Ray, Rip, Cliffy, Caron and... I 'm going to put Andre in there just because I give more negative weight to clunker seasons than I do positive weight to good but not great seasons. Andre hasn't been around long enough to have had a clunker season yet, and this season was borderline great. Barring catastrophe, he'll move up on everybody's list over the next two years, so I'm just beating everyone to the punch.
And Ben would have to be Ray-good to overcome my innate prejudice against vegans.
Oh, I completely forgot about Andre. I think he has a lot of big time hoops ahead of him and has a good shot at jumping into that top 5. I guess my list, assuming that Kemba and Andre play at a high level for a long time, is as follows:
Ray,
Rip, Andre, Kemba, Rudy, Donyell, and Caron
... that's 6. I added Rip after realizing I seriously undervalued his career. I forgot about how well he played that season and during the playoffs when Detroit won the title that year. Not necessarily in that order except for Ray at the top spot. I find it really hard with the latter part of that top 5. I could make a case for Rip, Cliffy and Ben to unseed any of my top 2 through 4. There's a case for and against just about all of these players other than Ray who's proven he's one of the best shooters that the game has ever seen and worked hard to improve his biggest weakness of being a poor defender. He defended well the year C's won it all.
------ Feel free to stop here. The following are breakdowns on a our NBAers' Game ------
Andre - young and unproven, though his game and numbers just seem to be improving. He's still very young and a freak athlete.
Kemba - even though he's small, he's a h*ll of a scorer, similar to Ben was early on, but is less of a defensive liability that Ben has been his entire career.
...which brings me to Ben. BG was a very good scorer early in his career, but his inability to defend has resulted in his frequent benching or lack of PT. He was an unstoppable scorer his final season at UConn, but some of his UConn teammates were able to make up for his defensive deficiencies.
It's been a while since we've seen Cliffy play. He had a long NBA career and a number of those years were very productive. He was a 6th man type of contributor, similar to how one might describe Caron and even Donyell for much of their careers. I haven't looked up any stats, but I bet many of us are under-valuing how good Cliffy was.
I have Rudy in the 3rd spot on my list, who's always been a good scorer, but similar to Rip and Ben, has struggled to defend and rebound at his position. I'm guessing it is his defensive deficiencies that have resulted in Rudy falling out of favor with some of his coaches and contributed to his being traded. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But he has put up good offensive numbers on a consistent bases when he's been given solid PT.
Donyell was a big time tweener for his early career and where he wasn't quick enough to cover wings and wasn't strong enough to rebound and defend at the 4. Once he began to fill out, he became a real nice 3rd type stretch-4 type scoring option, such as when he played along side of Lebron James and couple other big time players, if my memory serves me.
Caron has been a steady contributor throughout most of his career. Like many of our Husky NBAers, he's not played on championship teams. He's always been a highly skilled offensive player who makes the most out of his abilities, but has always been a tad undersized. If he was just 2 to 3 inches taller, he could have been a big time NBAer IMO. Similar to other Husky greats, he's struggled most on the defensive end of the floor. He was very good at stealing the ball early in his career, but taller and quicker players have been able to exploit his undersized stature.
Rip came out of the chute after a slow start as a legit scorer, but quickly fall off the face of the earth, due to some issues with his coach (or coaches) and like the trend I keep on mentioning, he too was a poor defender at the NBA level.
As noted above, I clearly didn't remember how long Rip played at a high level during the majority of his NBA career. Funny how many of our best offensive players were terrible defenders, while UConn has had a rep of being a tough defensive team. I think this is because most of our best defenders were the less talented offensive players while the good offensive ones JC was able to land tended to be sub-par defensively coming and and going out. Rip went from being a starter at one point to a role player, a bench warmer and a not dressed DNP. For that reason, I have a tough time putting him in my top 5. Just a sub-par body of work IMO.
One interesting thought is if some of these players had played their be best years under the current rules, where teams can play some sorts of zone D, (
can now play off the players and in open spaces on the weak-side as long as they don't drift into the paint), some of them might have had better overall careers. I think the new rules will help undersized players like Kemba, Bazz and Boatright, where in the past trying to cover athletic bigger and stronger players one-on-one, proved to be too difficult for some of our guys such as Ben, Rip, Donyell early on, etc.
It will be interesting if Bazz can stick in the league. His size and athleticism is working against him, but his high BBIQ, will to win and shot-making ability makes up for some of this. I hope he ends up playing for a coach that will give him an extended chance to get solid PT. A system like what is played at Utah or San Antonio would fit him well. His game reminds me a little of Steve Nash, who wasn't exactly a big, strong athletic guard, but somehow won an MVP or two.
Boatshow is another interesting player. If he can stick with the right NBA team, I can see him become a poor-man's Allen Iverson. He's a plus athlete who's defense really improved his senior season. If at his size, if he can be enough disruptive on D and can avoid getting swallowed up by bigger defenders and when trapped, he'll be an interesting one to see how much he might be able to contribute at this level. He doesn't have the BBIQ as Bazz did. I don't think it's as bad as it looked last season when he didn't have nearly the supporting cast that Bazz had when he was at the helm. When he is on his game, he's a dynamic scorer who can knock 'em down from both deep and mid-range. Bazz was and assume still is masterful at getting shots off close to the basket when you'd think he should be swallowed up. RB was great at the up-and-under, using the rim to shield off the defender, but going straight at the basket he had a tendency of getting overwhelmed among the trees. He'll just need to exploit the deep and mid-range game, get his share of thefts and breakaway dunks, to survive in the league.
