Adjustment period on deck for Ferguson
There is a short-term plan for Terrance Ferguson.
The Thunder rookie — the No. 21 pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft — is spending this weekend getting to know his new organization. On Saturday he will meet the media. The hope is that he’ll play in the Orlando Pro Summer League starting July 1.
There will be a longterm plan, too. It’s not quite so clear.
“You know, I’m hesitant to say this is how this guy’s first season is going to go,” Thunder general manager Sam Presti said. “I’m hesitant to say. I don’t know how the first month is going to go.”
Ferguson was one of the most mysterious men in this year’s draft, a 19-year-old former Dallas high school star who skipped college for Australia’s National Basketball League, where he spent this season with the Adelaide 36ers.
Now Ferguson — born in Tulsa, where he lived until the sixth grade — has a new hoops home, but questions remain.
The biggest among them: How soon can a teenager realistically hope to help a team that won 47 games and reached the NBA Playoffs? There’s no easy answer. Most any praise of Ferguson — and there certainly are reasons to praise the 6-foot-7 wing — is accompanied with a caveat, a sort of youth disclaimer. He turned 19 in May and played only 15 minutes per game last season with the 36ers.
“He has a chance to be really good, because he’s athletic, he can shoot it and he can really defend,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said in an interview Friday. “He’s a two-way player, and I think you can expect that he’s going to be like a lot of these young players that enter the draft. With some time and maturity, he’s got a chance to be an outstanding pro.”
How much time it might require is anybody’s guess.
Ferguson built his reputation in high school as a shooter, and he showcased his long-range talents last year at the Nike Hoop Summit, an event that pits some of the top U.S. high school players against elite prospects from the rest of the world.
He made seven 3-pointers in that game, and he’s capable of heating up on a moment’s notice. Ferguson is “among the better shooters” in the draft, Bilas said, and a high-flying athlete who can score in bunches.
And he’s a willing, hard-working defender.
All of that sounds like a fit in Oklahoma City.
But even for the Thunder — the third-youngest team in the NBA last season, and the youngest to make the playoffs — Ferguson is a youngster. He’s two years younger than Domantas Sabonis, a rookie who played his way into the starting lineup at the start of the season.
Late Thursday night, when the draft had ended – long after the Thunder had selected Ferguson – Presti met the media. And though he said the organization is “thrilled” to have Ferguson, Presti also tempered shortterm expectations.
He noted that the Thunder doesn’t draft a player “for where he is today” but to “walk hand-in-hand with them through their development.” Presti said the franchise is “hopeful he’s the type of player that will emerge over time and be a contributor at the NBA level.”
There are players who accelerate the learning curve, Bilas said, because they land in a winning culture early in their careers.
“That doesn’t mean they all do, because they all don’t,” Bilas said. “But that’s a great culture (in Oklahoma City). And (Ferguson) plays hard. He does that all the time. It’s not situational. That’s going to serve him really well.”
That still might not be enough for Ferguson to help Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams as a rookie.
He could send much of his season with the Blue, honing his craft in the G League, or he could be running the floor across Reno Avenue with the Thunder.
“This guy, he competes,” Presti said. “I don’t want to put any limitations on what he’s capable of doing. He makes shots. He’s got great, great length and speed. So those are things that generally are valued in our building. We’ll see where it goes.”