home field advantage

Hoop Vision on Luka Garza. Iowa's just down the road for the basketball program:

Would they even have helped? In year one Juwan Howard had a couple of high profile recruiting reversals that stung: losing Josh Christopher to Arizona State and Isaiah Todd to the G-League. This was depressing at the time; for obvious reasons it no longer is. We've talked about Christopher some. Todd's been on the shelf as the NBA figures out what the hell to do with the G-League, but his Ignite team recently started taking the floor. Early returns via Sam Vecenie:

Teams remain unenthused by Isaiah Todd

Todd didn’t bring much to the table in the opener. He had a couple of nice defensive possessions but overall didn’t look like he was at the same level of play as most of the other guys out there. He played 17 minutes but had two points and three rebounds on 1-for-4 from the field. The 6-foot-9 forward was considered one of the top-five players in his class when he was an underclassman in high school but steadily dropped down the composite rankings through his prep career as he started to float out on the perimeter while not particularly improving as a shooter or decision-maker.

“There’s no way I’d draft him right now,” one scout said. “I wish him the best, but he didn’t look ready for pro basketball.”

The G League is a tough, highly competitive league. There’s no shame in a teenager not being ready to play in such an atmosphere. But it also goes to show just how far off Todd is from contributing to an NBA situation if he can’t even contribute positively to this one. I have Todd outside the top 80 on my board.

There's obviously a big gap between G-League teams and college. I wonder about the counterfactual where he's on this year's roster. Whose minutes is he taking? Terrance Williams, probably. Brandon Johns, maybe. Livers, Wagner, Brown: no.

If you're looking at one-and-done types the portal is likely to cough up just as many quality options as high school recruiting.

Also! This got slipped into an eval of Todd on Prospective Insight:

Much more effective when he plays inside-out, but doesn’t embrace contact; Subpar free-throw shooter; Was viewed as having one of the highest upsides entering high school, but has largely failed to improve substantially and became enamored with demonstrating his improving perimeter skill-set; Weak and often unwilling passer to date; Plus shot-blocker (more from the weak-side); Solid student; His mother is substantially more vocal than he is; Needs to add upper-body strength, tighten his handle, refine his perimeter shot, and embrace contact.

Grimace dot emoji.

[After THE JUMP: the spot you want to be in]