JaVale McGee

JaVale McGee: 7’0, 235, C, So., Nevada

JaVale McGee Video

This is a difficult player to evaluate because he’s really only an intriguing prospect due to his size and athleticism. As a basketball player, he’s incredibly raw. McGee runs better than most players his size and he can jump out of the building. He gets a bunch of blocks and a fair amount of offensive rebounds. There were times when he dominated and times when he disappeared in college, but mostly he’s looked like a big project. Teams are more willing to gamble on the future of 7-footers and whoever drafts McGee will need to be patient. Everything will change when he plays against NBA centers instead of the mid-major college guys he towers over. He has a lot of work to do before he can play at the next level. His fundamentals are terrible, he creates many more turnovers than a center should ever be responsible for, and he is embarrassingly bad on defense. But the NBA scouts love huge athletes and someone will hope that McGee can be taught to play soon and becomes quality low-post player. That’s a very rare occurrence, however. The NBA is not a learning environment and players that come in unprepared rarely ever become productive. I am just not impressed with McGee, despite how tall and athletic he is.