No one can deny that Kemba is a winner, and ultimately, that is the goal. He's a great competitor, and like you, if Petrie decides he's the guy, then I'll bow to greater knowledge. I've never been a huge fan of diminutive PG's. But when they're good, they're usually very good. But players like Chris Paul are the exception rather than the rule. The smaller you are at any position, the greater your skill level, and to some extent, the greater your athleticism has to be to overcome your lack of size. You could see with Pooh Jeter last season, that just being a great athlete at his size, isn't enough.
Obviously, Kemba is far more talented than Jeter, and taller as well. Here's the question, and its not a fair one, but I'll ask it non the less. If Kemba hadn't won the national championship, or at least come close, would everyone be as high on him as they are? I think not! And of course, it is part of the equation. He did win a national championship. But if you go back to the beginning of the season and look where Kemba was projected to go in the draft, it was late teen's or early 20's.
That projection was based on his previous two years at UCONN. So how much better was this last season than the previous two, championship aside. Well he scored more points per game, going from 14.6 PPG to 23.5 PPG. However he more than doubled the amount of 3 pt shots he took. Going from 112 three pointers to 227 three pointers. Overall, he simply put up more shots, which explains more points scored. Efficiency wise, There was no improvement. In his sophmore year he shot 33.9% from the three, and last season he shot 33.0% from the three. His assists per game when down a little from 5.1 APG to 4.5 APG. He did reduce his turnovers slightly, but when your passing the ball less, your apt to turn the ball over less.
There is no doubt, that for at least one year, meaning last season, Walker was a shoot first and pass second PG. And to be fair to him, he says thats what they asked him to do. And like Fredette, he wasn't exactly surrounded by prolific scorers. The next best player on the team being a freshman SG named Jeremy Lamb, who I happen to like a lot. Walker was surrounded by a very young team made up for the most part of freshmen and sophmore's. The only regular rotation player that was a senior, was Okwandu, their center, who was hardly a scoring threat.
So is Walker really that good, that he can will his team to a championship, or did he make a deal with the devil. Or was it just one of those, once in a lifetime magical years. How many quarterbacks have won the Heisman trophy, and a national championship, and gone on to be busts. More than the teams that drafted them would like. I'm not saying that Kemba will be a bust by any means. But there's a lot of glitz and glitter around Kemba, and sometimes that can blind your ability see clearly. I could use Rubio as an example as a player that got drafted more on perception, than on reality. If he's really coming this next season, it'll be interesting to see if he can turn that perception into reality.
