Duke Associate Head Coach Jeff Capel: Okafor Was Easily 'Best Player In Draft'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Before the 2014-15 NCAA basketball season, Duke's Jahlil Okafor was the preseason collegiate national player of the year. During the season, the freshman big man led his Duke Blue Devils to a national championship, averaging over 17 points and eight rebounds per game.
But the 19-year-old 6',11", 275-pound center from Chicago was not the first name out of commissioner Adam Silver's mouth at last Thursday's NBA Draft. Okafor wasn't the second either. Instead, the ACC Player of the Year fell to the Philadelphia 76ers at No. 3.
"Well, I think you're getting the best player in the draft [in Okafor] and to be quite frank, I'm not sure it's close," Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel III told Michael Barkann and Ike Reese Monday on the 94WIP Mike & Ike Show. "He's an amazing kid, a truly unique and special young man and an immensely talented basketball player whose best basketball is ahead of him. He's a big time winner and he has effected winning at the highest level at every stop, whether it's been high-school, USA basketball winning three gold medals and being the anchor for each team, and then certainly for us. As a freshman, leading us to a National Championship."
Listen: Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel III on the 94WIP Mike & Ike Show
If Okafor was clearly the draft's best player, why didn't the Minnesota Timberwolves take him first?
"[Karl-Anthony] Towns is very talented, don't get me wrong," Capel said. "And OK, maybe he can step away and do some stuff away from the basket better than Jah. Maybe he can, people look at defense. All I know is that Towns fouled out about six times this year only playing about 20 minutes a game. And again, it's not a knock to him. The kid is very talented and has a big upside, but to me when I look at the history of basketball, the history of the game. The game the majority of time, if you take away the Jordan years, has been won---the Jordan years and the two Isiah Thomas championships in '89 and then '90---the game has been won with dominant big guys or at least guys that can post."
