You know you're getting old when the children of people you saw play are getting drafted. Yes, I remember Samaki Walker.
From the Athletic Draft Guide: STRENGTHS Son of former NBA player Samaki Walker. Was not a wildly high-level recruit and chose Colorado over California and Saint Mary’s. It was quickly realized that Walker was underrated, though. He earned All-Freshman honors in the Pac-12 in 2021, then was first-team All-Pac-12 in 2022. At 6-foot-8 with a 6-foot-11 wingspan and an 8-foot-9 standing reach, Walker has good size and length for the four position. Plays with real twitch and light on his feet. Also has good functional strength. Was not very flexible as an athlete as a freshman but has improved in a big way there. I buy Walker as a shooter for the most part. Clean release with good touch as a teenager. Good shot prep. Ready to one-two step into the shot. Gets a good base underneath him and sets to fire. Really good as a trailer when he can step into it. Made 35 percent YEAR TEAM LEAGUE AGE GP PPG RPG APG TOPG BPG SPG FG% 3P% FT% 2020-21 Colorado NCAA (Pac-12) 18 26 7.6 4.3 0.5 1.1 0.5 0.5 52.6 52.3 77.8 2021-22 Colorado NCAA (Pac-12) 19 33 14.6 9.4 1.2 2.3 0.7 0.7 46.1 34.6 78.4 2022 NBA DRAFT GUIDE 96 of his 3s in 2021-22 but is up around 40 percent over the course of his entire collegiate career on the larger sample size, and he’s always made free throws at a high clip. I don’t see him as much of a movement shooter. He’s a bit too stiff for that, and his shot takes a long time to get off. But he should be able to make shots as a spot-up corner and wing shooter. That might be enough given how good Walker is on defense. Improved drastically in space defensively as a sophomore. Has real switchability now. Colorado used him regularly as a switch defender out of ball screens, and he had some real success with it. Not the quickest guy in the world but has some real twitch and particularly flips his hips well. Stays active on his feet. Combines that with real functional strength through his core that allows drivers to not go through his chest even at 215 pounds and allows him to wall up on the block and play through contact while guys try to push him around. Has good awareness with off-ball actions. Absolutely awesome on closeouts for his size. Covers ground very quickly while staying balanced. Smart rotator over from the weak side as a rim protector. Blocks some shots, but even when he doesn’t get to them, he contests and make the opposition’s life harder. Has real anticipation reads that end up being exceptional contests at the basket. WEAKNESSES Outside of the jumper, I don’t see a ton that is all that translatable as an offensive player. The shot might be enough, but Walker has a way to go at all three levels. Not a good enough finisher for what his tools are. Made 52.8 percent of his shots at the rim this past season, a well below-average number for someone this big. Can dunk out on the break or out of the dunker spot, but he’s a significant load-up athlete at the rim. Has to jump off two feet. Doesn’t maintain his shooting touch through contact either. That’s a problem because he’s that load up off two feet athlete. His leaping isn’t all that functional, and the result is that he ends up taking a lot of below-the-rim attempts. Have very real worries Walker won’t be able to score around the basket all that well. Doesn’t have any ability to be a scorer off the bounce. Doesn’t look comfortable driving and attacking. A very slow driver. Doesn’t seem to have great control over the ball. Has no first step, no change of pace and no effective crossover game. You know exactly what he’s going to do every time. His only counter is his spin move, which makes it easy on defenses to anticipate that he’s either going to try to drive straight or try to spin back. Can’t get to the rim. Gets stuck in the midrange all the time. And that’s a significant problem because he’s also not a great pull-up threat because the shot takes too long to get off. Gets blocked more often than you’d hope as players recover into the play. Made six of his 23 pull-up attempts this past season. Extremely hard for him to be efficient when that’s the case. On top of it, instead of taking advantage of defenders collapsing on his spin often, he doesn’t see passing reads or see the court well. Results often in turnovers. Misses open kickouts all the time because defenders collapsed on him knowing he wouldn’t make the read. What we have here on offense right now is a pure spot-up guy. Walker isn’t a movement shooter, and he doesn’t have many ways to score outside of hitting spot-up 3s or getting out on the break. SUMMARY What role can Walker fill on offense? That’s ultimately the big question. He’s a good shooter, but he’s streaky enough to where he’s not a good enough shooter to not do anything else on that end and make it. Essentially, you have to buy into him being able to add some further functional ability as a driver or finisher. He’s much more interesting if you felt like he could be a versatile roll man off pick-and-rolls or pick-and-pops. Or if he could make short-roll passing reads. Or if he could functionally attack closeouts to where he can either drive to kick or drive to score. He can’t do any of that right now. He’s still a teenager, so there is some real time for him to add these skills. And his defensive versatility mixed with his size and potential to shoot it only off the catch could give him enough time to figure the rest of it out. There’s a chance Walker is a useful forward defender who can knock down shots at some point. But it’s very theoretical until he becomes more comfortable on offense. He’s on the borderline of being a guarantee guy or a two-way for me.
Solid defender, good shooter (when set). May be more ready to contribute than 3-4 players currently on the Blazer roster.
Never saw this dude play, didn't even know who he was, but I gotta say I'm intrigued by what I've seen since. Seems like another Schmitz pick btw
Measured at their respective combines... Jabari Walker 6'6.75" barefoot, 214 lbs, 6'10.75" Wingspan, 8'9" Standing Reach Jerami Grant 6'6.5" barefoot, 214 lbs, 7'2.75" Wingspan, 8'11" Standing Reach So about the same height/weight but Grant is longer. One measurement they weren't alike at all was body fat where Walker was over 12% compared to Grant under 4% which seems to imply that Walker isn't (& probably hasn't been) in very good shape. If he can find religion about conditioning, nutrition & taking care of his body, who knows? Maybe he's got another level of play he hasn't hit yet? STOMP
I'm a PBJ guy, and it looks like neither really had an efficient night, but Walker stepped up when he had to. I think that says something about him.
yes good form but if I'm critiquing it's not a quick release. Bet they focus on shortening his motion to help get it off at this level. STOMP
When Tad Boyle decided to offer Jabari Walker a scholarship to play basketball at Colorado, he was — he’s not afraid to admit now — doing so mostly on a whim. Walker was not a highly touted prospect. He was a three-star wing without a clear position, a skinny kid who outwardly showed relatively little of the pedigree of his father, Samaki Walker, a 1996 top-10 NBA Draft pick who played a decade in the league. Boyle thought Walker was interesting early in his career at Compass Prep in Arizona, but he hardly had a deep developmental file on the kid, and by the time the Buffaloes had a genuine recruiting need for a player of his type, COVID-19 had sent all recruiting into the dreaded realm of the Zoom. Walker, like so many of his peers, never stepped foot on Colorado’s campus in the process, and Boyle never got an up-to-date look at whether this gangly young prospect had improved. “We ended up signing him not knowing, quite frankly, what we were getting,” Boyle said. After two promising, productive years of college basketball, first as a role player and then as a star, the Jabari Walker portrait is much clearer now — and the Portland Trail Blazers, who picked him 57th in the NBA Draft, hope there is much more upside left to capture. Walker, as it turned out, was simply a late bloomer, a player whose full skill package and body hadn’t remotely come together by the time he needed to decide where he wanted to play college hoops. Now, as he enters the NBA, that late-bloomer label still fully applies, this time with a foundation of proven, in-demand NBA skills. It’s an exciting combination. Those showed his long-term potential not long after Boyle finally got the player on campus. “I remember talking to Samaki when we signed him, and he said ‘Coach, I hope he can help you by the time he’s a sophomore or a junior,’” Boyle said. “‘He’s not ready yet.’ Then he gets to campus and goes through workouts and it’s like, oh. He’s a good player.” Walker had the benefit of walking into a veteran Colorado team, a top-10 outfit nationally and one led by senior guard McKinley Wright IV, and so Walker could blend in, do the stuff he did well, and not be forced to carry a major load. Listed at 6-foot-9 with a 7-foot wingspan, Walker shot 52.3 percent from 3 and flashed elite rebounding rates as a freshman, playing on the periphery of a high-functioning offensive team. Out of nowhere, the 3-and-D wing template was applied, and the NBA immediately took interest. Walker’s star turn came last season, as a sophomore, when things got complicated. Suddenly, thanks to his own rise and to a minor rebuilding year for the Buffaloes’ roster, Walker was expected to be a star. He also, for the first time in his life, felt the all-seeing eye of constant NBA scouting scrutiny. Early in the season, shots weren’t falling, his stock was slipping, and a minor crisis of confidence ensued. “You know what happens to these kids,” Boyle said. “There was some buzz about him after his freshman year, and he’s like, Now I’m the guy, it’s my turn.” It was hardly a secret among the Colorado coaching staff that Walker had put too much pressure on himself, and that his shot had gone haywire as a result. Rather than spiraling, though, Walker managed to turn his season around, an impressive piece of quiet resilience that salvaged Colorado’s Pac-12 campaign, too. In short, Walker chilled out a bit; shots started falling; defenses started pushing up on him, which allowed him to put the ball on the floor, and everything flowed from there. The promise of his freshman campaign remained intact. By the end of the year, Walker shot 34.6 percent from 3, including 37.3 percent in Pac-12 play, while also rating out as the nation’s 11th-best defensive rebounder. He was capable of operating in the post, and produced efficient per-possession numbers down there. Offensively, he could float between roles somewhat, for better and for worse, but generally, he was exactly the kind of efficient, outside-in wing with length the NBA loves to draft these days, and so it is little surprise he was selected after impressing scouts during the pre-draft process. Still, there are big areas for growth. Walker has the tools to be a solid two-through-four defender, but didn’t always apply them last season. He should get stronger and faster, and will probably need to. The inconsistency of last season’s shooting can’t carry over into the league. But the fundamentals — great rebounding and deep perimeter shooting in a forward’s body — are there. If Walker keeps blooming at the current pace, he should pleasantly surprise his next coach, too. https://theathletic.com/3369293/2022/06/24/jabari-walker-nba-draft/
Developing him to his specific skillset is key. He’s a shooter - not a slasher/rim runner/playmaker. Miami Duncan Robinson sets - wide open 3s.
They have 12 players on the roster (I included Nurk and Ant but not Bledsoe) before free agency. They also have a decision on Elleby. So unless they’re sending out more than they’re taking back in a theoretical trade, I doubt they have room for Jabari on the active roster, especially if they roll with 14 players like usual.
Yeah sure, there's a bit of a roster crunch and we will see how that plays out but I'm just saying that this particular picture does nothing to prove that he is going to be a 2-way guy. Looks like some random word doc written by somebody online or another team. It's just some inspirational stuff for his Instagram
I don’t mind having him on a 2 way rather than a guaranteed deal. He does a lot of things well and is still developing, I’m guessing that if he can stay in front of guys on the perimeter in practice and hit open 3s in garbage time, he’ll be back on a cheap 3 year deal like Watford. It’ll be exciting to see if he can consistently guard SGs and SFs. He’s probably got a Trevor Ariza ceiling.
