🏀 KuBuckets Archive

1. T-Rob. This was a foregone conclusion. The best rebounder of the Self era and one of the best scorers too. Plus the way he demanded double-teams was invaluable to our offense. Came up big against misery and lead us to a final 4.

2. Jalen Wilson. A hot take of mine (many will disagree) is that Perry Ellis might actually be the second-best player on the list (I will explain why below). But J-Will just has too much going for him for me not to rank him at two. He had a 20ppg season, was a good rebounder, a solid defender, could handle the ball, and, oh yeah, he was a national champion.

3. Perry Ellis. I really like Perry's game. By his senior year he had an elite understanding of opposing offenses and was able to help our defense get organized in the perfect formation. Furthermore, he could switch onto any guard, rebound, and on offense he would both stretch the floor and give us a post-scoring presence. Plus he was consistent and often commanded double-teams. Like I said, all things considered I think he might actually be the second-best player on this list.

4. Darrell Arthur. This is another player I think is so underrated. He had such a solid all-around game, a great blend of strength, length, and quickness, and was a key contributor in 2008's balanced offense and suffocating defense. Along with Chalmers, Rush, Collins, and arguably even D-Block (who will be ranked with the centers), Arthur is one of those guys from the 2008 team who could have been a star scorer on a less-balanced team.

5. Svi. This is Svi being rated as a stretch 4. I wrote about why I like him so much yesterday. To summarize: shooting, senior year defense, and heroics against Duke.

6. Josh Jackson (could have been a wing but he played the 4). He was unguardable when playing well. I decided not to rank him higher than 6 because of inconsistent defense and costly turnovers against Oregon in the elite 8.

7. Marcus Morris. This is another player who might have a case to be ranked higher. But its just that everyone above him is so good and Marcus had a bad attitude that I think hurt the team. Plus he choked against VCU.

8. Kevin Young. I had a hard time ordering Kevin Young, Dedric Lawson, and KJ. KY and KJ are elite defenders who don't do much on offense, while Lawson was an elite offensive player who was bad at defense. I ended up going with KY first because he saw more team success as a starter than either Dedric or KY.

9. Dedric Lawson. He is ahead of KJ because he is a better rebounder.

10. KJ Adams

11. Christian Moody. I like Moody, but he just didn't have the talent to be as good as anyone else on this list.

Heavy Marcus slander here. T-Rob goes above him but they are both in a tier on their own above the rest of the group.

@MR11 If it was just on-court play I would likely put Marcus at number 2. However, I am also counting factors such as leadership and locker room influence. In 2011 Marcus was our unquestioned leader, and he failed miserably in his responsibility of rallying the troops when VCU hit a few lucky threes against us. Our team was clearly shell-shocked, and that is completely on Marcus.

There was a time the twins felt unstoppable. VCU was a shocking loss. But i think it safe to blame that loss on Morningstar, Reed and Selby who were a combined 3-21.

I think we lost the VCU game the moment we ran through their huddle and lit their fire instead of ours

@Jhawk69 Would you qualify any of these guys as PFs? They were pretty goood :)

What about Wayne Simien? Darnell Jackson? Julian Wright?

@rockchalkjayhawk Yeah but I will rank them with the 5s tomorrow

Perry is too high. He was a below average defender, playmaker, and rebounder. You talk about Marcus Morris in March, but Perry was worse in March. The loss to Stanford, 9 points on 3/10 shooting and 4 points on 1/5 shooting in the 2016 Villanova loss. Those are unacceptable performances from someone who was supposed to be a top player. I would flip him and Marcus.

There's a reason why he's one of the guys on this list who never really sniffed the NBA.

@Texas-Hawk-10 You have a valid case and your opinion is probably worth twice as much as mine. I will defend my case anyways. With Marcus my rationale was more based on his off-court character and his leadership and how it effected the team than it was his performance on the court. Regarding Perry, I agree he wasn't good against Stanford, but against Nova he was double teamed constantly as Nova's strategy was to count on us not making open 3s (which worked), so I don't really blame him for that one.

@Jhawk69 If Perry was a better player, those double teams wouldn't have mattered. In an Elite 8 game, your star senior can't disappear the way Perry did. He just wasn't athletic enough to overcome those double teams.

I forgot Julian Wright. Let's put him at number 8.

I like having Perry ranked high. He was athletically limited but his skills and smarts made him a joy to watch.

Perry was skilled, but my main memories were lack of physicality and vertical leap that kept him from rebounding, rim protecting and dunking as much as I would like from a 4. Same with the Morii, as I recall. Also, it’s been a while, but shouldn’t D Arthur be higher. I recall him as very solid.

@HoraceZontal No championship in ‘08 without Darrell’s quiet 20 point night.

@dylans yup. That too.

@dylans 20-10!

The more I think about it the more I would like to move Darrell Arthur up

Jackson was one of my least favorite Jayhawks ever. Put him in last. KJ hung around for his career, I know he wasn't everyone's cup of tea but it's an insult to him to rank him below Jackson.

There must be an AI tool out there somewhere that could compare players... crunch all their numbers and then weight factors of importance. I know... I know... I'm an AI sellout. I've just had a very successful business month where I dumped a huge load on the backs of my slave laborers... 3 AI platforms that saved me from doom!

@drgnslayr said in Power Forwards/Stretch 4s of the Bill Self era peak offseason pt 4:

There must be an AI tool out there somewhere that could compare players... crunch all their numbers and then weight factors of importance. I know... I know... I'm an AI sellout. I've just had a very successful business month where I dumped a huge load on the backs of my slave laborers... 3 AI platforms that saved me from doom!

Ugg half the sports articles out there appear written by AI - it sucks. They all sound like a 7th grader plagiarized something they don’t fully understand. On a more disturbing front - I read an article the other day where someone used a language model to try demonstrate why rich folks should pay more in taxes - it had no reasoning behind it other than raw numbers that don’t project forward properly. It’s like when someone cheats to get the answers, but doesn’t understand what they are saying so it’s all wrong, but it’s presented as 100% factual. AI is making people even dumber which I find incredible, I thought we had already hit the bottom - Wrong!!! 😂

@dylans That was exactly my opinion from the beginning... when AI was in it's infancy. But now it has grown into a toddler and becoming more useful. Beware... the terrible teens are coming! lol

If you were to ask AI whether Thomas Robinson or Christian Moody was a better player for us, it would, without a doubt, be able to tell you that Thomas Robinson is better and could explain why. However, if you asked it something that requires more nuance, like asking whether Darrell Arthur or Perry Ellis was better, it would most likely refuse to answer and would make the case for both.

@drgnslayr said in Power Forwards/Stretch 4s of the Bill Self era peak offseason pt 4:

@dylans That was exactly my opinion from the beginning... when AI was in it's infancy. But now it has grown into a toddler and becoming more useful. Beware... the terrible teens are coming! lol

It’s a tool that gets misused. - too many use it as a substitute for a brain.

A brain substitute is how it is being marketed. Definitely not the right way to use it.

AI has been around for a while (as we think of it). Photoshop is an example. A couple clicks and you've completely manipulated a pile of pixels. And now, even Photoshop, can go further with tools like prompts. I've spent the last 3 days trying to train a video AI tool on what I want. In the end, it trained me on how to ask it. lol It's been a humbling experience. I first thought I was the boss....

Strange as it sounds, AI is turning into an environmental crisis. I don't know much about this but apparently a lot of water is required for cooling the machines doing this AI stuff? Is it also a reason for increasing electricity rates as demand is increasing? I think I've read that. If I'm wrong, correct me. If I'm right, correct me either way!

The data centers that store the information banks AI accesses are huge and use up a lot of energy.

@wissox https://www.newschannel10.com/2025/07/02/worlds-largest-ai-campus-coming-texas-panhandle/ ↗

Right next to where the nukes are built. What could go wrong? lol skynet goes live in 3..2..1