There’s going to come a point in this year’s draft when someone is going to sweat over Harry Giles.
He had two knee injuries in high school and a third, fairly routine procedure, to clean up after one of the previous ones.
At Duke he barely scratched his potential. He began to play in December and only averaged 3.9 ppg and 3.8 rpg and he did not recover his luxurious athleticism.
He got beat fairly often on defense and was clearly rusty for much of the season.
But we got glimpses.
A block here, a dunk there, an intuitive basketball play that took your breath away.
But it wasn’t consistent and he wasn’t able to help Duke as much as anyone would have liked.
Still, people saw him in high school where he was compared to Chris Webber. When healthy, Giles is as good a forward as you could hope to find.
So after all the easy decisions are over, at some point, someone is going to have to decide: do you pass on a potential generational talent? Or do you believe his past injuries predict his future?
It’s a tough call.
Strengths:
- Athleticism and defense. When healthy, there’s no one in this draft with more.
- Character. By all accounts, Giles’ character is sterling. If he can overcome, he will.
Question marks:
Knees. It’s so early his his career to say this but Giles’ knees are a huge concern for anyone drafting him. That said, if he’s sound and healthy again, it’s a real dilemma for any team.
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