16 NBA Draft Thoughts

Now that the NBA lottery order has been set, I thought this would be a good time to barrage the world with my thoughts about this year's NBA Draft and maybe a few thoughts about the NBA playoffs as well.

1. My favorite moment of the NBA playoffs so far happened Tuesday night. All year Orlando Magic fans have been happy to have Vince Carter on their team and he has played well for them. That may have changed after his 5-15 performance on Tuesday night. He had a few moments that I think are pretty typical for his NBA career so far. So much potential, but short on the execution.

I am not a huge Vince Carter fan (for various reasons, not just because of where he graduated from), so it was great to see him settle for fall-away jump shots (as Jeff Van Gundy implores Carter to finish at the rim, he just won't do it) and then miss two key free throws that would have put the Magic within 1 point with less than a minute to go. Orlando, welcome to the world of Vince Carter. Where a fall-away jump shot is just fine, even though Carter should be able to drive to the basket, and the only two free throw misses for him during the game will come at a key point in the game. There's a reason Vince Carter is a basketball player better to be watched by a basketball fan when he isn't on your favorite team.

Onto my NBA Draft thoughts:

2. This column was written before the lottery last night, so we know the Wizards got the first pick of the NBA Draft and the chance to draft John Wall, which wasn't known at the time the article was written. It talks about some teams that may not draft Wall because they already have a point guard. For me, this is like passing up the chance for a new BMW because you have a 2004 Toyota Camry sitting in the garage already.

The Minnesota Timberwolves have a 19.9 percent chance at the top spot, but they drafted two point guards last year at fifth and sixth overall -- Ricky Rubio, the sensation still playing in Europe and will be for at least another year; and Johny Flynn.

You trade the rights to Rubio, because he isn't playing for the Wolves anyway, and play Wall with Jonny Flynn. That's if you want John Wall on your team and don't like Evan Turner more than you like Wall. You don't pass up Wall even though you like him better than Turner because you have Jonny Flynn. Work that problem out down the road.

The Sacramento Kings have a 15.6 percent chance of winning the top pick -- and they are set at point guard with Tyreke Evans. The guy who just won the Rookie of the Year Award and averaged 20 points and five assists per game. He is going to be an elite point, and the Kings have committed to building around him.

Yes, but wouldn't John Wall and Tyreke Evans look good in the backcourt? Plus, Evans is a tall point guard and he could play a hybrid PG/SG position if necessary. I would think a backcourt of Wall and Evans would have been too good to pass up. I wouldn't trade the #1 pick in this situation either.

Golden State has a 10.4 percent chance of the top pick, and their entire backcourt is overloaded with young players. They have Stephen Curry, the guy who finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting and a guy who stepped into the point guard role last season.

Put him at shooting guard if you like Wall more than Evan Turner. It's not like Stephen Curry can't play shooting guard and what does Don Nelson really care about players playing their best position for defensive matchup purposes?

They also have Monta Ellis who can run the point.

I have nothing against Monta Ellis, but you don't not draft John Wall because you have Monta Ellis on the roster who CAN play the point. A lot of players CAN play the point guard position. Wall plays the point guard position very well. The Warriors should probably trade Ellis anyway, wouldn't it have been a good chance to do so if they could have landed Wall? The answer is "yes."

I'm not saying every team should take Wall no matter what if they had landed the first pick, but if a team likes Wall more than they like Evan Turner, you make it work out. Doing anything else with the #1 pick (outside of trading it for players that are equally as good as Wall may be) would be absurd.

3. For some people, there is a slight debate about whether Evan Turner or John Wall should be the first pick. I don't know if there is really a wrong answer. This isn't a Derrick Rose v. Michael Beasley debate or a Greg Oden v. Kevin Durant debate for me. It isn't a situation where one of the two players has question marks like Oden had with his injuries and Beasley had with his maturity. This is a Derrick Rose v. Kevin Durant debate. I think both Wall and Turner will end up being great NBA players.

I do think the guy who wrote that article I just linked is a nutjob if he thinks Evan Turner has a future at the point guard position in the NBA. He can play the point if he needs to, but he only played it at Ohio State last year because there was no one else available to play the position. His NBA future isn't at point guard. He may not have a set position in the NBA right now, but I don't doubt he can play the shooting guard or small forward position. I don't feel like there is a wrong answer in this debate, but I would take Wall over Turner.

4. For me, the biggest loser in the NBA Draft lottery was the Nets. They are at the #3 position where they will probably take Derrick Favors. I have softened a bit on my stance on Favors because he didn't have a true point guard feeding him the ball at Georgia Tech. This has been pointed out to me on multiple occasions and I have finally relented a bit. My big problem with him now is that Favors did have problems mixing well with Gani Lawal because both players like to play down in the post, so I can't help but wonder how he will mix with Brook Lopez if he is drafted by the Nets.

I am not saying there will be a problem with these two players co-existing, I just know Favors had a problem at Georgia Tech being on the court at the same time with a player who had a similar skill set as himself. Lopez is a center, while Favors is a power forward, but both are going to want to be on the low post at certain points during a game. Lopez is a decent shooter, but I can see a situation where both players want to set themselves up on the low block and get the ball. I don't know how that will work out.

Overall, I was much more excited that the Nets would get Wall or Evan Turner.

5. Speaking of not being pumped up, I am not excited at all about the Wizards getting the #1 pick in the draft. John Wall going to Washington just doesn't seem exciting to me. I can't help but think back to last year when the Wizards traded the #5 pick to Minnesota for a shit-platter of players. There is no way they could have known they would get the #1 pick in the next draft, but I would have thought teams would learn from the Oklahoma City Thunder and Chicago Bulls and see that part of building a good team is keeping draft picks and drafting fairly well, not trading for above average players to add to a borderline playoff team. I can't help but think the Wizards regret the trade for Mike Miller and Randy Foye at this point.

The idea of Gilbert Arenas playing shooting guard is even less exciting for me, as are the multiple jokes about guns that will be made if Arenas plays "shooting" guard. I don't know if they can trade him, but I know they will try to. Still, Wall to Washington isn't that exciting for me.

6. Now I am excited about Evan Turner to the 76ers. Andre Iguodala is not a real #1 option for a team, he would work much better as a second banana. Now he has the chance to be that second banana with Turner coming onto the team and having a chance to be a star. For me, the 76ers are the real winner by getting the 2nd pick and starting a lineup of:

PG: Jrue Holliday
SG: Andre Iguodala
SF: Evan Turner
PF: Elton Brand
C: Samuel Dalembert

Bench:

Lou Williams
Willie Green
Jason Kapono
Marreese Speights
Thaddeus Young

You are telling me that isn't a playoff team? I believe it is.

7. NBADraft.net has their mock draft up. They have Utah taking Cole Aldrich. Was there any doubt that Utah would take Cole Aldrich? I just feel like this was meant to be. It's the same feeling that says if Utah passes up on Aldrich the Pacers will snatch him up really quickly. It is also the same feeling I get which says Jon Scheyer is going to end up playing for the Pacers this upcoming year in some fashion.

8. Speaking of Cole Aldrich, who is my favorite choice to be a bust in this year's draft, I thought I would do a quick comparison. Brian Zoubek was my favorite whipping boy on the Duke University team for the past four years. He is not going to get drafted most likely, because he has very little offensive skill, is incredibly uncoordinated, is prone to foul trouble and is tall but not a great defender. Of course he is 7'1" and those guys tend to get chances in the NBA, but I don't anticipate him being drafted regardless of this. Anyway, until this year Zoubek had injuries and also wasn't a great player, so I thought I would compare his numbers to Cole Aldrich's numbers for this past year...just to see how two centers from big programs compared to each other...one as an underachiever and the other as one of the best centers in the country.

Cole Aldrich: 26.8 minutes per game, 11.3 points, 9.8 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 3.5 blocks, 2.6 fouls, .562 FG%, .679 FT%, and 1.53 PPS.

Brian Zoubek: 18.7 minutes per game, 5.6 points, 7.7 rebounds, 1.0 assists, 0.8 blocks, 3.5 fouls, .638 FG%, .551 FT%, and 1.58 PPS.

I am NOT suggesting that Brian Zoubek is on the same level as Cole Aldrich or that in any way I should actually be comparing these two players. I just want to make the point that both of these players were starting centers on good college basketball teams, had great players around them, and there is a certain amount of comparison that can be done. Aldrich has the advantage in blocks and points, but Zoubek was as good of a rebounder as Aldrich. Zoubek isn't as good of a player as Aldrich, but the numbers aren't as lopsided as I would think they should be.

Clearly, Aldrich is the better player, but is he that much better than Zoubek as to where the gap between the players is so much where one player gets drafted in the Top 10 and the other player isn't drafted at all? This isn't as much about pumping up Zoubek, but indicating that Aldrich should be drafted in the 1st round, but not in the Top 10. Considering that Aldrich was one of the main stars of the Kansas team while Zoubek was a role player for Duke, it causes Aldrich's numbers, especially in points and rebounds per game to not impress me so much. Zoubek got most of his points on offensive rebounds and layups, but shouldn't Aldrich have a similar amount of points on offensive rebounds and layups as well? Maybe he did, but then he was also had plays run for him, so I really wish I had seen more scoring from him. He played with a team that was as talented, or more talented, than Zoubek's team.

I know I seem to be on a warpath to discredit Aldrich, but I can't but feel like a guy who is a Top 10 draft pick and one of the best players on his team should have significantly better numbers than a guy who was a role player and underachiever. Zoubek played 70% of the time Aldrich did per game (which was good because Zoubek would have fouled out playing any more time), but if Zoubek had played the same amount of time as Aldrich his numbers would have looked like this:

26.8 minutes per game, 7.3 points, 10 rebounds, 1.3 assists, and 1 block per game.

He would only average 4 less points per game and the same amount of rebounds per game than Aldrich...though Aldrich would have a clear advantage in blocks (and overall skill). Zoubek isn't an NBA player, but on paper his numbers don't look much worse than Zoubek's numbers and I feel like they are somewhat comparable since they did play similar levels of competition. For me, it is not a question of whether Aldrich is more talented than Zoubek, because he is, but why didn't it show up more in stats sheet?

They also both had players around them which had skill, so it isn't like one player was blessed with better teammates. I still have some questions about Cole Aldrich and when I compare him to a center who is inferior to him and look at both their paper statistics, my questions don't go away. I would love to have more time to do further analysis on this comparison, but I just wanted to throw this out there to sort of show part (and only part) of why I am sort of down on Aldrich.

All this means Aldrich is going to be a 10-time All-Star and I will look like an idiot.

9. There are a few players in this draft that I think are going to be undervalued. They will be drafted after the point where they really should be (think Ty Lawson, DeJuan Blair from this year). The first one is Jarvis Varnado. Sure, he is offensively challenged, but I can think of a few other players who were offensively challenged and then thrived in the NBA. Ben Wallace is one of them. Varnado can block shots, rebound, and he may not be a star in the NBA, but he probably deserves to go a little bit higher than the 2nd round.

Greivis Vasquez is another guy I think will be undervalued. The only thing he does well is shoot the ball well, get to the basket and score, rebound, pass, show leadership qualities and he is a tall guy who can play point guard. Yes, he isn't the most athletic guy in the world, but that didn't seem to hurt him too much at Maryland when he was guarded by more athletic players. He still produced. He'll go in the 2nd round and he should go in the 1st round. I refuse to believe a team like the Magic, Grizzlies, or Hawks couldn't use a player like him.

I am shocked I am even writing this, but Eric Bledsoe is another guy who will be undervalued. I have seen him go in the 2nd round in some mock drafts, but he is a Top 20 guy in my mind. He should have stayed at Kentucky one more year, but he got shitty advice (which isn't new), where he could have shown the world he can play point guard and isn't a hybrid guard only by staying for his sophomore year. He isn't John Wall, but he also isn't a 2nd round pick. He should go before Avery Bradley, Willie Warren, Dominique Jones, Elliott Williams, and Armon Johnson, but he may not. That's not right. He is a Top 20 pick.

10. There are also a few players I think are overvalued. I won't include Cole Aldrich in this list, but rest assured, he is there. I am not as high on Wesley Johnson as others may be, but I won't include him either. I will include James Anderson on this list. I have seen him play and he isn't a terrible player, but he is a guy who can score points and that seems to be about it. If you are drafting him in the 1st round, there has to be a better guy available at his spot. He doesn't always drive to the basket when he needs to and he "looks" like a great player, but I don't see it. He seems like a 2nd round player to me.

Epke Udoh is a guy who I think is going to go in the Top 15 of the draft and doesn't necessarily deserve to. He's a power forward who doesn't have a great offensive game and he is already 23 years old so he is reaching the point where we have begun to see exactly what he can do. If he went 10 spots later than he most likely will, I wouldn't have a problem, but he isn't a Top 15 or Top 20 pick due to this unrefined game.

Devin Ebanks is another guy who is going to go in the 1st round and he probably shouldn't. I pretty sure a team could find a small forward who can't shoot somewhere else in the draft. He plays great defense, which is wonderful, but he needs to gain some muscle/weight to play small forward in the NBA. If he had some semblance of a clue at the offensive end then I may value him higher, but he doesn't look to score and you don't take defensive-first small forwards with shooting range issues in the 1st round of the draft.

Maybe he is the second coming of Bruce Bowen and I just don't know it.

11. Stanley Robinson is a guy who can jump and dunk really well. Other than that, I haven't watched too many of the games he has played in and thought he was an NBA prospect. Throw in some character issues from his time at UConn and I am surprised this guy will even get drafted. The NBA does love themselves some athleticism, but he is an athlete who plays basketball. He shoots the 3 point shot, loves to play weakside defense but not defense on his man as much, his other offensive move is to dunk the ball, and he has never been one of the top three players on UConn's team...and that includes when Hasheem Thabust was on the team. I am not a fan.

12. I am completely torn about what order all the tall guys in this draft should go. I want to say the order is Favors, Cousins, Monroe, Patterson, Aminu, and Aldrich, but I could see that order getting turned around in some fashion. Naturally, I am doing a mock draft in the future, but I don't know where the hell these guys will end up in that mock draft a month from now.

Out of these guys, I like Aminu, Monroe and Favors (I have officially changed my mind on him over Cousins) the most, but that obviously doesn't mean they will get drafted according to what I think. There isn't a guy that I am absolutely sure will bust like Hasheem Thabust last year. The player I would draft if I were the Nets is probably Favors for his upside, but I would love to see Monroe on that team as well, though #3 is too high for him.

13. I know this is going to sound very American of me, but I am glad this draft isn't full of European born players who I haven't heard of or have seen only through footage that looks like it was shot with a hand-held video camera by a drunk guy. I like to know the players who are getting drafted and like to have seen them in college so I know their strengths and weaknesses fairly well. For a few years there, I felt like NBA teams were drafting foreign-born players and completely ignoring the weaknesses they showed overseas. It is like because NBA teams knew less about the players that was actually a good thing.

14. It looks like the Detroit writers are already expecting Joe Dumars to screw this pick up. This is a fairly deep draft I think and the Pistons could use some help at the forward positions and there is a lot of that available in this draft where the Pistons will be picking. I think they aren't in a bad position at #7. They should have some good options available. This writer, Drew Sharp, seems to believe the Pistons are going to select Ed Davis at #7, which might be a good pick depending on who else is available. In my mind's eye I see DeMarcus Cousins going to Detroit.

One thing this writer said about Ed Davis interested me:

My early personal favorite is North Carolina sophomore power forward Ed Davis. He's not incredibly athletic, but he was a ferocious rebounder last season for a Tar Heels' team mired in its worst season in quite a while.

I don't get how Davis isn't incredibly athletic. He is a 6'9" inch power forward that can run the floor incredibly well, can dunk the ball from seeming anywhere in the lane, and once he fills out he should use his great footwork to be a Chris Bosh-type player who can drive to the basket around a defender using a pump-fake. If anything Davis is too skinny, but I don't believe a lack of athleticism is his problem.

15. Quick thought about the Oklahoma City Thunder and this may not be able to happen. What if they could package their two 1st round draft picks together and move up in the draft? This is a team that doesn't have a ton of holes on the roster right now, they could possibly use a better center or a backup for Kevin Durant. Instead of trading one of those picks for a veteran or future picks, why don't the Thunder try to see what those two picks can get them in moving ahead in the draft?

It may not work or would have to involve players trading hands to get farther up, but for a team like the Rockets who would probably could find value out of the #21 and #26 picks in the draft, would those two picks be more valuable for them than staying at #14? Probably not, but that is why players could change hands as well to even the trade out and then the Thunder could take care of the center problem they have by drafting Hassan Whiteside. Hell, this may not work out and I am just eyeballing this, but I see the Thunder don't have a lot of holes and have some picks to work with (they also have the #32 pick), I wonder if a move up in the draft would be worth it to them. The Thunder are still going to have some good choices at #21 and #26, but I can't help but wonder what they could get by trading up.

16. One more thought. The Celtics-Magic played Tuesday night, but they don't play again until Saturday night? Isn't that too long of a layoff? This annoys me so much.