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Worst case scenario: ... I don't know, Diet Coke Brandon Knight?
Shoot first, ask questions later.
Here were my comments in the Lotto post, comparing White to Garland:
"Like Garland, a quick PG who'll fire from anywhere and who probably scores better than he creates. Shifty ballhandler. A genius in transition. A terrific shooter for the most part, though I'm not in love with his release point. Also not a great athlete-- Garland probably the better athlete, but White *definitely* is stronger. Like Garland, questionable decision making-- I saw way more Coby game tape, obviously, and he's a guy who can shoot you in or out of a game. Example: end of the first Duke game, White was really starting to jack questionable shots in a game where he struggled against Tre Jones. White had the ball in his hands late in a key possession, and I turned to my friends and say, "We've won." Sure enough, White took an awful shot, missed badly, Duke wins the game.
Hard to hold that against White tbh-- a freshman willing to take those shots is a commodity, honestly. Also hard to compare him to Garland since Garland has so much less game tape-- also, White wasn't the prospect Garland was and wasn't even expected to be OAD, so does that mean he played above his talent this year or was he just too slept on in HS? I'd personally peg White's ceiling as, and I'm not the first person to say this, a Diet Coke Gilbert Arenas. Never the most efficient guy, but a terror when he's hot, and if he got on the right team, he'd be outstanding. Floor is maybe... I don't know, a more aggressive Greivis Vasquez? I think he's deserving of a Top 10 pick, at worst."
After revisiting Coby's stats, I'm less sold on comparisons to guys like Vasquez, because Vasquez was definitely more of a creator than White. Even if Greivis isn't sinking shots, he's still giving you a strong A:TO and setting guys up, whereas if White isn't hitting shots at the next level, he's probably more of a liability. Arenas certainly wasn't a real creator in college, but he got there in the pros, doing 6-7 APG for years, and I'm, again, not overly convinced that's White's game. The more I think about it, the more he seems like one of those sparkplug combo scorers like a Crawford or a Lou Williams. He's not an especially great passer/playmaker except in transition-- he's fine in PnR, but no better than the above mentioned guys-- and he's not ever going to be even a decent NBA defender (he has good height but T-rex arms), so teams will likely be bringing in White specifically to score first, second, and third.
My fear is that, if he goes to Chicago, they need him to be a PG first and foremost to feed the other mouths, and I could easily see him doing early numbers in the 1:1 A:TO range. I feel like he'd be better off the bench than he'd be alongside LaVine... then again, if they're both hitting high percentages, maybe it wouldn't matter. My movies: http://russellhainline.com
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