Gradey has not yet announced his decision

I need to preface my comments that I am absolutely the WORST judge of NBA talent in the world, but from my untrained eye, Grady simply doesn't look ready to me.

He came into the season like a man on fire intially, but as other teams became aware of his shooting prowess, they neutralized him to a certain extent. Don't get me wrong, the guy has a ton of hustle, and was a surpisingly good rebouder, but he wasn't quite the "assasin" that we might have hoped for.

So by my "eye test" I think a year of bulking up combined with no need to hurry for the cash with the NIL money available, I think he should consider staying in school another year to develop more of the "put the team on my back" skills that Jalen showed off all year. I think he's capable of doing that.

Just for giggles, I looked at his scoring to compare it to my eye test. Here's what I found:

12 games into the season (1/3 of the games) he was averaging 15 ppg. After that he settled into the 14's where he stayed unitl the end of the year (14.1 ppg).

But if you look at his performance over 12 game bursts (resetting the scoring clock at each 1/3 of the season), it starts to support my thesis.

After the 12th game, he was averaging 15.4 points per game.

From the 13th - 24th game, he averaged 13.5 ppg.

From the 25th-36th game, he averaged 13.3 pg.

So in theh 1st third of the year, he was a true 15 ppg game, but in the last 2/3rds of the season he was down essentially 2 full points.

I dunno. With NIL I wonder what the hurry is. Not sure he's a lottery pick right now but I think he could be in a year. Why rush?

I look at guys Like Devonte Graham and Christian Braun. Both wonderful college players, who I believed lacked the 5-star physical basketball skills to make it in the NBA.

But when you pay guys millions to spend 6-8 hours a day working on their bodies, nutrition, and basketball skills, you end up with the fully capable, and often super talented, NBA Graham and Braun type players.

I think Gradey’s ceiling is significantly higher than both of those players already, and I think we’ll see an all star level talent emerge once he gets paid millions to focus entirely on his game. I can’t imagine him coming back to KU to endure faceguarding and double teams while a wholly new roster gets implemented.

And that's just reinforcing my original opening statement that I'm admittedly the WORST at scouting for NBA readiness. I'm literally wrong about 100% of the time.

Just for giggles I peeked at a couple of mock NBA drafts. In both of them, they had Grady going somewhere around the 10th spot. They also both had Jalen going in the second round. Meanwhile, if there was a 5 on 5 scrimmage with 8 identical basketball playing robots on each side, and one team had Grady and the other had Jalen, right now, I'd put my money on Jalen's team.

I guess I'll stick to my day job.