Duke’s Jahlil Okafor wont be the first player in NBA History, who can potentially go No. 1 in the NBA Draft and have a cloud of doubt and scrutiny follow him throughout the whole process. During the regular season, Okafor — at 6’11”, 270 pounds — led the Blue Devils in scoring and rebounding with 17.5 points, 8.6 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game, but for some critics that is still not enough.
From watching his games at Duke it is clear that Jahlil Okafor is ready for the pros. One of the best players in this draft class is definitely a solid threat on the offensive end with his advanced footwork and post-up game acumen. The Duke product absorbs contact well and is able to finish around the basket in a number of different ways, and he constantly creates second opportunities for his team by grabbing offensive boards. We all know how important 2nd chance points are during the course of a game and with his rebounding efficiency at Duke it wont be hard for him to translate that to the NBA. However, it all comes back to his defense — if you watched him look lost trying to defend the pick-and-roll back in January it was easy to picture him getting torched at the next level.
PBT’s draft expert Ed Isaacson and others say his defensive issues are overblown. Certainly part of it was scheme — Duke couldn’t afford to lose his impressive offense, so they didn’t ask a lot of him on defense — but Isaacson adds that Okafor needs to show more of a mean streak on that end of the court.
Okafor says just wait, he’s going to get better on that end. Here is what Okafor told Alex Kennedy of BasketballInsiders.com in a story about Okafor’s draft prep.
“I know I’m going to get better,” Okafor said of his defense. “I can get better at everything I do, and I always improve. I don’t think my defense was as bad as people made it out to be. We did win a national championship and all of my coaches were extremely happy with the way that I played on both ends of the floor. Also, I couldn’t get in to foul trouble and with the way our defense was set up, I wasn’t really in rim-protecting situations.
“Honestly, that is one of my flaws that I can improve on, but I can also improve on the offense end. Luckily, I’m 19 years old and I think I have a lot of time to improve my game. … I think a lot of people forget that a lot of us are still 18 or 19 years old. We’re put under the microscope and expected to be perfect, on the floor and sometimes even off the floor. Oftentimes, I do think people forget how young we actually are.”
As Okafor said, he often wasn’t asked to be a defensive stopper because his team needed him staying out of foul trouble and saving his energy to dominate on the offensive end. Alex Kennedy also states that Duke assistant coach Jon Scheyer confirmed this. Scheyer said he did see defensive improvement from Okafor throughout the season, and added that he believes the intense criticism is mainly because Okafor has been projected to be the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft for the last two years and people were looking to magnify the holes in his game.
On June 25, Okafor will find out where he’ll be spending the next chapter of his life. Will he be the No. 1 overall pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves and play alongside the NBA’s reigning Rookie of the Year Andrew Wiggins? Will he go No. 2 overall to the Los Angeles Lakers and get the chance to learn from Kobe Bryant and join Julius Randle in their front-court? I hope it’s the latter.
