Miles in the NBA

[timmy c]

Here is an interesting Draft Express write-up on Miles and his upcoming draft prospects.

“… despite his unimpressive career numbers, Plumlee is an NBA prospect and could get some looks from teams drafting in the second round. If not, he's easily the type of player who could find himself on a team's roster this fall, as there just aren't that many big men around with his physical attributes and rebounding ability.”

See the rest of the article here.

[Dukehky]

I always thought that the biggest issue with Miles was his mental state in games. For years I've heard that he was the best big man in practice. He was the starting Center at the beginning of his freshman year, but when the games started, it took a really long time for him adjust to the pressure he put on himself as a Duke basketball player. To be perfectly honest, I fully expect him to make a roster in the NBA for the reasons listed in the previous post, he's a tremendous physical specimen who will be a phenomenal practice player to say the least. I actually think the pressure that he senses as an NBA player will be significantly less than being a Duke basketball player, and will hopefully lead to a career where he fulfills his potential even more than what we saw when he was at Duke. His mid-range game is solid, his post moves are good when he gets the ball and decides he wants to be aggressive, and he's built like a house and can jump out of the gym. If he can get his head right, there is no reason he can't be a great practice player and hopefully a solid role player in the league for a long time. As I've said before, as a professional basketball player, without anything other than hoops to worry about, he's just going to get better with every day that goes by.

[NM Duke Fan]

To me Miles has significant potential to make a team, and if he can let his instincts and body take over in due time instead of over-thinking the game, he could really surprise people. He has the necessary physical tools to stick in the league and be a solid back up for years. Miles, lose your mind and come to your senses!

[greybeard]

To me Miles has significant potential to make a team, and if he can let his instincts and body take over in due time instead of over-thinking the game, he could really surprise people. He has the necessary physical tools to stick in the league and be a solid back up for years. Miles, lose your mind and come to your senses!

Instincts have nothing to do with how one performs. Nothing. Miles has poor concepts about certain type movements, he works against himself and the laws of physics and makes certain movements/moves much less effective and efficient than they can be. My guess is that this comes from classical training that gifted athletes exposed to "coaching" at an early age receive, coaching that has to do with developing musclular core muscles, muscling the ball from waist high up to shooting or dunking the ball and delivering it to the basket. All thisw muscling gets in Miles' way, much of it is downright self-sabotaging. Tight core muscles that hold excessive residual tension PREVENT rather than FACILITATE a person's moving from a bent over position to a relatively upright one. Thus, for example, when Miles catches it inside the defense, bends to gather himself, either fakes going, up or actually goes up, to shoot, he must not only overcomke gravity but also the pull of his core muscles downward into folding. The core muscles are more powerful than the erector muscles of the back. The erector muscles must exert sharp and effortful force to break through the folding flexor muscles of the core. When they do, Miles arms go flying upwards, and the ball goes flying out. We then say that Miles has "bad hands," or Miles is "uncoordinated," but neither is true.

Rather he is double cursed. First, all the core strengthening exercises big guys are put through to help them stand erect and do whatever it is that strength and basketball coaches think they help big guys do actually impede flowing athleticism and the timing and completeness of the flexor muscles of the core and therefore of the rest of the body, particularly those that permit the head to move away from the chest and come even with the horizon and even slightly upwards, to LET Go. This is what we call COORDINATION. Miles' workout routine to build ever stronger abs works against his performance rather than furthers it.

The problem for guyws like Miles is compounded by the fact that the focus on core muscle strength leads to upside down concepts of what makes for effective inside play--it actually prevents them from seeing the obvious and leads them to try to do things that make no sense kenesthetically, esthetically, and certainly not from the perspective of the dance that takes place between te guy with the ball h is nerthe asket and the guy without it who is trying to time and impede the guy with the ball from putting it into the basket.

I could spell this out in minute detail, believe me minute. But, I'll simply ask you ts. Does anybody on this Board, anyone, not KNOW to a certainty when Miles is faking underneath the basket instead of going up to shoot, and does anybody on this Board not know when Miles is intent on going up to shoot and is the least bit surprised when he loses control of the ball. Are you alll genuises? My guy Michael Hebron used to be fon of saying that "even the worst golfer among us can tell by looking who has a good swing that makes sense from one that doesn't. They might not know what makes one swing work well and the other work bad but they sure as heck can see the difference.

Miles does not simply need to relax, not play with the stress tht he usually brought to the court iuntil those final handful of games, he needs to learn how to figure out how to do things differently, how to discover ways of playing underneath the basket that permit him to control tempo and direction and balance and manipulate those things in the defenders around them. Once he begins the process of experimenting with a fresh mind, hopefully with some structure that will permit the differentiation of body parts that move together as if frozen when sometimes moving them in opposition or with different timing would be more effective for the task at hand, he will learn a much more diverse and effective array of offensive skills than he has developed in the 16 to 18 years of having been subjected to how to instructions has produced to date.

The best thing about the pros is that it will give Miles the opportunity to kick it with players who present in diverse ways to get near the rim, manipulate defenders, and go into finishing moves as the reaction of the defenders dictates. He can watch and look for all sorts of things beyond which all those fitness gurus and how to coaches have told him in a miriad of ways are important. We are talking from the feet through the knees (bend) to the tihtnss and twtichness o ththghs nd butts to the elongated elegance that those same muscles can create and which are far more susceptible of change midstream than the twitchy variety, to thetightnes of the shoulders, neck and jaw muscles, the firmness with which the ball is held, which hand is on top and which is on the bottom, which route the hands take when they bring the ball up to shooting, and how that fits with what has been done before, etc. You look at those things from moves that your temmakes make against you in one-on-one lay that emts them to change in midstrea o aoid your defense and throw you even further off the play while maintaining their own balance and timing and delivery. You then try to recreate what you think you have seen in your own body until the feel and the movemens sem to begin to fergh eversible and repeatable and the ball goes where you wnt o\it, with the trajectory and speed that you wnt it, maybe also the spine that you wnt it, from the release point you want it, and so on.

None of this learning can take place if Miles is dead set on tighting those core muscles into a permanent state of assymetrical constriction and Miles is certain that more strength and quicker movements with greater intensity of musclar action is the answer.

There is, I am soyo say, no instinct to return to that will permit a person who does not know how to pull a hyudini and simply relax into a performance that requires self knowlegdge and mastery. Once the course of such learning begins, once the investigation of possible modes of self use in different environments begins, learning can take place quite quickly--an awful lot can be accomplished in a surprisingly little time. But, practicing the same way, with stress or not and expecting different results, well, let's say it don't work and lae it t hat. If it did, I have to believe that we would not be having this conversation for the millionth time, for the millionth time even though we know that Miles has been subjecd to world-class phyical trainers, kinesthegiologists, how-to coaches, since well before he came to Duke and certainly thereafter.

At some point, someone has to come up with the startling possibility that there must be a better way. Hmmm.

[allenmurray]

There is, I am soyo say, no instinct to return to that will permit a person who does not know how to pull a hyudini and simply relax into a performance that requires self knowlegdge and mastery.

This sentence makes my brain hurt.

[mstein34]

i could see him being a Taj Gibson type player off the bench. give him a few years and he'll come into his own.

[COYS]

Rebounding is a stat that usually translates very well to the NBA. Miles has always been very good at it. I think Miles could thrive on a team that already have plenty of scoring in their second unit and just needs a guy to come in and do dirty work on the boards and on defense. His offense is still very, very raw and he'll have to keep turnovers to a minimum. However, if he can start to hit wide open 12-15 footers with consistency (he's shown flashes of this in college) and do his usual cleanup work around the basket, he could have a pretty solid career as a role player off the bench. If things ever slow down for him and he's able to improve his rebounding to exceptional levels (which his athleticism might make possible) he could be more than a role player off the bench.

[Reilly]

Shav (6-10, 245): 92 G, 17.5 mins, 6.3 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 0.6 ast, 1.4 blocks, 51% FG, 64% FT
Miles (6-10, 230): 135 G, 15.9 mins, 4.8 ppg, 4.8 rpb, 0.3 ast, 0.6 blocks, 56% FG, 63% FT

[MIKESJ73]

Shav did make over $3,600,000 in the NBA alone. That is a nice little head start to any career. Hopefully Miles can make some money playing ball too. IMHO, Shav was a better ball player, but Miles is a better athlete.

[Jderf]

Shav did make over $3,600,000 in the NBA alone. That is a nice little head start to any career.

Head start!? I know you were purposefully making an understatement, but still, if my net worth ends up being anywhere near that at the end of my "career," I will be a very happy man. Head start? Heck. That's starting from the finish line, if you ask me. Not a bad place to be at all.

[cato]

Head start!? I know you were purposefully making an understatement, but still, if my net worth ends up being anywhere near that at the end of my "career," I will be a very happy man. Head start? Heck. That's starting from the finish line, if you ask me. Not a bad place to be at all.

Of course, grossing $3.5mm in your 20's and ending up with a net worth of $3.5mm when you're 65 are two very different things. Nevertheless, as you say, starting from the finish line is still a good place to start.

[hq2]

Of course, grossing $3.5mm in your 20's and ending up with a net worth of $3.5mm when you're 65 are two very different things. Nevertheless, as you say, starting from the finish line is still a good place to start.

Shav (6-10, 245): 92 G, 17.5 mins, 6.3 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 0.6 ast, 1.4 blocks, 51% FG, 64% FT
Miles (6-10, 230): 135 G, 15.9 mins, 4.8 ppg, 4.8 rpb, 0.3 ast, 0.6 blocks, 56% FG, 63% FT

Hard to say. Shav did make it, but he had problems at Duke with playing overweight and being injured;
we never really saw him at his best. Not sure if Miles has that much upside. I think he's closer to
Chris Burgess, who was a great athlete at 6-10, but had minimal B-ball skills, and who never made the NBA (although Miles may be a little better). Anyhow, now that I know Shav's worth around 3 million, I won't feel sorry for him.

[greybeard]

Try this. Lie on yourright side with your right arm extended straight towards the wal behind your head, your hand face up, with the side of your head resting on your arm. Now, listen carefully. SLOWLY, open and close your right hand, but only until you feel some resistence, which means that nobody should be closing one's hand anywhere near a fist. In fact, when closing one's hand, simply bring your thumb reasonably extended towards the other fingers, also reasonably extended and also the fingers towards the thum and then stop when the resistence appears, whether it is efore the fingers touch or not. The same with opening the hand, only go as far open as is easy, until resistence appears. Do this very slowly, aqnd then slower than that. The slower you go the better able you will be a ble to discern differences, when the resistence first appears rather than pushing past that point and, if, as will undoubtedly be the case, push less far past the point of when resistence first appears. Do this for a few minutes, and then lie on your back and relazx. You might want to notice whether both sides of the upper back feel equally wide and equally in contact with the ground.

Go backi to your side and begin the opening and closing slowly, and only as far closed and open as you will feel resistence.

I could then ask you to coordinate the opening of your hand with an exhilation, aqnd repeat for a half minute to a minute, and then switch, match the excellation with the closing of the fist, again keeping both the exhilation and closing of the fist slow and in cync. Can you tell whether the fist opens and closes further and more easily when the exhilation and openking of the fist are coordinated or when the exhilation and the closing of the fist are coordinated? I could then ask you to repeat both going even more slowly about 25 times and see if you become clearer as to which will allow the hand to close and open more fully. I could do this but I won't because it will turn your head and your stomach inside out at first and for a while, until the movement of the hand starts to really let go of the residual tension that is held in the hand, the forearm, the upper arm, and the answers will change or appear to change, if you can tell any difference at all as you do this. It is by the way quite illuminating as you work with this and we could add many other small movements to this to make matters even more interesting, but we wont not now.

For now, work with the opening and closing of the hand slowly, about 25 times, only what is easy. Stop and rest for 30 sec0onds or a minute, and then coordinate with inhaling and exhaling but do not concern yourself which comination makes opening or closing easier. Repeat slowly each 20-25 times and lie on your back and rest. You might want to notice how the two sides of the back contact the ground or not.

Now, back on the right side and begin openking and closing, only what is easy, without regard to whether you are breathing in or out. Do it slowly and try to approximate when resistence is encountered and start going the other way. After you have done this around 10 times keep doing it and as you do, tighten your abs. No, I don't mean squeeze the snot out of them, just tighten them and then notice whether your hand is opening and closing less far, that is, whether you encounter an unmisstakeable amount of resistence as the hand both opens and closes and whether that resistence is encountered much sooner than when you were just opening and closing your hand slowly without squeezing/contracting your abs.

Remember, I haven't asked you to just play with coordinating the opening and closing variously with breathing in and then out. Breathing out in small and slow fashion will have necessarily constricted your lower abs a little, a relative minute amount, and if you did this a while you might discover some quite unexpected things. Nope, all I'm asking is that you establish a basepoint of op0ening and closing slowly without sqeezing or constricting your hand/fingers or pressing them outwards when opening--to practice doing this slowly and stopping either sqeezing or pressing open but rather making as little effort as possible. With that basepoint, we will then see what happens to thaqt right hand as you squeeze/constrict your abs, not a lot, but clearly discernibly, much less than say you imagine Miles might when he folds by constricting those abs in preparation for going up.

Should any of you undertake this little, and it is just the very beginning of a little experiment, it would be interesting if you reported your findings.

Should you find all this preparation too much, even in the name of science, even in the service of perhaps getting out of your own way when you go to say shoot inside off a rebound, if any of you play, you can simply lie on your right side, open and close your hand so that your thumb and fingers, not held rigidly either straight or curled, come closer together and stop when it gets slightly more difficult--do this 10-15-20 times until you get the hang of itl, the tempo and effort and amplitude of it, and then constrict those abs a bit and notice the difference that it makes.

Then, go back and imagine all that ab work that Miles has done and how much mass he needs to be lifting, and imagine the possility that he has developed the habit of constricting whenever he thinks of doing work through his middle, inclusive of when he is straightening rather than folding.

Then we will be able to discuss this issue. Until then, we are doing nothing much more than playing kick the can with a make believe can. Later.

[moonpie23]

Shav did make over $3,600,000 in the NBA alone. That is a nice little head start to any career. Hopefully Miles can make some money playing ball too. IMHO, Shav was a better ball player, but Miles is a better athlete.

shav is making money now....a lot...not in the nba, but he's playing ball, seeing the world and checking his atm balances...

[tommy]

Instincts have nothing to do with how one performs. Nothing. Miles has poor concepts about certain type movements, he works against himself and the laws of physics and makes certain movements/moves much less effective and efficient than they can be. My guess is that this comes from classical training that gifted athletes exposed to "coaching" at an early age receive, coaching that has to do with developing musclular core muscles, muscling the ball from waist high up to shooting or dunking the ball and delivering it to the basket. All thisw muscling gets in Miles' way, much of it is downright self-sabotaging. Tight core muscles that hold excessive residual tension PREVENT rather than FACILITATE a person's moving from a bent over position to a relatively upright one. Thus, for example, when Miles catches it inside the defense, bends to gather himself, either fakes going, up or actually goes up, to shoot, he must not only overcomke gravity but also the pull of his core muscles downward into folding. The core muscles are more powerful than the erector muscles of the back. The erector muscles must exert sharp and effortful force to break through the folding flexor muscles of the core. When they do, Miles arms go flying upwards, and the ball goes flying out. We then say that Miles has "bad hands," or Miles is "uncoordinated," but neither is true.

Rather he is double cursed. First, all the core strengthening exercises big guys are put through to help them stand erect and do whatever it is that strength and basketball coaches think they help big guys do actually impede flowing athleticism and the timing and completeness of the flexor muscles of the core and therefore of the rest of the body, particularly those that permit the head to move away from the chest and come even with the horizon and even slightly upwards, to LET Go. This is what we call COORDINATION. Miles' workout routine to build ever stronger abs works against his performance rather than furthers it.

The problem for guyws like Miles is compounded by the fact that the focus on core muscle strength leads to upside down concepts of what makes for effective inside play--it actually prevents them from seeing the obvious and leads them to try to do things that make no sense kenesthetically, esthetically, and certainly not from the perspective of the dance that takes place between te guy with the ball h is nerthe asket and the guy without it who is trying to time and impede the guy with the ball from putting it into the basket.

I could spell this out in minute detail, believe me minute. But, I'll simply ask you ts. Does anybody on this Board, anyone, not KNOW to a certainty when Miles is faking underneath the basket instead of going up to shoot, and does anybody on this Board not know when Miles is intent on going up to shoot and is the least bit surprised when he loses control of the ball. Are you alll genuises? My guy Michael Hebron used to be fon of saying that "even the worst golfer among us can tell by looking who has a good swing that makes sense from one that doesn't. They might not know what makes one swing work well and the other work bad but they sure as heck can see the difference.

Miles does not simply need to relax, not play with the stress tht he usually brought to the court iuntil those final handful of games, he needs to learn how to figure out how to do things differently, how to discover ways of playing underneath the basket that permit him to control tempo and direction and balance and manipulate those things in the defenders around them. Once he begins the process of experimenting with a fresh mind, hopefully with some structure that will permit the differentiation of body parts that move together as if frozen when sometimes moving them in opposition or with different timing would be more effective for the task at hand, he will learn a much more diverse and effective array of offensive skills than he has developed in the 16 to 18 years of having been subjected to how to instructions has produced to date.

The best thing about the pros is that it will give Miles the opportunity to kick it with players who present in diverse ways to get near the rim, manipulate defenders, and go into finishing moves as the reaction of the defenders dictates. He can watch and look for all sorts of things beyond which all those fitness gurus and how to coaches have told him in a miriad of ways are important. We are talking from the feet through the knees (bend) to the tihtnss and twtichness o ththghs nd butts to the elongated elegance that those same muscles can create and which are far more susceptible of change midstream than the twitchy variety, to thetightnes of the shoulders, neck and jaw muscles, the firmness with which the ball is held, which hand is on top and which is on the bottom, which route the hands take when they bring the ball up to shooting, and how that fits with what has been done before, etc. You look at those things from moves that your temmakes make against you in one-on-one lay that emts them to change in midstrea o aoid your defense and throw you even further off the play while maintaining their own balance and timing and delivery. You then try to recreate what you think you have seen in your own body until the feel and the movemens sem to begin to fergh eversible and repeatable and the ball goes where you wnt o\it, with the trajectory and speed that you wnt it, maybe also the spine that you wnt it, from the release point you want it, and so on.

None of this learning can take place if Miles is dead set on tighting those core muscles into a permanent state of assymetrical constriction and Miles is certain that more strength and quicker movements with greater intensity of musclar action is the answer.

There is, I am soyo say, no instinct to return to that will permit a person who does not know how to pull a hyudini and simply relax into a performance that requires self knowlegdge and mastery. Once the course of such learning begins, once the investigation of possible modes of self use in different environments begins, learning can take place quite quickly--an awful lot can be accomplished in a surprisingly little time. But, practicing the same way, with stress or not and expecting different results, well, let's say it don't work and lae it t hat. If it did, I have to believe that we would not be having this conversation for the millionth time, for the millionth time even though we know that Miles has been subjecd to world-class phyical trainers, kinesthegiologists, how-to coaches, since well before he came to Duke and certainly thereafter.

At some point, someone has to come up with the startling possibility that there must be a better way. Hmmm.

Funny, but none of these purportedly self-imposed physical limitations on Miles's performance seem to have affected him much at the defensive end, where his timing, his hand-eye, his strength, his jumping ability, and his overall athleticism, not to mention yes, his instincts, served him very, very well.

Rather than worrying too much about letting the coolness into his vertebrae, or whatever, I'd rather see Miles work on developing a drop step and a little jump hook. Those might help a tad.

[greybeard]

Funny, but none of these purportedly self-imposed physical limitations on Miles's performance seem to have affected him much at the defensive end, where his timing, his hand-eye, his strength, his jumping ability, and his overall athleticism, not to mention yes, his instincts, served him very, very well.

Rather than worrying too much about letting the coolness into his vertebrae, or whatever, I'd rather see Miles work on developing a drop step and a little jump hook. Those might help a tad.

On defense, Miles relies on the big muscles of his butt and thighs and hamstrings to do most all of the work. When they animater action, the also big muscles of the arms and shoulders respond. The finer the muscles of the forarms and hands, eyes, head, the ability to create illusion, all require subtleness, not force. Going for a rebound involves explosive action, holding position requires big muscle constant constriction; leaping involves the firing of big muscles. All these actions involve less of your brain than dribbling, catching off the dribble, faking with the ball, arms, hands, head, shoulders, eyes, etc. in a way that seems to say "here comes my momentum up to a shot so that the defender will react while your center of gravity has not moved." These are two different functions.

More importantly, on defense and rebounding you will not see Miles or any other big man start from a semi crouched position; they will be upright, not rigidly so as what many mstakenly call "good" posture, but rather with the erectness one sees in an upright running back. Thus, while there is the issue of residual tension throughout the core muscles that needs to be overcome that slows a player like Miles down, there is not the purposeful constriction of the core muscles that causes other flexor muscles like the muscles that pull the chin down towards the chest, the shoulders down and forward, the ribs down and forward, and all of the joints associated with these bends very rigid to overcome.

And, when Miles loses himself, that is his poor concepts of self image, when sprinting down the court to finish on a fast break we see what freedom can bring. But, how would you explain the anomoly of a beautifully performing athlete's running with elongated strides down the court, catching the ball in stride and then having the ball slip out of his hands, or bounce off the rim when he goes to throw it down. My hypothesis, he constricts those core muscles with the rest of the flexors in the body, which by the way include the muscles that CLOSE THE HAND INTO A FIST, in preparation for delivering the ball to the basket? Stress is not an answer. Stress will throw one into habitual patterns of flexor constriction, if that is your habit. On the other hand if you look at Mayweather, or Sugar Ray Robinson or Sugar Ray Leonard, when they are under "stress", their shoulders drop, their heads remain loose and floating on top of their spines, their arms are loose not tight, and their torsos are pliant not constricted. You want a perfect image--catch some video of when Tommy Hearns had Leonard in trouble and looked like he was ready to take him out and it ended up the other way around. Look at Leonard.

A perfect example of this same sort of posture in basketball would be, among others, Adrian Dantley, Kevin McKale, Paul Gasol, Vladie Divoc, Anthony Davis, Bill Russell, to name just a few inside players. You want outside players, MJ, Kobe, Nash, Pippin, Pierce, Dirk, Magic and Bird. You will see rigidity in these players when they have a defender off balance and want to blow/push past them. It is a conscious choice and can be let go in a nanno second.

By the way, the two best off the ball big defenders who dominated with their defense even though they were only in the 6'9" range brought that same type organization to their defensive styles and relied on the quickness and effortlessness in getting off their feet and moving their arms and hands with the freedom that the softness throughout their torsos that a lack of core constriction permitted were Russell and Davis. Both had the luxury and intelligence to use that organization to wait and to come at the ball from unexpected angles with impecable timing to be the defensive forces that they were.

In the end, my perspectives are just hypothesis, there might well be other things going on that a visual "examination" does not pick up that might be revealed by moving someone in ways that are effortless to them that will revel that such a hypothesis is wrong, or incomplete. The more one investigates, the more a revised hypothesis might be shown to need reevaluation. We are talking about an entire and unique individual, and one means of analysis, a first approximation of what is actually going on is rarely the whole story and sometimes no part of the story at all. My experience with the game tells me that my hypothesis concerning Miles has a decent chance of telling alot. But, that is all.

Stress is an interesting word. What parts of Miles you think it impacts and how you do not explain; nor do you explain why, if there is stress on one end of the court, it disappears on the other. If it is stress that produces tightness, knee jerk and uncoordinated actions on offense, as you posit, how and why is it turned off on the other end. And, what is it that you mean by "stress." Are you suggesting that Miles "chokes," and does so with reasonable consistently when close to the basket? it does appear to be what you are actually going beyond suggesting. I'm not buying it.

[tommy]

Stress is an interesting word. What parts of Miles you think it impacts and how you do not explain; nor do you explain why, if there is stress on one end of the court, it disappears on the other. If it is stress that produces tightness, knee jerk and uncoordinated actions on offense, as you posit, how and why is it turned off on the other end. And, what is it that you mean by "stress." Are you suggesting that Miles "chokes," and does so with reasonable consistently when close to the basket? it does appear to be what you are actually going beyond suggesting. I'm not buying it.

You quoted me at the beginning of your post, and then at the end posited the above question, as if I had stated that Miles' struggles offensively were due to stress. I never said anything of the kind. Another poster or two did, I think. I don't think it has anything to do with stress. I certainly never said or suggested that Miles "chokes." No idea as to where you got that.

In fact, it was I who queried you as to why, if the root of his problem is his abs, or his core, or any of this other physiological and kinesthetic stuff that you discuss, why would that body serve him so well at the defensive end and yet betray him at the offensive end of the floor?

Miles is an excellent defensive big man. He is a very good athlete. He has a decent stand-still jump shot from 15 feet and in. What he never did at Duke was develop any reliable back-to-the-basket post moves, like a drop step, a jump hook, a turnaround. Whether that was because he put more work into developing other aspects of his game at the expense of low post moves, or whether he tried to develop them, but simply didn't have the natural talent to make those moves effectively against top flight defenders, or because he lacked confidence to try the moves very often in games, I don't know. Though I suspect it was one of the latter two, I don't know because I wasn't at practice.

Nor have I seen his abs or heard or read that he has done an unusual amount of strengthening or muscle building in that area.

[miramar]

From today's Miami Herald:

"The Heat, which has the 27th selection in the first round but no second-round pick, has begun summoning prospects to AmericanAirlines Arena for workouts, including Georgetown forward Hollis Thompson and Vanderbilt shooting guard John Jenkins.

Several other prospects are booked for upcoming auditions, including power forwards Drew Gordon (New Mexico), Andrew Nicholson (St. Bonaventure), John Shurna (Northwestern) and Miles Plumlee (Duke), Vanderbilt center Festus Ezeli and Gonzaga center Robert Sacre."

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/3...#storylink=cpy


I don't think they would be looking at Miles as a first rounder, so perhaps they are considering him in case he's not drafted. Miles would be a nice backup for Chris Bosh.

[COYS]

From today's Miami Herald:



I don't think they would be looking at Miles as a first rounder, so perhaps they are considering him in case he's not drafted. Miles would be a nice backup for Chris Bosh.

I would imagine you're right. Even if they LOVE Miles and think he has first round talent, they'd be crazy to take him in the first round as there is virtually zero chance that anyone else takes him that high.

[CDu]

From today's Miami Herald:

"The Heat, which has the 27th selection in the first round but no second-round pick, has begun summoning prospects to AmericanAirlines Arena for workouts, including Georgetown forward Hollis Thompson and Vanderbilt shooting guard John Jenkins.

Several other prospects are booked for upcoming auditions, including power forwards Drew Gordon (New Mexico), Andrew Nicholson (St. Bonaventure), John Shurna (Northwestern) and Miles Plumlee (Duke), Vanderbilt center Festus Ezeli and Gonzaga center Robert Sacre."

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/3...#storylink=cpy


I don't think they would be looking at Miles as a first rounder, so perhaps they are considering him in case he's not drafted. Miles would be a nice backup for Chris Bosh.

The Heat (with playmakers like James and Wade) are actually a terrific location for a guy like Plumlee. Draft him in the 2nd round (or sign him as a free agent) as a backup PF and have him come in to defend, rebound, and catch alley-oops. Boston would be another good fit in that regard. Same for Chicago and the Clippers. He wouldn't be as good a fit in San Antonio (where their bigs are asked to make too many decisions with the ball) or OKC (where they already have limited offense guys in Perkins and Ibaka). But on a contending team with a good playmaker that doesn't need a back-to-the-basket scorer, he'd be an interesting get.