Sometimes there are just forces beyond a player's control.
Thought to be the consensus No. 1 pick for almost the entirety of the season, Jahlil Okafor watched as Karl-Anthony Towns passed him on most boards during the NCAA tournament. The main reason was that while Okafor is an otherworldly offensive player, Towns' immense defensive potential and improving offense give him the highest ceiling in the draft.
But Okafor believes his own defensive potential may have been undersold. In his time at Duke, Okafor wasn't made the focal point of the defense because he was such an important part of their offensive game plan, one that saw them ranked third in the country in adjusted offense. He also played through injuries that hurt his conditioning.
Considering all of those factors and his own desire to get better, Okafor believes he's being underrated, as he told Basketball Insiders:
I know I’m going to get better. I can get better at everything I do, and I always improve. I don’t think my defense was as bad as people made it out to be. We did win a national championship and all of my coaches were extremely happy with the way that I played on both ends of the floor. Also, I couldn’t get in to foul trouble and with the way our defense was set up, I wasn’t really in rim-protecting situations.
Honestly, that is one of my flaws that I can improve on, but I can also improve on the offense end.
He makes a good argument, and he did average 1.4 blocks to 2.1 personal fouls per game in his conservative role. Most of his value will still be derived from his offensive talents, but writing him off as a one-way piece at age 19 may be unfair, or at least premature.
As is often the case in a debate between two top picks - it happened last year with Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker, too - the detractors focus so narrowly on weaknesses that the strengths can be forgotten about. Okafor is an immensely talented player and one of the most uniquely gifted big men to enter the NBA in years, and teams favoring Towns - not all of them do, yet - would surely be pleased to land him as a consolation prize.
