Zaccharie Risacher last 7 games: 6.8 PPG on 34/33/29 splits (42.1 TS%).
Either he’s a victim of the sophomore slump or he’s just not all that.
I don’t even think he’s a top 5 player on his own team.
Jonathan Givony’s greatest feat was getting him drafted 1st overall.
Alex Sarr was projected 1st overall. Hawks just gave up on drafting him because he didn’t want to play for them, which is dumb.
Sarr would be great on the Hawks. I still have no idea why he didn’t want to play there.
Okungwu seemed good back then and looked to start along with the hawks being in no man’s land compared to the Wizards where sarr would get more opportunity.
Doesn’t mean Sarr couldn’t play the 4 in a 2 big lineup unless he wanted to specifically play the 5
Hawks have Jalen Johnson who’s best at the 4 and so no matter what, Sarr would have had a rough time getting minutes.
Sarr is a good rim protector already and rim protection is our biggest weakness by far, he’d get plenty of minutes
sure, the Alex Sarr that is currently playing after a full season of unhindered development in a starting role, would most definitely play a big role for the Hawks
the point is, y’all wouldn’t have started him and wouldn’t have played him 28mpg with the numbers he put up last year. he would have had to fight for like 15mpg and would have had basically 0 touches.
point being, the Hawks were a bad spot for the #1 pick as much as Risacher has been a bad pick.
Overall Hawks mismanaged their team and the ECF appearance was a rare case of being terrible for the franchise.
So he’d come along slightly slower, so what, he’d be getting 25mpg at least right now. Zacc has gotten plenty of minutes and has somehow gotten worse.
Im not arguing that it would have been better for Sarr, that’s probably why he didn’t want to come here, but it would have been better for the Hawks, which is probably what we should be prioritizing.
i’m saying any player y’all drafted would have looked bad by now
Jalen can easily play the 3 you’re acting like he’s not super versatile. Heck he can play PG if you really needed him to.
You’re (outside of hawks fans) saying that now tho
Jalen Johnson playing the 3 is not some genius level thinking though. If even a casual like me could see it people who have been around basketball all their lives like Sarr and the Hawks front office can certainly see it.
Not talking about position, taking about skill. Hawks were high on him, the rest of the league wasn’t (JJ) until he broke out this year.
Because their front office is clearly incompetent.
And even they finessed the pelicans
They should’ve drafted him anyways, but there was a very real fear that he would just stay overseas and refuse to sign with the Hawks.
And what just never make NBA money in his life ever? Hawks would own his rights if he ever wanted to play in the big leagues. No lottery pick is ever staying overseas instead of testing the NBA waters
Yeah 0% chance. We should have called his bluff just like the Jazz did with Ace Bailey, but we’re not especially competent.
I think the Wizards media people or whoever they plant to do the Sarr dont want to be a Hawk did a very well job sabotage the Hawks FO.
People always say teams should just draft the guy and call their bluff, and I typically agree, but it’s riskier than some people think. Especially a team like Atlanta in that spot, not a Free Agency destination and largely don’t control their picks going forward. I still think if you really think he’s the guy you gamble on it, but maybe Sarr really would’ve stayed in Australia if ATL took him. Maybe Kobe really would’ve went to play in Italy if he didn’t get LA. We’ll never know
There’s nothing to gamble on though, you take him and he’s locked to your team as you own his rights.
Players staying overseas isn’t uncommon, just extremely rare in the first rare. If it’s ever happened.
i almost bet money on that sht, i was freaking out then he didnt go #1
He was projected 1st, but not by that much. From what I remember Sarr and Risacher were more seen as 1a and 1b instead of 1 and 2. Some people also thought Sarr had bust potential so the fact that he didn’t do a workout with them also probably scared Atlanta a bit.
also no one was viewed as a runaway top pick. sarr wasn’t seen as a great prize, zac wasn’t seen as a big reach. it’s like 2013 except if the cavs picked like, cody zeller or otto porter jr
I read somewhere he has a connection with someone on the Wizards staff or front office. I forgot.
That lottery was pretty underwhelming so far. Pretty much everyone outside of Buzelis, Castle, and Sheppard are underwhelming considering where they were drafted(and at least for Sheppard there was doubt last season and he’s still working on consistency this season). A few guys are doing alright, but over not a lot of guys in that draft lottery are really performing at the level teams probably hoped they would.
I think Zach and Shep will fine, usually 2nd year lottery went thru a bump and wall when theyre esp great in their 1st year since Opponent scouts are getting them notices.
he just isn’t all that and not drafting Sarr is a god awful decision but I also feel like the coach should be giving him a bit more runway as a #1 pick, its not like we’re competing for anything anyways.
He gets iced out for large stretches of games whether he’s playing well or not, and it seems like Jalen Johnson is allergic to passing to him even if he is wide open.
i’m really just not a believer in the modern nba of a player getting ‘iced out’ anymore. as a wing literally all you have to do is go up strong, grab a rebound, then turn and dribble upcourt. boom, you’re initiating the offense. if you can’t reliably do that? then what are we even talking about
Dribbling and playmaking are his greatest weaknesses by far, so if he tried to do that it would go horribly and he’d get yelled at and/or benched.
right. so if you’re a wing and you can’t dribble what is there? you better be a lights out shooter, particularly on the move. its not 2004, games are way more fluid now. teams aren’t gonna run slow developing set plays for you to get multiple screens while the point guard pounds the rock at the top of the key. maybe an occasional ATO
Yeah he just doesn’t have a very high ceiling, a lot of our fans blame the coaching staff for not giving him enough touches but he just can’t really do much besides take catch and shoot threes and cut.
Tbf to him he was pretty good as a cutter last year and now without Trae our half court offense is a lot messier.
yeah i’m of the belief pretty much any time you see people blaming the coaches for a player not producing enough its pure cope. i call it the NFL’ification of NBA fandom as the number of people who’ve actually played organized basketball at any level seems to continue to decline.
a basketball player has so much more control over what they are doing on an nba court rather than the coach its insane. quin snyder would be doing backflips if risacher was capable of initiating offense lol. it would probably save his job!
Yeah, it’s pretty rare that a legitimately good player looks like trash for long stretches, no matter what the coaching staff is doing.
There are tons of examples of guys getting misused or just not optimized. But you can usually still see their talent shine through even when they’re being tasked with stuff that doesn’t fit their skill set very well.
Think Kevin Love on the Cavs being asked to guard guys on the wing and roam the arc to open the floor for LeBron. No, that wasn’t the best way to maximize Love’s talents and it was stretching his abilities on defense. But he still looked really good throughout most parts of each game because he’s really talented.
Risacher… doesn’t have that same thing going for him. Maybe he’s not being put in the best position to succeed, but whatever talent he does have doesn’t really shine through during the game all that much. He’s not a total zero or someone who doesn’t belong in the league. But there hasn’t really been any indication that he’s developing above average NBA skills that will carry him to being a very good pro.
Cavs Love back was a bit cooked. No way he sustains Minnesota production even if he was fed the ball as a #2 option on that time.
Also you can’t hide talent in practice. If he is booming everyone and destroying practices coaches AND the lockeroom would have more trust during games
You don’t need to be a good ball handler to attack closeouts.
Attacking closeouts requires almost no dribbling ability. Theoretically he should be able to do the things that Norm Powell does. Shoot 3s, attack closeouts. That’s almost all Norm does and he does it well despite being a shit ball handler and 6’4.
To be fair, it was a weak draft class and sarr didn’t want to be in atlanta.
Then they should have did the same thing as Utah to Ace - Tough shit
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You think Sarr was ready to turn down $57 mil?
There was not a real chance Sarr would forego that much money, plus atl would have his rights regardless
It wasn’t a weak draft, it was a shit draft.
It’s tough when Sarr told the Hawks he wouldn’t play for them
Name one player that actually went through with the bluff when push comes to shove, let alone for the salary that comes with #1 pick
Steve Francis
Fair enough but the Grizzlies did get a sizable haul for him. Leading to my true point that they should draft the BPA regardless of what he says since the worst case scenario is you get a similar haul like Francis did,
It wasn’t tough when Ace told Jazz he wouldn’t play for them tho
29% free throw? That’s all I need to see.
If you’re a worse FT shooter than Ben Wallace…you’d better bring something else impressive. Which Risacher doesn’t.
Can someone who watches the Hawks explain what’s going on with his 29% FT%?
That’s past bad FT shooter territory and into yips or injury territory, is something wrong with him?
I don’t watch but it’s low sample size. He’s shot 2 for 7 and he’s a 68% FT shooter in his career so far
Thanks, that makes way more sense
OP giving his FT% over a sample of 7 shots is devious lol
/u/gridironk you stink.
/r/nba is no better upvoting this junk
68% is still pretty bad, though. He can’t dribble or pass so he needs to be a great shooter to have a role.
It’s bad, but not 29% bad lol
I believe he’s been getting advice from Dyson Daniels🤨
Those shooting split don’t even add up to 100
Scott Steiner math
it’s 7 games
He’s at 10⁄3.5⁄1 on the season with 55% ts
That’s pretty brutal
that’s a more postable stat
Both are “postable” stats. You’re acting as though we can’t glean anything useful from 7 games.
7 games does not provide enough statistical power to be useful.
Assuming that the idea is to show how bad Risacher has been relative to the pool of starting NBA small forwards, we’d need 30 games of this type of performance to get to an acceptable statistical power of 0.8.
We’re not publishing an analytical paper here.
This is a discussion about basketball games, and you can certainly have a conversation about his recent play (with and without his overall career in context).
Not really we dont need multiple years/games to figure out if a top 3 pick can play or not. re Wisebum
7 games is a lot. Almost 10% of the whole season. Difference between 4th seed and 10th seed is 7 games.
You do not ever give someone “a pass” for 30 games. You need 1⁄3 of the whole season to figure out someone sucks?
A slump from such high quality basketball.
Damn that’s even worse than Cody Williams last 7 games.
There was a stretch last game where every single heat role player just iso’d and went at him on offense
Idk how but he showed less defensive resistance than Herro coming back from injury. Dude couldn’t even score in garbage time against the end of our bench. Really weird comparing him now to wat he was doing at the end of last season
100% believe he went first in large part because Wemby oversold the value of French player developed
Fk it at least he looks cool, good job hawks. Id make that pick 9⁄10 times
He can definitely resurrect his career somewhere else. I do not watch hawks games, but I suspect the shift away from a Trae Young after building a team around him is making it difficult for Zac as well as some other role players. Dyson had a horrible start to the season and while he has recovered a little, he is shooting 12% (!) from 3 lol. There is less space and while Jalen gets assists, there obviously less playmaking when you lose a guy like Trae.
I hate seeing young professional athletes struggle due to circumstance so I hope he can figure this out and have a nice long career.
Give it up on this guy he’ll be playing for the Shanghai sharks in a few years.
Are you kidding? NBA GM’s seeing a former #1 pick are all like: I can fix him.
Anthony Bennett got what 4 chances as a reclamation project. Marvin Bagley is being traded for shit.
He’s gotta be one of the worst 1 pick ever
Anthony Bennett still the worst I’ve seen
There’s like zero % chance anyone will take his mantle.
They weren’t in the same draft class…
lol right I’m dumb, was mixing up years
By talent maybe. But realistically nobody envisioned him being more than a high end roleplayer. Which he can still so easily be.
This is not a realistic subreddit. #1 draft picks have to be Jordan/Lebron clones or they are busts
So his weakness is basketball
That team doesn’t have a pg lmao imagine being a second year player around a bunch of dudes who not really looking to set you up, yes jj is getting assist but it’s different then having a pg especially coming from euro ball I’d assume
I’m not giving up completely yet. I watched this guy drop 36 on 1 dribble as a rookie, clearly he’s skilled. I think he just has the yips, but idk. It’s been bad the whole season outside of a few games
Pretty sure we’ve known that he’s just not that guy
Dude can’t dribble and even if he could he is weak so he can take contact when driving. All he can really do offensively is shoot 3s and he can’t even do that right now.
Zacc had a good rookie season, especially in the second half. I think part of it is he’s missing Trae. Who would get him great looks, especially in transition.
Shaping up to be a bust. Not the greatest draft of course but a lot of guys who have shown promise by this point. Sarr, Shepard, Clingan, McCain, Castle, Edey, Ware. Risacher has been pretty bad even compared to those guys and with given more opportunities min wise. Hell looking at the first round draft list there’s like 15 of those guys Id take over him with how things are looking at this point lol.
Loser Wembanyama.
I honestly think he’s the biggest bust of all time, at least Anthony Bennett had literally zero projections being a first overall pick.