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Frank Dennis James's avatar

Finally realized who Jabari reminded me of...a more athletic, bigger Shane Battier with a better shot. Is that worth a Top 3 pick?

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Chad Ford's avatar

Jabari is bigger and a much more fluid athlete

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Frank Dennis James's avatar

I agree. Yes, he is bigger and more fluid.

Sort of like Jabari being the newest version of the Battier operating system that requires more RAM, but has most of the old bugs fixed. Still the same OS and the new, top-line version performs the same tasks... just better.

Battier was a great college player - player of the year! - and I was heartbroken when he went to Duke, instead of Michigan, an alma mater. But just a good, solid pro.

It is going to be fun to watch Smith's progress this post season.

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Jay Loudermilk's avatar

Looking forward to listening. In part because I already thought it was weird that these mocks have the Pacers taking a guard when they now have Duarte and Haliburton. That seems to be a statement that one of those two isn’t expected to have a high enough ceiling.

This team completely mismanaged the asset they could have had from drafting Goga when they had “too many centers”. And now Goga has probably shown enough scouts that he’s pretty clueless on the court but he does put up interesting stats once in a while. So adding a guard while having a still-gaping front court hole isn’t something I trust this front office with managing.

There appear to be plenty of quality 3’s and 4’s to pick from (assuming Jackson or Smith if the Pacers can resign him passes as a “5” these days).

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