shoots 54% from the field.

What that tells you is when he does shoot from two, he basically never misses. So he's shooting 63% from 2 as a freshman. And this is where like the OG comparison, OG shot 61% as a freshman and 70% as a sophomore. And here are that's important, because those are numbers you'd expect for a big man who just like catches lobs. But OG and AJ Griffin, they're just such smart players.

They know when to cut. They know when to take the shot, when to hit the open man. And we've kind of been belaboring this point about Palo, about how he has to learn to pass, learn to make the right read. I feel like A.J. Griffin makes the right read all the time. You just don't always see it

because he doesn't get a ton of opportunities at Duke. And that's what makes it almost even more impressive the way he plays. Because, like, really, A.J. Griffin should be saying, I'm better than some of these guys who shoot more than me. So when I get the ball, I'm putting it up to get my numbers. but he doesn't play that way. AJ's always making the right pass.

Whenever I watch Duke and, like, Palo will make a good shot and move and make the simple pass. When AJ gets the ball, he's making the next big pass, the pass over one guy, the pass that leads to the pass. So AJ right now, he's averaging per 40 minutes,

2.2 assists on 0.8 turnovers. That's almost 3 to 1 assist to turnover ratio. That to me is really telling, because that says he doesn't get a lot of chances to make plays in this offense, but when he does, he makes the right plays. So when I see a guy with that efficient, that high assist to turnover ratio, that good a shooter, that good on defense, all my like warning bells are like flashing.

This guy is a star. This guy is going to be special. That's just what I believe. Yeah, I think you're right. I could see him definitely being like the type of perimeter deterrent to like the smaller lead scoring guard type like the

Jamal Murray's when he's healthy the Stephs Steph I don't know if he'll ever I'm sure but the Devon Bookers the guys who are in

that high range like I could see him being a point of attack terror basically and coming into the year you know Keels was talked about a little more

on the high school level I feel like Keels is a guy who over the course of the season the pitch for him for people is really big So that's their third freshman

Trevor Kills probably first on pick too And Wendell Moore is another guy probably be he could be a late. I wouldn't be surprised if he's mid to late first round. And then Mark Williams is another guy like a seven footer. But Keels is built like a really highly thought of, built like a running back. If you watch a Duke game, it's like Dan Schumann. I'm not trying to pick on the ESPN, but like Dan Shulman and Jay Bill is just like talk over.

They're like, well, he's a running back out there. That's kind of the deal there. But I feel like Griffin over the course of the year has kind of slowly proved like the dependability of like the basic things that he does is so consistent. Like he's going to hit open threes. He's not going to take bad shots. We talk about wastefulness. There's just not a lot of wastefulness.

If you give me a player who is going to be a terror on ball, I could seem being like a point of attack. He'll probably probably be more like a wing stopper type. Do you think he's laterally fast enough to be like a point of attack type of player? He does get beat sometimes, but I'm not sure if that's just like, not in great position or whatever. I think he has the athletic ability.

He's also really, really young. I believe he won't even turn 19 until after the draft next year. And to kind of go back to what you were saying, so his dad, Adrian Griffin, longtime NBA player, an assistant for the Raptors the last few years, older brother, Alan Griffin,

played at Syracuse, pretty solid college player. So I'm like son of a pro, younger brother of a high-level player, elite athleticism. And then he can also hit step back threes. Like he has that in his bag too

where he'll just like dribble, dribble twice, step back and drain a three over him. It's like this is a six-six guy who can like tomahawk dunk and hit stepback threes and he's a really smart player. I'm just kidding,

really excited talking about him. Like to me, I look at AJ Griffin and I see him as the same caliber of player as the top three. Like to me it's a top four. Maybe I'm wrong on that, but I think that's going to happen

as zero goes on, people start seeing that. I think that's the philosophical kind of fall line like we were talking about. It's like the question is that I think we have to ask ourselves is, is a primary player always more valuable than, let's say, like a high quality role player? And I'm not even sure AJ's not a primary player himself, ultimately. We'll see. I'm not going to put a ceiling on him yet, but he can't do that. His arms are like longer than Jalen Brown's. Like Jalen has like kind of notoriously short arms, short hands for his side.

in his frame. But I mean, I'm just thinking about like if we think about just physical body types, like OG's pretty big. OG's sick like a legit six eight. But I think that he will have to evolve into that primary, you know, kind of space for me. Like it's not as implied at this point. But if he's going to be a guy who's like a high quality catch and shoot player who's going to defend elite wings on the other end and not make a lot of mistakes, that's that's a winning basketball player. And he compare that to, we're talking about like somebody that probably needs to be a primary to be effective, but they're not super efficient at it. I feel like Jabari is going to be pretty efficient at what he does. He doesn't necessarily have to be a primary at the next level.

Chet, same kind of thing. The floor, the floor for what Chet does, rim protection, probably going to be a shooter, smart passer, floor is pretty high. Palo, I feel like is the one that's kind of in this wiggly spot where it's like if he doesn't evolve into like a guy who could pass, a guy who can exploit some of the attention that he gets. You know, you could maybe see a player of AJ's kind of quality, but I think I'm kind of with you. I have him in that kind of five-ish range. Like, I mean, he's up there.

He's a really good player. To me, like, I look at what Miles Bridges is doing in Charlotte this season. That's a good call. And that to me is kind of the guy I can see AJ Griffin becoming. And it's like that player is just so valuable because, and you're singing at Duke now is like, he doesn't have to have the ball to dominate. He's going to get his points through energy and skill.

You don't have to like, it's the thing with Boston, right? The Celtics have this problem where they've got two guys who want to dribble the ball into the floor, just jack up shots. It's hard to win that way. AJ Griffin's a winning player. I just love his game. Long story short. He is.

He's a really, really interesting player. Duke is a team. Where do you see Duke going? I feel like they have some problems. I feel like they should be like the best defensive team in the nation. This is just me kind of talking about this now. And lately Duke has just been kind of scooping up players I like. They're picking up Philipsowski and Dereke Whitehead for next year.

What do you see them doing in the tournament? I mean, it's all on the table for them. It's funny when you look at all of the players Duke has had over the last decade. It's kind of amazing. Like pretty much every year they have an all-MBA player and they have one national title to show for it. part of that I just appear randomness of college basketball, but part of it is just a way, how do I say this? I don't necessarily believe that Coach K always structures his team

in the way that gets the most out of them. I have not seen it from this year's team. I think they have the talent to a national title. Will they? I kind of doubt it, but anything's possible. I mean, as Coach K's last year, if he's going to do some coaching, now's the year to do it. Or if he may get the John Wooden effect and he's announced it and he's just going to get some calls down the stretch. We'll see.

That would never happen, Kyle. Come on. How dare you? I think they do have some kind of tough pain points within the way the roster is built like you were talking about. But I don't know. You never know with these things down the stretch. And I would encourage for all the NBA listeners, watch a Duke game. It's fun to watch.

They got some really good players, man. They're a fun team to watch. Yes. Go check it out and report back to us. And when's your palo piece going up? I'm turning in today, so I don't know when it's going to. Okay. Very soon.

Soon and very soon, folks. So, yeah, make sure you keep an eye out for that. And if you have any kind of questions, things that you want to hear in the future, we're open to that. What about your mystery piece? When's that coming out? You didn't want to talk hell us last week. I put out a little illustration of Clay Thompson,

so we have something coming on Clay Thompson, a video coming here soon. But, yeah, check out all the other great work on the Ringer. And we're going to have more draft stuff coming up here in the spring. I think KOC is going to do his thing too, and if you're into that. So we'll be back with you next week, upside high. Check us out on the Ringer NBA feed. Check out all the other shows on the network. That's great.

A lot of hoops discussion going on at all times. Charks, it's good to see you, buddy. As always, man. Peace.