- It’s not often that young phenoms are more developed defensively than they are on the offensive end. That’s probably because most of these guys are in their late teens and are still, for all intents and purposes, boys not yet having matured into full adulthood. But the two guys we’ve seen so far, Andrew Wiggins and Nerlens Noel, have really impressed me. Noel in particular, I have no doubt, will be a defensive anchor for years to come, but Wiggins also should become elite in that area with time. I don’t know if the latter will ever have the tools offensively to be ‘great’, but he will for sure be disruptive as a wing defender. While Harden got his numbers, last night, Wiggins did about as good of a job one could ask of a rookie against maybe the second or third best pure scorer alive. He stayed active, used his length, and most importantly, rarely bit on any of Harden’s fakes.
- Tracy McGrady comparisons are thrown around way too lightly as there was a span of time when every skinny, 6’8 kid to come into the league was the next T-Mac. I’ve heard McGrady’s name come up in Wiggins talk before, and I don’t see it at all. For one, McGrady was infinitely longer. But more significantly, I think people don’t realize how good of a ball-handler T-Mac was, just coming into the league straight out of high school. This was a guy at 19-20 years old, who comfortably was starting at point guard in the NBA. Wiggins, on the other hand, doesn’t really even seem to be able to dribble much with his off hand. This is not to say the latter won’t improve – he certainly will. But I think we often underestimate just how great certain people were at certain things. Playing point guard in the NBA is a very, very hard thing to do and not something you can just improve into doing. You either have that natural feel or you don’t. McGrady used that same skillset to blossom into one of the most devastating scorers the league had ever seen. That’s not the bar for Wiggins, but we need to realize how wide that gap truly is. People too often expect things to “just happen naturally”.
- Seeing Wiggins match up with Harden reminded me of many other classic current vs. future, old vs. new matchups throughout Rockets history. I remember Hakeem wiping the floor with a young Alonzo Mourning in a game in Charlotte. Charles Barkley’s struggles against a young Kevin Garnett. Yao’s surprising production against Shaq, and McGrady vs. a young Kevin Durant. There will be many more matchups like this to come with Houston boasting the best player at two positions, with each still relatively young enough to remain on top for some time.
- It’s funny how much the league just keeps evolving. In the 90’s, after Michael, big men ruled the NBA, when you could legitimately say that the best players in the league were Hakeem, David Robinson, Shaq, and Patrick Ewing. Now, almost everyone has a star point guard, and star wings are a dying breed. But in the 2000’s, wings were the thing, when we saw maybe the greatest generation of shooting guard/small forwards ever, with Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, and Allen Iverson all in their primes. Looking back, would you ever think Vince Carter would be the last guy standing as the sole player from that group to mold his game to fit the needs of a contender? Iverson is also interesting because he managed to change the narrative surrounding himself two times, erasing doubts about his maturity upon his trade to Denver, and then destroying everything he had achieved in building his image towards the end.
- I remarked after the Thomas Robinson-Patrick Patterson trade–a little too much for everyone’s liking–that Robinson might have been the worst high-level prospect I could remember seeing in a Rockets uniform. There was literally nothing discernible in his game to indicate future ability and nothing that made him seem worthy of the #5 pick. He looked closer to 6’5 than his listed 6’9, he couldn’t shoot, and he had one move (a one dribble spin into the lane that almost always resulted in the ball being knocked out of his hands by his defender). How was this guy a top pick? The Rockets traded for Robinson because they needed to unload Patrick Patterson’s salary slot and knew Robinson would be easier to trade in the summer than Patterson would be, if the former didn’t pan out. Houston of course needed every penny it could get its hands on to make Dwight Howard the max offer he received. When the Rockets eventually traded Robinson to Portland, I didn’t care much about who they received. I was just happy they got something back at all and was focused more on the cap savings. I never would have imagined that they’d get back a contributor in Kostas Papanikolaou who already has shown more in just ten games than Robinson has in his whole career. But that’s where we stand.
