Rui Hachimura has seemingly made a jump over the last several weeks. There’s been a lot of conversation about him taking on the challenge and wanting to guard 1 through 5. On the latest Bleav in Wizards podcast, Larry Hughes and I spent a good deal of time breaking down Hachimura’s development and how he’s finally making better use of his frame and physical gifts.
His proponents compared him to Kawhi Leonard which always felt unfair to me. And his detractors labeled him as a “tweener” which also felt unfair to me. For a while I described his ceiling as bigger, less athletic Caron Butler didn’t feel right either.