Messing with development

If you follow the NBA, I will assume that you would be familiar with these big men - Dewayne Dedmon, Willie Cauley-Stein, Bismack Biyombo, Wenyen Gabriel, Willie Hernangomez, Boban Marjanovic and Tristan Thompson.

These are experienced centers but up to the time of this writing, they’re homeless and are hoping that teams would want their services.

What’s my point?

Most of us had been swallowed by the hype of Kai Sotto’s summer league participation with the Orlando Magic and with the misplaced notion of landing an NBA contract.

Indeed it was an achievement to be included in the NBA’s audition lineup, but are others who are also bent on proving that they belong.

Well, the bubble had burst and Kai’s reportedly now back in Manila to rest his aching back.

If the above mentioned players can’t find a home in the NBA, how much more for Kai who had never really validated the importance of his 7’3” frame in both the Australian and Japanese leagues.

And as far as the Philippine national team is concerned, he’s yet to prove that he can fill the shoes of Junemar Fajardo or perhaps Japeth Aguilar.

In fairness to Kai, he’s only 21-years old and there’s a lot of room for improvement, a work in progress.  He wasn’t bad when he was finally given some playing time but coaches prefer to use their lottery picks more to assess their values to the team.

Kai had a satisfactory 2 games but sadly, Orlando didn’t think our great Pinoy NBA hope has it.

The caveat here is on his handlers.

It looks like they’re rushing things for Kai’s NBA dream oblivious to the fact that the basketball world have more mobile, faster and stronger big men also chasing the same dream.

Heard of that French guy named Victor Wembanyama or perhaps Colin Castleton?

Maybe his handlers should consider former Gilas coach Rajko Toroman’s advice that Kai play in the FIBA World Cup as it would be a very good learning experience for him with current and former NBA players on the roster in more than half of the 32-nation field.

But things were rushed thinking that with his length, Kai is all ready for battle.  It had messed his development.