Jahlil Okafor Continues to Prove Doubters Wrong

Jahlil Okafor of the Philadelphia 76ers has been shutting down people who have doubted him since he came into the league.

For some reason, Jahlil Okafor was not accepted when he became a Philadelphia 76ers player last summer. Drafted with the third overall pick in the draft, many Sixers fans groaned at the idea of bringing in yet another true center, on top of Nerlens Noel and Joel Embiid.

Who could blame them? The issues that were going to arise were pretty obvious. Once all of them are available for starter-like minutes, it’s going to be nearly impossible to divvy up the minutes between the three and make them all reach maximum output. But Sam Hinkie stuck to his formula, drafting for best available, and not for fit.

There’s an ongoing debate about who the Sixers should trade to clear their frontcourt logjam. I’ll leave my two cents here. I have been on the Jahlil Okafor side of things (that is to say, the team should trade Noel, and keep Okafor) since last season. He demonstrated a lot of offensive capabilities in just over half of a season that I really liked. Nerlens Noel stagnated in just his second playing season, and that worries me. I also think that the Sixers are not done with their logjam in the frontcourt after they trade Noel or Okafor. It’s still going to be hard to work out minutes between Embiid and Okafor or Noel, but a lot of people are, for some reason, ignoring that issue.

That being said, the rest of this article is not about why I think the Sixers should be keeping Okafor. While I still think that’s the right decision, I don’t think the debate of “Noel or Okafor” is getting us anywhere. It’s turned Sixers Twitter into a nightmare, and we all just go back and forth saying the same things over and over.

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The debate is redundant, and it doesn’t do anything at all. We’ve all put our case in, and now it’s up to the team management to decide who to trade.

With that said, I do feel as if Okafor has done a great job of shutting his doubters down since he entered the NBA.

Coming in as a rookie, there were some clear flaws regarding Okafor and his development as an NBA player. The two largest things were the fact that he was a lackluster defender, and that he could not sink free throws.

Let’s approach the free throws first, since that’s the thing that is most consistent from college to NBA. The defense is exactly the same — none — and the shot is also exactly the same distance away from the hoop. Free throws are quite possibly the only thing that is fairly controlled when moving from college basketball to the NBA.

There was reason to doubt Okafor’s free-throw ability coming into his NBA career. He shot 51 percent from the charity stripe during his sole season with Duke, which isn’t impressive whatsoever. He has huge hands, so it was somewhat understandable.

Much was made about his poor free-throw shooting leading up to his NBA debut, and he worked on his shot during the offseason. We saw videos put out online of him sinking 10 free-throws in a row, but it still seemed like the pressures of a real game would get to him.

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He did decently over the course of the season, though, improving his free-throw shot. By the end of the year, he shot 69 percent from the free-throw line, a huge step up from his just over 50 percent rate in his collegiate career.

Something that came up throughout the year was the fact that he was a little big — almost in an out of shape way. When those comments came up, though, we saw Okafor slim down not too far after that. He hit the gym, and clearly made himself more slender.

The issue with getting slender, however, is you risk losing weight and becoming less dominant in the paint. You have to compliment fat loss with muscle gain, something Okafor just recently has shown off. Pictures emerged early this weekend of Okafor showing off new muscle. While he still could work on specific muscle groups, he’s definitely on his way towards becoming a more dominant athlete.

Now, onto the defense. That’s the biggest issue going into this season. He can’t really guard anything beyond 5 feet of the rim, and he’s awful at switch defense and covering pick-and-rolls. He also wasn’t great at defensive rebounding, averaging 4.7 per game last year, and only 1.1 per game when there was one player contesting his rebound.

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I’m not saying Okafor doesn’t still have issues to work on, but let’s also remember that he’s only played 53 games, and did improve a lot in his game within those 53 games. Why should we expect anything less this year?

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This year is huge for Okafor. He needs to improve on his defense and his rebounding, but if history tells us anything, it’s that Okafor works towards making himself better. The first team All-Rookie player will flourish in the NBA and continue to strive towards being a better player whether it’s with the Sixers or not.