And you thought it was just the media over-hyping Andrew Wiggins...
That hype has some suggesting Wiggins could be the best pro prospect to come out of college since Kevin Durant.
So Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports asked Durant about Wiggins, and Durant cranked up the hype machine.“He’s raw, but his ceiling is high. He can be like a Hall of Famer, All-Star, for sure. He’s good,” said Durant before the Thunder’s loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Durant said he watched closely on television as Wiggins and Kansas defeated Duke on Tuesday night. Duke features another talented true freshman forward in Jabari Parker, whom Durant also thinks highly of after working with him at his basketball camp last summer…
“That [Parker] kid is amazing,” Durant said. “I think he is the best player in the country. Him and Wiggins are like ‘1A’ and ‘1B.’ Those guys are going to do the one-and-done thing, do it early. They are going to do really well in college and lead their teams to, I think, the Final Four. That’s kind of like, ‘Close your eyes and pick one.’ You’re good with either one of those guys.”
Wiggins is no doubt special but he is no lock No. 1 pick in a deep, deep draft. The very reliable and connected site DraftExpress.com has Julius Randle of Kentucky and international combo guard Dante Exum ahead of Parker in their early drafts now. That’s not to say how the final rankings shake out, only that there is a lot of talent at the top of this draft.
Wiggins is at the heart of that talent and could well turn out to be a franchise-changing player. Nothing is a lock, but he has that potential. A lot of scouts see it. Remember, NBA teams don’t care who is the better player this season in college, they want to project who is the best player three years from now, five years from now. Who has the higher ceiling?
Durant sees that ceiling and realizes it is very, very high.