 What's the word, y'all? NBA fans have this distorted perception of growth and potential amongst young players. Because boy, oh boy, the dialogue on Twitter and Reddit and social media in general around these young players is kind of mind blowing to me. I've seen a lot of tweets. I've seen a lot of articles just talking about, for example, let's just talk about the 2021 draft and how a lot of the players, majority of the players draft in there haven't taken the step, the step that you want them to take. Hey, Cunningham got injured early on. Jalen Green don't know a good shot from a bad shot. Evan Mobley hasn't improved. They have an offensive player, even though he almost got 40 today. I'm just saying. Scotty Barnes has lost the passion that made him the rookie of the year. Jalen Suggs exists, kind of. And that's just about the top five picks. Those are things I've read or heard about these young players just in their second season. And I'm telling you right now, it's a big mistake. Today's video is brought to you by PrizePicks. Hit the link in the description, download the PrizePicks app, and use Co-Kinney because you're matching all deposits up to $100 for new players. I've been playing PrizePicks now for two seasons. It basically just adds another element for me when I'm watching these NBA games. And it's just you versus the numbers. You pick some of your favorite or least favorite athletes and you look at a stat like points, rebounds, assists. You see the number and you decide if you think the person is gonna have more or less than that number. The last entry I made was an absolute banger. Jalen Williams' rebounds, Jaren's rebounds, LeBron's assists, Alperin Sengoon's fantasy points and Desmond Baines III's got me a five for five. And if for some reason you don't wanna play with the NBA, which would be weird that you're watching this video if you're not a NBA fan. Of course, there's the NFL, there's MMA, there's College basketball, there's soccer, there's Australian basketball league. So hit the link in the description, play some PrizePicks, use Co-Kinney so they can match all the pots up to $100. Please play responsibly. I wanna show you something. I wanna show you something. And this is where I think all of this starts. Googling Scotty Barnes is the next Yanis. Those are some big shoes to feel. How about we change that to Evan Mobley? Evan Mobley is the next Tim Duncan. Jalen Green is the next Kobe. These are the expectations that we are putting on 19 to 20-year-old professional athletes. Think about that. Kay Cunningham is the next LeBron. Like, we can do this for every single one of the top picks. When we watch them, whether they be in college in the G-League or the first couple of weeks of the NBA season, and we immediately say, oh my God, Scotty Barnes is about to be a 10-time All-Star. Oh my God, Evan Mobley's gonna win 12 defensive play of the years. Kay Cunningham might be Braun. And then when they don't end up like that, you say, ew, they're not as good as we want them to be. So because of that, they're bad. And really, it is just ridiculous because this is not anything that's unique to this draft class, unique to this season. And we see this all the time. Somebody has an amazing rookie season. They get to their sophomore season and they are like nearly the same player. They don't take the jump. Everybody think there's gonna be a jump, but I gotta keep telling people progression is not linear. It's not too K, bro. Scotty Barnes not gonna jump up three overalls just because he had one NBA off-season. It takes a lot and a lot more to get better at this game of basketball at this level. And what we continuously see is somebody have a down season. If you, I don't even wanna call it that because I don't think these players are having down seasons. They just aren't having the jumps you think they should have had. But we'll use the words down season. And then year number three, they take off. Jason Tatum struggled his sophomore year after a really good rookie season. Third season, all-star. John Morant basically had a very similar rookie season to a sophomore season. And then third season, what happened? All-star. And this is why I always try to explain to people that you gotta watch the games and not the box scores. I take real pleasure in watching the players like small developments. You know, Evan Mobley's counting stats might not be a lot different than his rookie season, but that playmaking is a lot better. I see him on a short roll, feeling way more confident this season than this rookie season. But since he didn't jump up seven points per game, he must have been a bad pick. I can't even think of another word that upsets me and fandom more than the word bust. Oh my God, we are so very early on all of the bust conversations. Player could be four years into the career and not be a superstar. And people are like, well, he's a bust. Like the words just get thrown around here and there, here and there, just way too much. And the reality is, when you jump onto a scene where these NBA coaches basically have the only thing they have to scout you by is what you did in college. That's really not a lot. So people jump into a scene, they have a good rookie season. And guess what? Now we got a full 82 game sample size on Scotty Barnes going into a sophomore season. We know he don't like this. We know his Tennessee. So we're going to defend him a little bit differently. And now Scotty is his job to adjust. And that adjustment is not going to happen in three games. It's not going to happen in 10, 20. It might not even happen in a season, but it should happen eventually. But even if it doesn't, Scotty's a good NBA player. If Scotty never develops and this is the version of him we get for 10 plus seasons, good NBA player. And that's pretty damn good for a draft class that I vividly remember people telling me it's top three heavy, it's top three heavy. It's Kade, Jalen, it's Mowgli. And then that fourth person could be Jalen Suggs and it ended up being Scotty and he won the rookie of the year. All I ask for y'all is just to watch the games and hold out on criticism on these super young dudes. It's just too early. In this video, and I forgot to articulate this, the super important point, they just slipped my mind until this morning, right? Part of this is due to the franchise, right? You got to think about it. These NBA fans set through a season where they won 20 to 25 games. Just thinking, oh, this number two overall pick that we get, number one overall pick that we get is going to be the savior of our franchise. And nine times out of 10, the person ain't a savior. You know what I'm saying? So now once we get the person into the team, you get the expectation that this is going to be the dude that's going to see you to the promised land, see you back to the playoffs and that just adds an extra element of expectations that you shouldn't have. So these organizations, actually I'm not going to tell them to stop tanking because I think it's a viable way of getting better. Look at OKC, the last couple of seasons. But you give what I'm saying, just don't expect nobody to be the savior because it's more than a one-man job. And the craziest thing about all of this is that since the turn of the calendar year, a lot of these dudes from this draft class that were underwhelming in the first half have looked damn good. Scotty Barnes averaging over 20 points per game again in this month. Evan Moble just had his career high night. Josh Giddy is averaging 18 points per game, 50, 40, 90. Like these guys are putting it together slowly but surely and all I ask from you and all they ask from you is to just have patience because that's basically what you're going to have to do, especially in a couple of years if they get rid of the one and done rule and people are coming in at 18, man, it's not a lot of people. There is not a lot of people in the world that will be able to come to this league and immediately be good in two seasons. It happens for sure, but it's unlikely. So Giddy's people time, Giddy's players time and let them do their thing and watch basketball. God, the amount of times I get tweeted a box score, a shooting percentage or whatever with no context to the game or no context to the development at all blows my mind. It genuinely does. Oh, he can't be having a good season. He's shooting 28% from three when he shot 33 last year. Like, bro, sure his three-point percentage has gone down but that don't mean that he's worse. Anyway, that's my rant for the day. Shout out to y'all for watching. I'm recording this because I was a believer that the 76ers are gonna lose this game tonight because it was gonna be a 76er video because they are like hooping, no Joel and B, no James Harden. They have a six-point lead going into the fourth. So they, I would have a 76er fans. Just keep winning and you'll get your video eventually.