re: NBA Summer League Thread (Game Thread?)

This is where I come in, steal your typical line when you disagree with someone’s viewpoint on a prospect, and just let you know, you are flat out wrong/this is an awful take. I forgive you. You are really only guilty of optimism bias. You are also guilty of wanting your own predraft assessment of Kira to be correct. Look, I thought the guy would be good too. He isn’t though. And it’s been obvious for a long time, that his absolute ceiling is Darren Collison and he might have a 10% chance of actually hitting that ceiling.

Look, this same board for 18 straight months, denied that Tyrese Maxey was better than Kira, even though it was obvious within the first month.

This same board, for 6 plus months, assumed Kira was better than Jose, even though Jose ran circles around him in SL, while Kira legitimately played terrified and was maybe the 6th most influential player on that SL roster.

If Kira was any good, any good at all, you would have the occasional fans from other teams say he was good, or saying they wish they had drafted Kira, or be pining to potentially trade for him. You have exactly none of that. Kira’s rookie card market is non existent. And that is also usually a good Indicator of what unbiased basketball people/collectors/investors overall think of someone’s skillset and upside.

I like Kira the human. But we have to make far too many excuses for Kira the player. Oh he was miscast, oh SL isn’t the right format for him, OH SVG, OHHH YADAYADAYADA.

Perhaps Kira isn’t any good. If you Truly evaluate what we have seen from Kira from a winning basketball perspective over the last 2 years and you don’t base your evaluation on hopes, dreams, Pels fandom, and top end straight line speed, Kira is not even a top 30 player from his own draft class.

So, when the decision comes down to trading Hayes (who on his best day is some variation of Anthony Davis) or Kira, who on his best day gives you an average Darren Collison game, I think the choice is easy.

Because if we are completely honest with ourselves and we ignore the fact that we burned pick 13 on Kira and passed up on Maxey and other solid players to take Kira, and you just judge him in the lense of if he is any good or not. If you line up Kira, Graham, Naji, Hayes, and even Jared Harper, I’m likely picking Kira last if I want to try to win a basketball game this year, or even 2 years from now.