Free Ballin’

Something caught my eye in a recent David Thorpe piece, regarding O.J. Mayo:

“I don’t see a lot of upside with him, but I don’t see much of a downside either. His ability to get open jumpers off the dribble is nice, and he competes pretty hard. But he’s not special as an athlete, so his ability to blow by people is average at best. Learning the “shot-fake attack game” will help him a great deal.”

The first time I heard something like this was in a Chad Ford piece last year (that I can’t find right now) discussing the best incoming college freshman. The report said that according to scouts, Mayo (listed second or third best) wasn’t an “elite” NBA athlete, didn’t have PG chops, and was a streaky shooter.

I was surprised, since I’d always heard the guy was going to be awesome. Instead, he sounded like a ‘tweener without the extraordinary athleticism (like Steve Francis or Dwayne Wade) to negate the size disadvantage (for a SG). Throw in the fact that he was a 20-year-old freshman, he sounded like a huge bust waiting to happen.

Now, though he’s a good reporter, I don’t think much of Ford’s analyses, and I think he has a tendency to primarily note the scouting reports that support his opinion. But I think Thorpe’s quite good, and the above matches those early warnings. I haven’t weighed in yet, because I haven’t seen Mayo play, but even the support for Mayo sounds mighty fishy.

Mayo proponents I’ve heard almost exclusively discuss his passion for the game, how much he loves basketball, how he’s just going to be a “special” player, and (my favorite) how he “just knows how to score/can flat-out score.” (Like they said about Adam Morrison.) What utter bullshit. Reading between the lines, it seems to me that writers are trying to justify their decade-long infatuation with a guy who isn’t going to live up to “Next One” expectations.

The only new stuff I’ve heard this year is that Mayo’s become a real pure shooter—his shooting stats are promising—and that he’s a very good defender. OK, it sounds like he might be a valuable rotation guy, but he sure doesn’t sound like allstar material to me.