Reply To: Goldy Upside

[lehigh90Participant]

I haven’t looked at the stats in detail, but I thought Gabe really struggled from the perimeter late in his career. Early on in his career, he was effective on the block with his hook and drop step moves. He was very polished coming out of high school. I remember him putting up 30+ in a game in his soph season (I think it was) and I thought he was really going to be a big low post scorer. But, as his career progressed, he tended to move his game further and further from the block. In his senior season, he took a ton of ill-advised 3s, in my opinion. And, a lot of deep jump shots from 2. As he moved further and further from the basket, I thought he became less and less effective. When he had his big games, it was not from the perimeter, but from the block. He got away from that too much late in his career, and when we needed him to dominate on the block (post CJ injury) he was shooting 3s. We had so many better options from the perimeter that I didn’t want to see my 6’9″ pivot, 20 feet from the basket. I also think he rebounding suffered as he played so far from the hoop. But, he clearly did not have the necessary quickness, quick leaping ability to be a top-class rebounder. Great player for sure, but I would have preferred to really see him send all of his time in the low post.

We cannot expect Kempton to be at that level coming in. Especially from the low post, where it takes so much repetition to develop comfortable low post moves. But, I think he will be more polished than your average freshman center, due to his father, and the fact that when you are not an elite athlete you need to be very sound fundamentally to have success. I think he will be more comfortable facing the basket early in his career. Gabe was probably the opposite. He established himself on the low block from day one, and he had a vast array of low post moves, and his left-handedness helped him down there.