Post by jhb on Feb 16, 2021 13:27:18 GMT -5
Yi Jianlian
PF
7'0"
240
20
China
Yi has scouts pretty split on what his future holds in the NBA. There are some that say he has the potential to be one the best international prospect to come to TMBSL so far and that they've been tracking the CBA prodigy for almost half a decade as a future contributor in the league. These scouts maintain that with his size, youth, and developed skills from several years already playing professionally that Yi has major upside and could be a future star. Then there are others that say Yi has major bust potential, as the documents he used to verify his age are forged, he struggles with the type of physical play he'll see regularly in TMBSL, and he doesn't have a go-to guy mentality. Yi has also shown a little diva behavior in terms of his camp wanting to be able to dictate where he lands on draft night to take advantage of marketing opportunities back home.
Regardless of where you come down on Yi's off-the court assessments, he is a player with great size who could still add some good weight as he's a little thin in his upper body. He runs the floor well for his size and he has great length in addition to that prototypical height and weight you'd want in a big man. He shows a very technically sound jump shot and finds a ton of easy shot opportunities from attacking the offensive board. He uses that jump shot well in the post, as he typically made opposing CBA big men look foolish with a very efficient turnaround move and countered with a jump hook the other way once they would anticipate the turnaround. His post game benefits from having a tremendously quick first step for a man his size, although his ball-handling ability is not great yet to this point. Scouts say he'll have to add to his post scoring arsenal or they suspect stronger big men may neutralize him in TMBSL. Another big question mark is that Yi is a bit soft, having a tendency to flop and not play through contact well for a man of his size and that he doesn't react well to double teams, having a tendency to throw quick, poorly planned passes to avoid the pressure. With his somewhat passive nature and his tremendous jump shot, scouts have hypothesized that he may be pushed to shoot the three point shot and be used to draw opposing bigs out of the lane for his teammates rather than banging with them to score buckets in the post.
Defensively, Yi has some work to do. He gives position away far too easily and despite having excellent leaping ability for his size, his timing at attempting to block shots is poor and it's not a great skill of his at this time. His poor response to physical play appears yet again when looking into his rebounding efforts, as he does a poor job boxing out the defensive boards and seems much more engaged offensively at rebounding when he can try to slide into the post and pick up those rebounds without having to bang around for them.
