I think this crop of "tweener" forwards could be the exception. They all have what makes most "tweener" forwards not successful because of what they lack, major league athletic skill.
To the degree that that might be true, its true precisely because the athleticism will allow them to actually play SF, rather than having to shift up to PF becuase they are too slow footed. Hence they will not be tweeners at all, but guys playing their more natural NBA position.
NBA PFs, the good ones, are BIG. 6'9" musclemen at the smallest. And the elites are nearly all pressing 7'0" since Webb (a musclebound 6'9 1/2") went down a few years back. Who are the really good perennial All-Star PFs? Duncan, Dirk, KG, Pau, Bosh, Howard, O'Neal...these guys are huge 6'11"/7'0" tall (Bosh is "only" 6'10"). And the top guys who aren't close to 7'0" are all earthmovers -- Randolph, Boozer, Brand etc. -- who could snap a small tree in their teeth. This seeming urge to throw every 6'8" tweener stringbean who comes down the pike in there amongst the monsters is just nutty. The monsters eat those guys for lunch. You want a PF, go find a guy 6'10" and up, or a 6'9" barrelchested beast who grabs you by the crotch and does the military press with you until you agree to draft him.
As an aside, this may go a bit beyond Thronton, who hopefully has the game to make it in the NBA just as a pure scoring SF, but there are good tweeners, and bad tweeners. Good tweeners are 4/5s and 2/3s. For the simple reason that the positions they straddle play similar roles -- PF and Cs are both expected to rebound, bang, play in the post, clog the lane. Its a similar role. OGs and SFs are both the pure scorers, neither position being counted on as primary ballhandlers, primary rebounders etc. So a tweener between those positions can play both without being out of place or not having the right skills for one or the other. But the 1/2s and 3/4s are problematic, because those tweeners straddle positions with radically different expectations. From passer to scorer at the PG/OG, and with a huge jump in size between the two positons as well. And from perimeter to interior at the SF/PF, from outside scorer to inside banger. Those are bad tweens except amongst the most special of talents (say a KG). Only the rarest of birds can play both positons without sucking at at least one (in the case of a 3/4 nromally being too small and soft to bang with the big boys).
