Andrew Schlecht

You want to talk about the top three guys, I think you can put him in the core four.

I think...

He's a player that has... I mean, he hasn't even played 100 games yet, and it's very obvious that he's got it.

And he's better defensively than they thought, which I think is a huge part of this equation, is that offensively, he's a guy that can get a paint touch whenever he wants.

He can score at all three levels.

He's tough as nails.

But defensively, he's a lot better than anyone thought he would be.

It's part of the reason that he slipped to the second round is that he was thought to be just kind of this...

you know, dynamic score that, you know, is he, he's a bench player in the NBA.

Well, the fact that he can defend and he is as competitive as he is, I think is probably the reason that he's elevated into that core four, because I talked to even, I talked to him about it.

I've talked to Lou Dort about it because I just really value how Lou thinks about defense.

And I was like, what did you think about AJ when he got here?

He was like, he was already good.

He was already a good defender.

He said he's learning more as he goes and as he gets more reps with everybody and as he learns the NBA.

But AJ is a good defender.

And so to me, you can add him to that.

I think as the Thunder figure out where they want to position themselves in the second apron, I mean, they're undoubtedly going to experience the second apron at some point, whether they try to completely dodge it this summer or not.

I don't know.

But AJ Mitchell is going to be part of that path.