In my opinion it’s a bad take, but think what you will. At this point in Grant’s career he was a consensus first round pick, so those are hard shoes to fill in any comparison.
Carey has some good traits, mostly size with a decent pin down on offense and he’s good under the rim. Not a huge scoring threat, but he could help that stat himself by working on FTs. He’s not a good ball handler or passer, so when he moves up top as a bail out pass, the only real option is DHO. He’s definitely not shooting. He’s going to get the ball low due to being a decent rebounder. He needs to go back up with it more quickly.
Defensively he has struggled to learn Barnes gap defense scheme, but he isn’t bad in a straight man set. Unfortunately this is what is keeping him off the floor. He’s also a far less effective shot blocker than okpara or Estrella.
Carey would probably look like a superstar in a zone defense team playing another zone defense team. His first step is just too slow for the way higher level basketball is played today to be a superstar.
He’s a good player that still has a ton of room to improve. If he could trade 30 lbs for 3 inches of height he’d have something, but no magic wands around here. I still think he could make a massive improvement by leaning out some without losing muscle. Tough ask but it’s doable.
