"Dominic James appears to be the player that made the biggest mistake playing here. His stock is plummeting and it could have a lingering effect on next year as well, should he return to Marquette. James decided to enter the draft when it appeared coach Tom Crean might be leaving for greener pastures. After it became apparent that wasn't happening, James decided to continue to "explore his draft options". Big mistake. James first game in the camp he went scoreless on 0-3 shooting with 0 assists. Even worse than the terrible game, his inability to run a team has been exposed."Wait, there's more. Here's the day two assessment from DraftExpress:
"...going up against players like Aaron Brooks, James looked very non-descript as an athlete, and almost tentative in the way he approached the game.This account of last night's game from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer seems to validate James' ineffectiveness against Aaron Brooks, who is a second-round pick at best.
James rarely looked to score in this one, but his lack of size was apparent whenever he did. Given his shooting struggles and continuing tendency to waste precious of the shot clock by hanging onto the ball, these just aren’t good signs coming from a prospect that was thought of as a potential lottery pick at the beginning of the season."
ESPN's Chad Ford is more to the point about Dominic's performance, "he was the only player here to do virtually nothing in the game. If that's not the signal he needs to go back to Marquette, I don't know what is." FWIW, James' line from last night's game was 0 points, 2 rebounds, 0 assists, 1 steal, 0-3 fg’s, 0-2 ft’s.
Not to be outdone, STATS via CNNSI jumped into the mix - - rather diplomatically:
James has shown good quickness and driving ability, and has done a solid job trying to get teammates involved. But playing in the same backcourt with Cook in Wednesday night's final game, James went scoreless as he missed three shots from the field and he failed to record an assist.
"This is an important step for me as far as the camp goes," said James, who averaged 14.9 points and 4.9 assists as a sophomore. "I really wanna come out here and perform well just so they can see I can run a team in a different manner than what I did in college because it's different personnel and it's a different style game when you get into the NBA."
It wasn't a style many players grasped Wednesday night."
If you are keeping score at home, that's an 0-4 night for DJ. In baseball, they refer to a performance like this as the Golden Sombrero. James will have a shot at redemption tonight when Team#3 takes the court at 6:30pm.
The guys at MU Scoop are talking about Dominic James' struggles early at the NBA pre-draft camp in Orlando here.
James is an average college player with above average athleticism. He's a leaper, appears to be physically strong and he's quick. He cannot shoot a lick and actually has a difficult time even using his left hand when he's handling the ball. He's never struck me as NBA material.
ReplyDeleteThis is the sound going thru DJ's head after reading those reports. -- What do we have for a parting gift, Johnnie?
ReplyDelete"continuing tendency to waste precious time on the shot clock by hanging on to the ball" - geez, sounds like a typical Marq possesion - wonder where he acquired that skill??
ReplyDelete"he was the only player here to do virtually nothing in the game."
ReplyDeleteHey, sounds like the first half of a lot of games last season...