CHICAGO -- Midway through his media session at the NBA Draft Combine last week, a reporter asked longtime-phenom-but-now-question-mark Thon Maker about the mix-tapes.

You know the ones. The mix-tapes that hailed Maker as the next NBA superstar. The ones that proclaimed him to be the next Kevin Durant when he was just 16 years old. The "most versatile 7-footer to ever play high school basketball." Odds are, if you're a basketball fan, you've seen one of the countless highlights that have been uploaded to YouTube.

Maker has seen them, too -- but wants to move past them and into a future where his real game does the talking, not the highlights of him facing off against overmatched teenagers.

"People have gotta stop with the mix-tape stuff," Maker said. "That's not me. I bet you those people that put out those mix-tapes haven't really sat through a whole game of mine and watched it and saw my defensive rotations, the way I communicate to my teammates, the way I pass the ball. They probably got the bad passes, the one-handed passes, and didn't get the fundamental two-handed ones, or jump stop, or skip passes. They don't get to see all of that stuff. So some people use that to identify me, the mix-tapes, and I just told the teams what it is. That's not me."

Not only is that not Maker, but it's also never been the reality of Maker's game. Yeah, he has always been skilled, but the hype and predictable backlash to the hype has always overshadowed what he really is as a player.

So with that being said, let's call this the moment where one part of Thon Maker's basketball career died and another was reborn. The moment where Thon Maker: mix-tape superstar disappeared, and followed by the moment where Thon Maker: the real basketball player appeared for good. And now that he's here, NBA teams have to evaluate him as such. And boy, is that going to be tricky.

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Words have been spilled about Maker for years now in a variety of ways from supporters of his play, detractors of his game, and non-reactionary sources. And while the disagreement in regard to his talent rages on to this day, there's one thing that is consistent in just about every discussion.

Maker is known as a thoughtful and intelligent 19-year-old who is wise beyond his years, and it's something that's going to play well with NBA teams.

Maybe he's genetically pre-dispositioned to be such a person. Or maybe it has to do with all of the life experience that he's already undertaken, moving from Sudan to Australia as a child, and then from there to North America when he was a teenager. Even in North America, he's been to three different schools in six years in completely different areas of the continent.

"There's not a certain weather condition that I haven't been in," Maker says about his travels. "I live in Canada, and it can't get any worse than Canada in terms of the cold. It can't get any hotter than South Sudan. So put those two together, and I've been to numerous number of states in the US, so I'm going to be easily accustomed to wherever I go. I'll make friends."

He's also regarded as a tireless worker in terms of improving his game. If there's some sort of "it" that you have to "get" in terms of guys who executives want on a team, Maker is indeed the guy you want.

Now that we've separated "Thon Maker, the myth" from "Thon Maker, the human being' we need to talk about where he's at in the development of his game. That's where the more mixed signals come into play.

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The first thing that must be said off of the top for those unfamiliar with Maker beyond his mix-tapes: he's not Kevin Durant, and he knows that.

"I said 'I like Durant as a player,' " Maker said about how that whole thing got out there. "And they said 'I think I think I'm Durant as a player.' "

So who does he model his game after then?

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Thon Maker raised his stock at the NBA Draft Combine. Getty Images

"Kevin Garnett," Maker said. "I see myself as, later on, being a modern version of Kevin Garnett. What he brings in terms of intensity, leadership, hard work that's contagious and is going to rub off on his teammates, a defensive presence and offense too."

That's definitely a more accurate assessment of what his game is like. At near 7-1 with a 7-3 wingspan, Maker brings a high motor and and interesting skill set to the table on both ends of the floor both on the interior and perimeter. But beyond the effort level, everything is still theoretical at the next level and he has a long way to go to reach that level.

Maker has the framework of a jump shot that occasionally falls from distance, but the mechanics are slow and robotic, leading to a flat arc that may not translate as well to the next level. He's a good athlete laterally for his size with the ability to handle a variety of actions on the perimeter in pick-and-roll and switch situations, but he's not an explosive athlete vertically. He can perform ball-handling moves most 7-footers can only dream of, but struggles to catch the ball at times and seems to have substandard hands.

He battles and fights inside, but his lack of lower body strength hurts him in terms of how he holds positioning against stronger players. He's still young, intelligent, and relatively inexperienced in terms of his basketball career, but he doesn't seem to instinctually react to what's happening around him and doesn't have the most fluid athleticism. He's still growing into his body, but doesn't quite have the best frame for sustainable weight and strength gain.

You can see by all of the contradictions in his game that he's far from a finished product at this stage. That tends to lead to inconsistent performance. He can make a disinterested player look bad relatively quickly due to his motor and energy levels -- see what happened to DeAndre Ayton last summer when he met Maker. Or, he can look relatively bad himself against a similarly sized and skilled player, like what happened last spring against Skal Labissiere at Hoop Summit. He's had good events, like the NBPA Top 100 camp in 2015, and merely average ones like Basketball Without Borders this spring.

The question for NBA teams as they make their decision this June is going to be whether or not they feel Maker is worth the time and energy. Because it's going to take a lot of both of those things. As mentioned, he's still only 19, and has a solid ceiling due to his potential to shoot it and protect the rim. But his game isn't polished enough at this point to play at the highest level, and it's going to take some time to get there. Some scouts genuinely do not think he's a real prospect at this stage.

But don't confuse that lack of readiness right now for abject hopelessness in the future. After all, if there's one combination of assets that can be incredibly valuable in the modern NBA at this stage, it's the ability to hit perimeter jumpers and block shots at 7 feet tall. Some team is going to value that potential and want to develop him. Be it in the first or second round. Be it in the NBA or D-League.

It's time to move beyond the mix-tapes and into reality when discussing Maker. Simply put, he probably does not have the ceiling that some had hoped when he was 16 due to some of the bigger problems in his game -- his lack of explosiveness, rough frame, and poor hands. But there's still a lot of skill in there for a 7-footer. Plus, given his work ethic and intelligence, it doesn't seem like a great idea to count him out.

Indeed, it's finally going to be the little basketball plays that tell the tale of Maker, just like he mentioned in his media session. And that alone makes him worth paying attention to this summer when teams begin selecting players on June 23.