Wizards win the lottery.
Is John Wall a lock at #1? Is Evan Turner as good a prospect, deserving of serious consideration or is Wall a total no-brainer? In other words, how are the Wizards going to fuck this up?
Other draft news?
I think the Wizards absolutely take Wall. Point guards with that level of talent and athleticism are pretty rare. I think there’s only about a .005% chance that they trade the pick or take Turner instead. Its about as no-brainer as it gets.
I’ll admit I paid little to no attention to college basketball this past season; I never saw Wall play. Who would you say he compares with? Just to throw out some names - Wade, Chris Paul, Deron, Derrick Rose, others? Can he come in and be a star from the git?
I think he compares favorably to Rajon Rondo, another UK one-and-done player. I think he will be a star from the git go.
I am a Kentucky fan so I saw a lot of him, but I could be accused of bias. I’ll mix and match to try to give you an idea. I kind of want to post this just so I can come back and see if I’m an idiot in 4 years.
He’s pretty big, he’s fast like very few players are fast – Iverson/Kidd/Tony Parker straight line speed – and at Kentucky he was a distributor rather than a scorer, which makes him hard to compare. Not as strong as Rose or Wade getting to the rim, but a better point guard than either, and not as good in the halfcourt as Williams or Paul, but unreal in transition, and a better combination of all those things than any of those guys. He mostly gets into traffic to set somebody up rather than finishing himself, but he’s a ridiculous athlete so he finished alley oops and that sort of thing.
He had a pretty good record of making shots in close games, so I think the scoring ability is going to be there, even though he isn’t a polished shooter. It’s hard to tell from one season, but the way he was playing in the tournament I think he’s got it in him to be a 24+ scorer in the NBA, even though it isn’t the way he played in college. With lousy teammates, especially, I could see him playing as a primary scorer, but I think he’d be a much worse player that way. He has really good instincts and makes a lot of plays that non-great players just never make, especially passing in the halfcourt; he created like seven dunks a game. He’s also a little goofy and turns the ball over in really stupid ways from time to time, and even though he’s a very good defender he seemed to get a little lazy sometimes off the ball.
So maybe Russell Westbrook’s floor game, only he’s 6-4 and 200 pounds and is a passer more on the level of Paul or Williams than the other guys. I think he comes in and is a star right away, yeah. I also think he’s going to be #1, but Turner’s a hell of a player and a lot of people like him. Turner’s pretty much a sure thing as an NBA player because of all the things he can do. Of course, as a Sixers fan, or what passes for one these days, this draft has suddenly become a terrifying affair because jesus would I like to see them get Wall.