Sikatrix2
Moderator
Landale's improvement so late in his career is actually incredibly rare , remember he was a bench warmer for the Spurs last season. And now at 27 years old with Phoenix he's playing well .
While some may say cause he got PT , but that's the thing you don't just get PT , unless your showing the coach what you can do in practice. CJ already disclosed why he can't give Kai more minutes (reported to season unconditioned). . We can rationalize all we want why he's getting less minutes , but at end of the day , NBA scouts rarely almost never look at undrafted players who are not only not starting for foreign teams , but who's stats are not improving from year to year rapidly. Note the biggest expected jump is from Rookie year to 2nd year (this is expected), it's not happening for Kai. Kai has to be a starter and be an all NBL candidate to be noticed by NBA teams , if he can't do this over an aging and defensively weak DJ in 36ers , this speaks volumes..
For sure the centers like Seagun in Turkish league had to compete with better centers to get minute over , and they did to get noticed
While the Landale case is rare, one thing going for Kai is he spent the early part of his development in the Philippines and obviously that hampered his growth to a certain extent. That combined with the G League fiasco means, at least to me, that there is a chance for Kai to take a leap now that he is in the proper environment to succeed at the highest level.