Paul George

Been awhile. I plan on getting back into things a little more as the season starts. Of course I had planned to toss some content out over the summer, but that just didn't happen. We'll see how this goes.
I follow the two big draft sites, NBADraft.net and Draft Express, mainly for their mocks. Both sites have excellent content, but I like following the mocks because it gives a quick snapshot to what the scouts are probably thinking at this time. In general the two sites are pretty close on the top players and have been for the few years I've followed each site. This year there's one difference. NBADraft.net has had Fresno St. swingman Paul George consistently in the top 10, while Draft Express barely mentions him and has him as their 46th ranked sophomore. So I thought George would be a good guy to look at starting this season off. There's obviously some disagreement among the experts on this guy. I'm going to go by the numbers to see how he stacks up. Here's the Paul George profile. The numbers are from 2008-09, hs freshman year.:

• Size: 6'8 210 according to ESPN. The draft sites have him at 6'7" 185, which I suspect are his numbers from last year. That's good for an SG, tall and sinewy. He seems to have gotten bigger since his frosh year and if it's due to working out, that's a good thing.
• Scoring: P40: 16.7, FG pct: .470, 2-pt pct: .486, 3-pt pct: .447. This is a weak spot for him and something that has to change if he expects to be drafted in the lottery. SGs who can't score both often and efficiently never make it as anything more than a reserve. Specifically his P40 and 2-pt pct. need to improve to at least 20.0 and .500.
  
• Defense: RSB40: 10.5. George is a potentially great defender, considering his size and the fact that his stellar 10.5 RSB40.
  
• Passing: Assists are on the low side and his A/TO is a weak 0.8. Right now I wouldn't call this a problem, but I will say that it wouldn't hurt if he could improve this number.
• Team situation: He was the Bulldog's 2nd-leading scorer last year, behind PF Sylvester Seay. Seay returns this year as a 5th-year senior. The team is loaded with swingmen, so there could be competition for the ball. Unless George comes to camp and shows dominant scoring skills, one would guess that this year's Bulldogs will resemble last year's bunch. That's a balanced-scoring attack where Paul George improves his scoring modestly to about 18.0 P40.

Right now it's tough for me to call Paul George a likely lottery pick. He's more like a player to watch. He has good size, plays good defense and he can drill the trey. He might break out this year, but I've watched players like Antonio Anderson, Eddie Basden and Geoff McDermott spend 4 years in college flashing a great all-around game sans the scoring. Such players rarely make a ripple in the NBA. Paul George needs to start scoring more often and scoring more efficiently on the 2-pointers if he's going to live up to NBAdraft.net's high opinion of him.