A film crew has been following James Tyler, the San Diego High School prep star, around campus and is even considering putting cameras in his home. This is all in hopes that the 6-9, 240 pound 16-year-old will someday be a National Basketball Association lottery pick. Of course, before that he would need to play one year of college basketball as per an NBA rule requiring any player entering the draft to be one year removed from their high school class' graduation.
Tyler is rated the No. 1 sophomore basketball player in the nation by Rivals.com. In 2007-08 he led his team to a 23-5 record and helped his team win the California Interscholastic Federation San Diego Section Division I championship for the first time in 33 years. Tyler averaged 18 points, 14.5 rebounds and 7.7 blocks. NCAA teams that have showed interest in Tyler include North Carolina, Florida, Georgetown and UCLA.
To give some perspective, during his sophomore high school season in 2000-01, Lebron James averaged 25.3 points, 7.3 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.6 blocks. Tyler is obviously more of a power forward than he is a small forward. His own coach has admitted that the biggest weakness in Tyler's game is his ball handling. He will probably continue to grow and be close to 7-feet which could mean that ball handling wont be his main objective during games.
A more fair comparison would be 7-1 Center Tyson Chandler who, as a sophomore at Dominguez High School in 1998-99 averaged 14.1 points and 8.1 rebounds. Chandler had to grow into his awkward body and learn to use his size to his advantage. Most likely this will be the path Tyler will take during the next three years.
- some facts in this article were obtained from an article written by David Biderman of highschool.rivals.com.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment