Former NBA player Rasheed Wallace was on the show “Gil's Arena” with another retired league star Gilbert Arenas where the discussion was on Purdue basketball's Zach Edey and how they see his game translating to the Association.
Edey and the Boilermakers recently just lost to UConn in the national championship game as the Canadian-born player's next step is being drafted in the NBA.
The topic of Edey in the NBA has been a polarizing one as, while there is no denying how productive Edey has been in college, winning back-to-back Naismith player of the year awards, there's also a side that thinks his ceiling is low for the professionals.
There have been countless mock drafts where Edey is a late first-round pick, even as low as a second-round selection, but Wallace on the other hand shared his support, even saying he “should be the No. 1 pick.”
“I like the young fella, he’s a big body, dominated college,” Wallace said. “Hurley came with the old-school mentality. We’re going to let you get yours, but everybody else can’t get theirs.
“That’s pretty much what it was. Nobody could stop Edey in the tournament. It was just slowing or stopping the other guys, and that’s what they did. But Edey I think should be No. 1 pick. If any GM’s got sense, that’s the No. 1 pick for sure.”
Wallace would run his team through Edey
Edey won back-to-back Naismith player of the year awards, which is the first time a college basketball player has done that since the early 1980s when Ralph Sampson did it.
Wallace made his case about Edey during the show with Arenas, even saying that, if he was an NBA general manager or head coach, he's “running my whole thing through Edey” and even compared the way the San Antonio Spurs build around rookie Victor Wembanyama.
“I’m running my whole thing through Edey dawg, number one. Let's just say hypothetically the Wizards, and he goes there, I’m building around him dawg,” Wallace said. “Wherever he goes is going to be a bad team, just like they’re doing with Wembanyama in San Antonio.
“San Antonio is f—n terrible, but what happened? They drafted Wembanyama, and he’s doing his thing, but he’s still taking his pops on the chin though. It’s going to be the same thing with Edey.”
Arenas previously said that Edey would make an NBA GM get fired
Arenas already shared his opinion on the matter of Edey right after the Elite Eight where he mentioned that any NBA general manager that selects the 7-foot, 4-inch center “is probably going to get fired within a few year.” In Zach Edey's last college basketball game in the national championship, he scored 37 points and collected 10 rebounds.
“Listen, I don't want to mess a kid's hopes up, right, because you know he's playing a hell of a basketball, but you know I'm pretty sure whoever drafts him in the lottery is probably going to get fired within a few years after that draft pick,” Arenas said.
“How he plays the game is not how the game is being played today, so that same player you can find in the second round. So I'm pretty sure he will slip because how is he going to play defense in the NBA now?”
Arenas calls Edey a ‘waste' of a lottery pick
His main reason for dismissing Edey was more so on the defensive side of the ball where he talked about the prospects of guarding superstars like the Denver Nuggets' Nikola Jokic and Philadelphia 76ers' Joel Embiid. He would then double down his thoughts on Edey and say that he would be a “waste” of a lottery pick.
“You only really have two match-ups, which is Joker, Embiid, and they're going to pull you on the outside,” Arenas said. “I mean, it's a different game, so unless he can develop a defensive strategy of moving around the perimeter, being switched on, he's just going to be picked on.
“So to waste a lottery pick on that, I don’t see it happening. But there are stupid general managers out there, so it could happen.”
There is no doubt that it will be interesting to see where Zach Edey lands in the NBA, especially in terms of the draft choice, as whether or not he's worth a lottery pick, he could be of use due to his size and ability in the post.
“In a recent Yahoo Sports mock draft by Krysten Peek, he's the first pick in the second round by the Toronto Raptors. This season, Edey has averaged 25.2 points, 12.2 rebounds, and 2.2 blocks per game while shooting 62.3 percent from the field.
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