Bad faith on your part. The entire conversation had been why have so few Utah high school players become NBA players. My point was that the NBA game has changed so much that even those local players who played for a year or two twenty years ago might not be suited to the NBA today, like Judkins. The conversation had nothing to do with whether they would be good college players today. Any of them would improve Utah’s current roster.
College basketball is much worse than it was a generation ago, and longer. You can tell that just by noting that college players for more than a year barely get drafted. You think any college team of the last 10 years could have beaten the UNLV, Duke, or Kentucky teams from the early to mid-90’s?
I agree with Concerned that the NBA game has changed a lot, too. The sheer amount of talent on NBA rosters is breathtaking. It’s a completely different game.
Remember when it was a big deal to have “twin towers” / two 7-footers?
Being a 7 footer doesn’t mean much in today’s NBA, though most teams have multiples. The Jazz have Markkenan and Kessler, with Kessler being probably 5" “taller” on reach, similar to Gobert, Markkenan is really a stretch 4 with terrific shooting.
The athleticism is crazy, too. Every guard can throw it down any way you want it. Frank Jackson at 6-3 was an athletic freak in the State of Utah at the HS level and went to Duke, but really struggles in the league.
(Also agree about distractions & other challenges with producing HS players inside the State of Utah. Just saying the NBA is a lot higher level than it used to be.)
Of course the point was a metric for demonstrating the decline in native Utah talent that is available to the Utes to recruit, not NBA prospects from Utah per se. We all seem to agree this has occurred. Talented HS Utah athletes are disappearing like honey bees.
I hear you, concerned. Not sure I agree with this. Of course, I tend not to compare players or teams across generations. Game has evolved (better or worse).
Player training has evolved. When I was an athlete at the U, I ran 4.6 and had a 35" vertical, of which both were decent as a 6’1" athlete. Now, I’m not even close to being competitive, and those are just two of the many measuring metrics. Now, players start training so much earlier and tools/resources are much more available. Thus, coaching has also evolved.
It is clear that one-and-done has changed college basketball. So have the transfer portal and NIL. If you were watching college basketball closely in the 80s and early 90s and then took a Rip Van Winkle nap, on awakening you would barely recognize the sport. That’s true of comparisons among other prior eras too, of course. Is the sport a better fan experience now? I don’t think so.