We all know Jimmer Fredette is a great college basketball player and everyone is talking about him, but when people who talk about him who obviously have not seen him. ESPN's Rick Reilly is one of those who obviously have not seen Fredette play and Reilly has his shtick where he tries to be funny, and he usually does but in this case he misses by a mile.
First off, who cares how good Fredette will or will not be in the NBA, his college career has been great and recording-setting within the BYU program, and he most likely will be named the Naismith Player of the Year once the season ends. If Fredette spends two years or 10 years in the NBA his college career will still a great one.
Reilly goes into some diatribe offending BYU fan's and Fredette himself:
If his last college game is what he's bringing to the NBA, then I'd say, in five years, he's got a really good chance to be your Provo area Isuzu dealer.
Great kid, though. Polite, smart (good chess player, whiz at Sudoku), studies his Bible in hotel rooms. Maybe that was the problem. Fredette and the largely Mormon BYU Nation should've never been made to come to New Orleans. You can sin just by osmosis here.
You should have seen some of them on Bourbon Street, the freshly scrubbed Cougars fans, horrified to find themselves among the window strippers, the hurricane chuggers and the bead catchers.
Really?
I am pretty sure that prior to the NCAA tournament, Reilly had seen Fredette play maybe once or twice. He goes onto complain about Fredette's defense and how awful it is, well we all know that he is not a good defender. Reilly goes into how in the NBA he will need to be a significant better defender, while true when has the NBA really been known for defense.
I also rarely recall people complaining about Allen Iverson or Michael Jordan hoisting up 30 plus shots to get their 30 points, but when Fredette does that it means he is no good. His comparison to Pete Maravichis unfair -- as it was not smart for BYU fans to compare him to Maravich as well -- since he is possibly the best college basketball player of all-time and no player has ever sniffed his 44 point per game average.
I have not read Reilly in years and feel is stuff is old and stale, plus I am not the only one who thinks Reilly was way off base in this article.
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