The Boozer Debate

At some point, you’d think people who make a living in basketball would figure this out: intelligence can compensate for athleticism.

The classic examples are Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, but there are others: Steve Kerr, Don Nelson, Draymond Green, Charles Oakley, Stephen Curry and, most recently, Kon Knueppel.

Knueppel is particularly relevant here because when he was taken with the fourth pick in the 2025 draft, people thought that was way too high. Ace Bailey was said to be a safer pick.

As it turns out, that wasn’t true at all, and Knueppel, along with his Duke roommate Cooper Flagg, are the leading candidates for Rookie of the Year.

Now, Cam Boozer is having a National Player of the Year type season and people are having the same sorts of questions.

In a sense, we get it. He’s not flashy. He doesn’t fly through the air with the greatest of ease and all of that. But athleticism, in and of itself, is no guarantee of success.

In this article, Jonathan Wasserman has some thoughts about Boozer’s potential:

“He continues to produce in the paint using his strong frame, footwork, touch and the instincts that tell him when to be patient and how to counter. However, it’s the 16 threes (10 games), drives past closeouts, pick-and-roll ball-handling and obvious passing IQ that separate Boozer. His perimeter game gets sharper every year. His scoring versatility remains unmatched for a big.

“There are still going to be evaluators who question whether his dominance can translate, mostly because of a lack of vertical explosion. But that just seems like overthinking at this point.

“Boozer compensates in so many other ways with his strength, feel and skill, and his rapidly improving shooting and face-up game should help ease concerns over athletic limitations around the basket.”

We’re not comparing Boozer to Bird, who, as Joe Dumars once said, was a savant. But Boozer is exceptionally smart and the NBA of today is not the NBA of Bird’s era. You can’t beat players up like Bill Laimbeer did. The rules today do not allow it.

Boozer will be guarded, but he consistently makes smart decisions and the NBA court is far more open than it used to be. His fundamentals are as sound as anyone we’ve ever seen at his age and if you’ve paid attention, you’ve noticed that his brilliant footwork gets him out of some situations that most players simply couldn’t do. He’s also a tremendous rebounder.

Like we saw with Knueppel, no one will know for sure where the X of Boozer’s intelligence will intersect with the Y of his physical talent when he gets to the league. However, there is one other factor that consistently gets underestimated or dismissed that really shouldn’t be, and that’s this: Boozer’s teams tend to win.

He’s emerged already as a vocal leader. His fundamentals are superb, as are his instincts, and he won consistently in high school, basically winning everything his teams were in. So far at Duke, he’s undefeated. That will most likely change, but the pattern is unmistakable: Boozer’s teams win. That shouldn’t be overlooked.

And by the way, this is now a generational thing because people had the same debate about his father, Carlos, who went on to have an outstanding NBA career.