Quote Originally Posted by SupaDave View Post
The problem that comes in is that it's pretty hard to think of an ACC player that Barnes compares to hype wise b/c those guys were pretty good and cut their teeth for many years developing their games.

Most of the guys that have gotten the hype throughout the years have been stone cold killers. That's one of the reasons I could never understand why they chose to promote Barnes and not Zeller or Marshall. It's like they kept promoting this "what if?" factor almost. Like "tonight will be the night Barnes goes crazy!". It rarely happened.

I mean this IS a guy that's about to go in the first round of the draft based on SOMETHING. He's not chopped liver but I think that's more a statement of the quality of player in the NBA now... In 1990 Barnes would have done some damage (well maybe, what they lacked in athleticism they more than made up for in physicality).
To be fair, there are some Duke players who didn't live up to the hype or accolades they received as prep players.
Chris Burgess, Ricky Price, and Shavlik Randolph come to mind. Circumstances differ, but I think it's fair to say we, as fans, expected more from those guys.
It's not particularly fair to trash guys for failing to live up to someone else's expectations, but it happens often in sports. They wanted to succeed and tried, but didn't become stars.

One factor in taking shots at Barnes is that, in his case, he really did help create the hype and expectations.
At this point, I'm mostly just curious as to how he will do in the NBA; conceivably, he could end up as a bench player or a star, really don't know.