Awesome, Kentucky’s Archie Goodwin sneaks into the first round at #29 to OKC. He’s very, very raw, hope OKC can develop him. The Thunder have two UK guys now, suddenly I like them more.
Now I need Murray State’s Isaiah Canaan to get picked.
Goodwin’s going to Phoenix. Colorado’s Andre Roberson goes to OKC in a complex trade between Golden State, Phoenix, and OKC. OKC wanted to get Roberson with the second pick in the second round.
Roberson is a stat freak’s Golden Child. All of the things that transfer well from college to the NBA he is great at, and he is weak at the things that don’t carry over to the pros. He could be a steal.
Dammit! At least he’ll get more minutes there.
Maybe, but I had a lot more confidence that the OKC front office knew what they were doing before the Perkins extension and the Harden trade.
That Stern/Hakeem sequence was genuinely affecting. Stern’s had a hell of a run.
And there goes Canaan, to a Houston team that’s done very well with low-drafted players. Great spot for him. He has a 2-guard’s skill set in a point guard’s body, so hopefully they can develop his passing skills.
Glen Rice Jr has to be the first guy drafted off a D-League team, right? What a strange tale.
It has happened at least a couple times before. Mike Taylor from Iowa State, that guy Latavious Williams. I don’t know if there were others.
Well if there was ever a draft to go with the safe pick (which IMO is normally not the case), this was it. Which is why I love the Oladipo and Porter picks. Those were no-brainers as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t blame the Cavs for taking a flyer on Bennett; you want to make a splash with the #1 overall pick and Bennett has as high as ceiling but a much higher floor than Len, and apparently they were nervous about Noels’ knee. I think they got a good player who can contribute off the bench right away and at least be a solid starter by 2014.
And to no one’s surprise Michael Jordan shits the sheets again and picks Zeller WAY too high. The kid’s got little t-rex arms. Frankly I don’t think he’ll ever be a legit NBA player.
Noel will be just fine in Philly, and of course time will tell but for the moment New Orleans came out WAY ahead on that trade.
Two of the 2nd rounders who I hope have nice careers are Ray McCallum and Nate Wolters, both small school guys, one of them from that basketball factory South Dakota State, the other a McDonald’s HS All American who spurned big programs to play for his dad at Detroit Mercy.
Sixers were busy, huh? Traded for Noel, then traded Glen Rice, Jr. to Washington for Arsalan Kazemi and Nate Wolters, who they then send to Milwaukee for Ricky Ledo (who gets sent to Atlanta, who sends him to Dallas), then they pick Pierre Jackson who’s headed to New Orleans as part of the Noel trade. That seems like an excessive amount of work to wind up with Arsalan Kazemi, whoever the fuck that is.
I like Rice for the Wizards, he should be a good player off the bench, but they still need a decent backup point guard and I liked Wolters for that role.
Huh. I don’t watch the draft every year, sometimes I just check the results the next day, so I must have missed those.
I’m not thrilled about his height but I also had serious reservations about McLemore. We did need defensive help, too; the team was 25th in defensive efficiency last year (admittedly with half the starters out for half the season.) For five years it was “let Dwight take care of it” so even the veterans had kind of forgotten how to play D.
I guess if Oladipo has the physical tools to turn into an offensive star I’m good. If he’s always going to be a one way player I’m not.
I’d say the biggest winners last night were:
New Orleans. Love the Noel + 1st-rounder for Holliday trade for them. Noel would have been redundant on their roster, and Holliday is a 23-year-old All-Star, not something that falls in your lap every day. They can start Holliday-Gordon-Davis-Lopez, with Greivous Vasquez and Ryan Anderson coming off the bench, which isn’t a bad core at all. Their starting SF, Al-Farouq Aminu, is a UFA, and they have no replacement on the roster, so that must be addressed, but otherwise, not too shabby!
Brooklyn. They found a way to improve after all! Getting out from under the awful contract they gave Gerald Wallace was a masterstroke. If Joe Johnson’s healthy and productive, and we see Actually Gives A Shit Deron Williams, this team’s ceiling has just risen to the #2 seed. The future has to be right now, though, considering the age of Johnson, Pierce, and Garnett, their insane cap figure, and the fact that they just traded 3 first-round picks. KG gets to play power forward again, unless they use him as a sixth man (which I imagine would be Pierce if anyone), which should let him squeeze a bit more out of his body, since he’ll be banging with smaller guys. Tons of pressure on Jason Kidd, he is far and away the weakest link in the organization now.
Biggest losers:
Charlotte. Cody Zeller at #4???
Boston. Surely this wasn’t the best offer they got for KG & Pierce. The picks will be in the mid-to-high 20’s unless J-Kidd is a debacle, and Gerald Wallace’s deal runs through 2015-16 and he can’t be amnestied. Jason Terry made half as much and his deal ended in '14-15. Unless they are able to move Wallace, this trade represents about 35 cents on the dollar for KG, Pierce, and JET.
His ceiling is roughly “Tony Allen with a jump shot”, which isn’t great for a #2 overall pick, but in this draft, you could do a lot worse.
Oladipo gets to the rim well. He was 4th in the Big Ten last season in offensive rebounds. He’ll slash past guys and get lots of freebies on put-backs. His effective field goal % was the highest of any of the picks. He was an efficient offensive player.
I don’t get the criticism you guys are giving him about his height. He’s about Dwyane Wade’s size. Heck, he weighs more than Nerlens Noel.
He’ll be a solid contributor, but that’s probably it. For #2 in the draft, he’ll underwhelm.
Agreed, 6’ 4" isn’t great size for a modern shooting guard, but neither is it noticeably short. Here’s the heights of the starting two-guards for the playoff teams:
Dwyane Wade - 6’ 4"
Monta Ellis - 6’ 3"
Jason Kidd - 6’ 4"
Avery Bradley - 6’ 2"
Lance Stephenson - 6’ 5"
Devin Harris - 6’ 3"
Joe Johnson - 6’ 7"
Marco Belinelli - 6’ 5"
Thabo Sefolosha - 6’ 7"
James Harden - 6’ 5"
Danny Green - 6’ 6"
Kobe Bryant - 6’ 6"
Evan Fournier - 6’ 6"
Klay Thompson - 6’ 7"
Chauncey Billups - 6’ 3"
Tony Allen - 6’ 4"
Good thing Orlando’s in the East, though, some tall guards out West.
The criticism is about his height per se; it’s about his guard skills considering his height. If what you bring to an NBA team is that you project as an elite wing defender and havoc-wreaker, a high-efficiency converter in transition who can bang on somebody with regularity, and somebody who scraps on the boards, that’s great: you’re Gerald Wallace. Except Gerald Wallace is six-seven, six-eight. He can do all those things and hide on the weak side in the half court, because he doesn’t need to be a primary ballhandler.
Oladipo did the same thing at Indiana. In the tournament they were starting Ferrell, Hulls and Watford, all of whom were much more competent with the ball than Oladipo. And hell, the fifth guy out there was Zeller. So he was playing on a very spaced floor, getting basically exclusively fantastic catch-and-shoot and run-out looks.
Now he’s on the Orlando Magic. That’s why it matters that he’s six-four. He’ll be on the court with, what, Vucevic, Harris/Big Baby, Harkless/Afflalo and Jameer Nelson? The difference between being Dwyane Wade and being a guy who makes open shots suddenly becomes pretty stark. Freebies and efficiency and hustle are great. Who’s going to get shots and take and make shots for that team?
KG had a no trade clause and he wouldn’t agree to a trade unless it was somewhere he liked and Pierce came with, Boston wasn’t getting equal value in this trade no matter what.
Gerald Wallace is a forward, and the comparison only works if you’ve concluded that Oladipo won’t be able to create a shot for himself. He’s a guard, I expect him to be able to score the ball.
And it worked pretty well for them. But you can’t draw firm conclusions about a player’s game based on the system he played in in college. If college defenses left him open for catch-and-shoots, then Indiana didn’t need him to create. That said, when Oladipo did attack he got to the FT line about a third of the time, so I think you’re underrating his ability to get to the basket.
Orlando isn’t ready to compete yet, so it doesn’t matter if he’s unable to carry the scoring load his rookie year. They’re still a work in progress. But you’re right, he does need to improve his ball handling.
Yes, Gerald Wallace is a forward, whereas you expect guards to be able to create their own shots. Which is why using the number two pick on a guard who has never done so is a thing I’m talking about.
That was a fascinating and crazy draft, and I enjoyed David Stern’s trolling a great deal. I wonder where the heck Andrew Bynum is going to end up. I think the Noel trade - which I liked for New Orleans - means that Philly is going to let him go. So who takes a gamble on him, and for how much? I assume there will be a couple of interested teams and that he’ll get a contract that is bigger than he probably should.
You really think Tom Crean was able to plumb the depths of what he could do as a player?