LaVine is the ultimate eye test guy. He didn’t have a big freshman season at UCLA, but he has a world of talent and as much upside as any player in this year’s draft. Your eye is just naturally drawn to him when he’s on the court - he’s 6’5 180 with a 6’8 wingspan, he has an effortless looking three-point shot, he can handle and pass the ball like a PG and he has a 45’ max vertical. There are not many guys at any level of the game who can do things he can do.
So much of a player’s situation in college is out of his control. LaVine was on a team with two other first-round picks (Jordan Adams and Kyle Anderson) who dominated the ball and were ahead of him in the pecking order as well as three upperclassmen (Norman Powell and the Wear Twins) who had proven themselves at the college level. He also shared time off the bench with the coach’s son, so there was little chance he was going to put up big numbers.
My guess is that wherever he goes in this year’s draft, it’s going to be too low. Once you enter the league, it doesn’t matter where you are picked and what you did at the college level - talent eventually wins out. If he had stayed in school, he would have been in line to be a lottery pick in 2015. As is, he represents a huge roll of the dice for a team in the middle of the first round who can look beyond his statistics and get a chance to grab a player with star potential.
. Whenever the buildup is this chaotic it's usually pretty pedestrian.
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