I have a really hard time believing that. Do you have a link?
Here is something I wrote at the time:
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Why isn't Wilbekin at least a late lottery pick?
I want to take care in investigating the question I posed in the subject line. Everyone knows Wilbekin can play. He was the SEC player of the year after all. He can play both ends of the court so this is not an Ernie “no D” situation. There has been some speculation that Wilbekin just is not athletic enough, but then it turns out that he is at the Clipper’s combine. Wilbekin is not overly tall, but then other players his size have been very high picks.
So I first compared his combine numbers to 3 very high picks his size: John Wall, Derrick Rose and Brandon Knight. Here is their combine comparison:
Wilbekin 6'1.5" w/o shoes, 6'2.75" with shoes, 168 lbs, 6'3.25" wingspan, 7'11" reach, 4.4% body fat, 34.0" No step vertical, 38.5" max vertical, 12 reps with the bench press, 10.65 seconds for the agility drill and 3.11 second for the sprint.
B. Knight 6'1.5" w/o shoes, 6'3.25" with shoes, 177 lbs, 6'6.75" wingspan, 8'2.5" reach, 4.2% body fat, 29.0" No step vertical, 37.5" max vertical, 10 reps with the bench press, 10.74 seconds for the agility drill and 3.07 second for the sprint.
J.Wall 6'2.75" w/o shoes, 6'4" with shoes, 196 lbs, 6'9.25" wingspan, 8'5.5" reach, 5.6% body fat, 30" No step vertical, 39" max vertical, 10.84 seconds for the agility drill and 3.16 second for the sprint.
D.Rose 6'1.5" w/o shoes, 6'2.5" with shoes, 196 lbs, 6'8" wingspan, 8'2.5" reach, 4.6% body fat, 34.5" No step vertical, 40" max vertical, 11.69 seconds for the agility drill and 3.05 second for the sprint.
Wilbekin is right their with this group height wise. Wilbekin falls down a bit in wingspan and reach, but may have the best overall athletic tests.
As I said, we also know that Wilbekin can play. This link takes you to a side by side comparison of these 4 players. Wilbekin is as good as all of the in offensive efficiency, does not rebound as well as the other three, but takes far better care of the ball.
Of course these comparison are for guys a few year back. Maybe this years’ draft has better guard. Well there are 3 projected first round guys this year about Wilbekin’s size, Marcus Smart, Tyler Ennis and Elfrid Payton. Here are Wilbkin’s combine numbers compared to theirs:
Wilbekin 6'1.5" w/o shoes, 6'2.75" with shoes, 168 lbs, 6'3.25" wingspan, 7'11" reach, 4.4% body fat, 34.0" No step vertical, 38.5" max vertical, 12 reps with the bench press, 10.65 seconds for the agility drill and 3.11 second for the sprint.
E. Payton 6'2.5" w/o shoes, 6'3.75" with shoes, 185 lbs, 6'8" wingspan, 8'2.5" reach, 5.7% body fat, 31.5" No step vertical, 35.5" max vertical, 11.06 seconds for the agility drill and 3.23 second for the sprint.
M. Smart 6'2" w/o shoes, 6'3.25" with shoes, 227 lbs, 6'9.25" wingspan, 8'3" reach, 10.6% body fat, 33" No step vertical, 36" max vertical, 11.06 seconds for the agility drill and 3.26 second for the sprint.
T. Ennis 6'1" w/o shoes, 6'2.5" with shoes, 182 lbs, 6'7.25" wingspan, 8'2" reach, 6.2% body fat, 29" No step vertical, 36" max vertical, 10.82 seconds for the agility drill and 3.30 second for the sprint.
Again Wilbekin is right there with this group height wise, a little worse than them in terms of wingspan and reach, but clearly the best of the four in terms of the measures of athleticism, the verticals and the running times.
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I had a link in the above to the site I took the numbers from but alas the site is no longer. Clearly Wilbekin is more athletic in the traditional running, jumping and agility sense and is in the height range with the players above. What he isn't is long in the modern parlance of wingspan.
It was in response to posts like this that I ran into the explosion rationale. I am not sure that explosion can be as concretely defined as athleticism, but I can also see that someone can be athletic enough but it not somehow translate. So I am willing to consider that about Wilbekin and there were some players who did give him trouble in college.
BTW, it is just embarrassing that UF fans would claim he can not dunk. This poor kid bailed on his high school to come to UF a year early and so part of his reward is UF stare gazer fans pretending that he was lowly rated rather than essentially unrated as he reclassified so late and now on top that that this highly athletic guy has people claiming he also is unathletic and can not dunk. I guess people who say most UF fans know NOTHING about basketball might be right. Certainly you can not accuse UF basketball fans of being homers as they are always looking to put down UF's program and UF players.