Morning Sixers – Tuesday, March 21st, 2017

“Point Guard of the Future. On offense, we know from Coach Brown, it is Ben Simmons. You’ve mentioned the need for a PG to guard opposing PGs. Who in this draft could reasonably be expected to do a better job at this than TJ?”

— Colin

(For this question I’m going to be limiting it to players that could be potentially selected in the top 7 of the draft, not potential second round picks).

In terms of sheer defense, most of the potential ‘star’ point guards at the top of the draft aren’t necessarily better defenders than TJ is.

De’Aaron Fox is the one that jumps out as a better defender. He’s 6’4″, with elite quickness and good defensive instincts. He could develop into a really good defensive, disruptive, point guard.

The problem with Fox is he’s not a good fit offensively at all, shooting just 23.4% from three-point range and 34.9% on two-point jump shots. Some will look at his form and suggest it’s not completely broken, and he has been better of late (37% on a pretty small amount of three-point shots since January 24th), but it’s hard to project that out with much confidence. Because of that, it’s hard to really slot him in next to Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, regardless of how intriguing his defense might be with them.

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