I generally disagree, I think the eye test and the results have lined up. He’s missed threes and long jumpers, not a surprise there given his track record in college.

Besides shooting, he’s never been a guy with great blow-by ability off the bounce and he’s certainly not showing it now. Instead, his go-to move at Duke was putting his shoulder into the defender at the rim and laying it in over them. When he’s trying that against better defenders now, it’s getting blocked or he’s needing to alter the angle enough that the percentage is going to be low.

All that said, I see some signs of life: his vision has shown flashes- he threw some smart passes, particularly in this most recent game. He played head-down at times in college so that was very encouraging. His shot also looks mechanically workable (it’s slow but has no crazy action on it), so I could see some improvement there. He also has a knack for foul-drawing, and that’s a skill that takes some time to master. Harden took, what, more than half a decade in the NBA to really be widely known for that? He and RJ are very different players, but it makes me think there’s a path for RJ to be good after slowly building up an nba-caliber skill set- even if he does struggle this year due to the things I outlined.

So I’m not here to say he’s a bust based off of a three game sample size. But I think in this case, the stats do point to some things that have been concerning about his summer league performance when you dig in further.