Player Jaemyn Brakefield

[rome8180]

He never seemed like a Duke caliber player in all honesty. However, his presence alone next year would have been good for a continuity/leadership perspective. It’s one of the biggest gripes I’ve had with K since OAD began. He needs to find a way to have better roster balance. Like previously mentioned, giving 10 min/game to Brakefield could have been enough to sway him to stay in the program.

I don't know what you were watching. He was inconsistent, but in the games he popped he really popped. I think he'll have much closer to the Ojeleye and Gbinije career than AOC's. I'd take his longterm potential over a couple guys still left on the roster.

 

[childress22]

I respect your opinion, but I personally would still take Roach or Baker*, and obviously Wendell, over Brake long-term.

I feel like the fact that Brakefield had those 3 good games, 2 of them early, made people overrate him some. To me, what set Brake's good games apart from his bad games was mainly getting hot from outside.

Could be be a 14 and 5 guy somewhere as a senior, maybe junior? Sure. But he's not good right now. People made fun of Okafor and Parker's defense, but at least they made up for a little bit of their terrible rotations with their good defensive rebounding. Brakefield was a bad defender AND a bad rebounder. Just nothing at that end of the floor.

Couple that with the .477 TS% (.416 in conference), and that's ...just not that good. He was a .417 FT shooter, too, so the bad shooting doesn't seem that aberrant. Of course, it's a small sample size on those free throws, but that's also because he had a crappy FTr, too.


* If I were only judging Baker based on this past craptastic season, I'd have to give it to Jaemyn, but the fact that Baker was actually pretty good for a whole season as sophomore still wins out here.

 

[rome8180]

Baker was good as a sophomore? Lol. He was flat out garbage but with a respectable 3pt percentage.

And no, I'd take Brakefield over literally all those players mentioned. I hate to eye test, but he passes it. And if we're getting into defense or advance stats, Roach was goddawful in both. The thing with Brakefield, like I said, is he had some really really good games and some bad ones. It turns out it's hard to be consistent when your coach hates you. Two minutes in a given game is not a valid sample size.

 

[rome8180]

I actually don't know where the notion that Brakefield was bad at defense comes from, tbh.

 

[rome8180]

Want to put some money on it, btw? I'll bet you Brakefield is an efficient high teens scorer as an upperclassman, assuming he stays in college that long.

 

[childress22]

Potato, potahto. I think if I was trying to eye-test some other dude whose actual metrics were at Brakefield's level, you'd take me to task. But it'd be tedious to argue. Let's just set a calendar reminder to revisit in three years and we'll see how these dudes turn out.

 

[The March Hare]

I was sorry to see him go because: a) he played with fire and enthusiasm / fun to watch; b) he generally seemed to hustle and was willing to make the effort on defense, and: c) while he was inconsistent like most frosh are, it seemed like he had the potential to get better and better each year.

Best of luck, JB.

 

[childress22]

Want to put some money on it, btw? I'll bet you Brakefield is an efficient high teens scorer as an upperclassman, assuming he stays in college that long.

I generally suck at gambling, so it's probably a sign that you'd win, but I could do ten bucks or so if we agreed on an efficiency standard.

 

[rome8180]

I suck at gambling too. Battle of who sucks more.

And you're right that I would be taking you to task if you were using eye test for a player with comparable stats. But I also think that it's a mistake to always purely use stats. The flashes he showed of shooting, ability to attack a closeout, and nice rotations for blocks combined with his physical attributes convinced me that he's going to be really good. If you wanted to make the same argument for things Roach does well, that's fine. I'd buy it less with Baker, given that we've seen him for three years and he's a shooter who doesn't consistently knock down shots, doesn't move without the ball, and doesn't seem to understand his role. But that's a different argument.

 

[rhfarmer]

Brakefield is the only Duke player I have ever seen do both of the following:
Perfect entry passes
Box out

He knows how to play, and it's a bummer he will be doing it for someone else.

 

[Inveigle]

Of all the defections to exit the program I feel we will wish we had this kid back.

 

[rhfarmer]

Of all the defections to exit the program I feel we will wish we had this kid back.

Gbinijie says Hi

 

[rhfarmer]

Of all the defections to exit the program I feel we will wish we had this kid back.

Gbinijie says Hi

Semi says Hi

 

[DukeNukem05]

Of all the defections to exit the program I feel we will wish we had this kid back.

Gbinijie says Hi

I don’t disagree, but he seemed to have hated being at Duke. At least Jaemyn looked like he enjoyed being on the team.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

Do we win the 2015 title if either Silent G or Semi is in the rotation at the expense of freshman Grayson? Maybe, but don’t want to replay that.

Gbinije also wasn’t really any good until he was a fourth/fifth year player at Syracuse in 2015 and 2016, and he couldn’t have been a fifth year player had he stayed at Duke to even help that 2016 team.

In sum, fuck G he a B.

 

[Inveigle]

Of all the defections to exit the program I feel we will wish we had this kid back.

Gbinijie says Hi

Semi says Hi

Yea, but neither one of those guys had an impact signature win as a Freshman like Brakefield did against Virginia. We're going to wish we had him back next season.

 

[rhfarmer]

Do we win the 2015 title if either Silent G or Semi is in the rotation at the expense of freshman Grayson? Maybe, but don’t want to replay that.

Gbinije also wasn’t really any good until he was a fourth/fifth year player at Syracuse in 2015 and 2016, and he couldn’t have been a fifth year player had he stayed at Duke to even help that 2016 team.

In sum, fuck G he a B.

Yeah, I mean the dominoes that would fall if we kept those guys are impossible to predict. Does Winslow come? Grayson?

What it really boils down to is that we rarely have upper class depth, and there is no question that Semi and Silent G would have been valuable pieces in that regard, because they could play.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

I agree with you that the process Duke followed in not playing those potential upper class depth pieces was poor and it happened to work out in our favor with it all coming together for Title 5. I wouldn't change the way things happened but doesn't mean we should continue to just do what we did then.

 

[savedukebball]

I actually don't know where the notion that Brakefield was bad at defense comes from, tbh.

He definitely wasn't good, but Duke's entire team was a dumpster fire defensively this year so it's hard to pinpoint whether it was an individual thing. A majority of his minutes came with Hurt next to him and there's absolutely no rim protection in that scenario. Couple that with Duke's perimeter guys mostly being negatives on that end (outside of Goldwire) and you have a recipe for a bad defense.

 

[savedukebball]

I agree with you that the process Duke followed in not playing those potential upper class depth pieces was poor and it happened to work out in our favor with it all coming together for Title 5. I wouldn't change the way things happened but doesn't mean we should continue to just do what we did then.

Agreed. The 2015 title validated the coaching staff that this "all-in on freshmen" approach works, when there isn't enough credit being given to the guys like Quinn Cook, Amile Jefferson, and Matt Jones -- guys that the program doesn't have anymore.