Dejuan Blair – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Dejuan Blair
PF/C – 6’8, 270lbs – Born 22nd April 1989
Austin Spurs
Three years removed from his last stint in the NBA, and the veteran Blair is still trying to get back in it.
Blair has had short G-League stints in two of the last three seasons, yet this season he landed a spot only by going via the draft mechanism. Blair was drafted with the 107th pick in the 2018 G-League Draft; to put that into some context, that was the second-last pick of the entire thing, and of the 106 “picks” in front of them, 33 had actually been passed (i.e. no selection made whatsoever). It is true to say that roster size limits were a large part of why, but it also evidenced that Blair is not just a forgotten man in NBA circles; he had become one in the G-League, too.
Nevertheless, as 107th picks go, Blair has yielded some excellent value. In his limited minutes, Blair, who now has big hair, has played the physical bully ball that he always did, something which is increasingly rare in the modern era and something that the smaller GLeague 10-man rosters do not always have good defenders for. He has not become someone else; Blair still does not much shoot or handle, is heavily right-handed dominant, has very slow feet on perimeter defence and struggles outside of the paint on both ends. He never was explosive, but he really isn’t now, and while he posts to righty hooks and rolls to the basket off his own meaty screens, the resultant shot attempts are from below the rim.
Still, while the NBA has moved away from players like Blair, the rest of the world has yet to do so. If his health holds up, he should make money for a few more years yet.
– 20th June, 2019
- This above is extracted from the following page in the The Basketball Manifesto, an entirely free 3,775 page, 1.2 million word-ish basketball reference book which contains reviews, strategies, ideas, opinions, and a whole lot of scouting on men’s world basketball.
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