OT: Espn - Drummond could rank as 'greatest teen' in NBA his

[Tacoma]

In a sense, Colangelo was "right" not to pick Drummond, because our GM hadn't done his homework before the draft. It would've meant drafting Drummond "blind". But the question then becomes, why didn't Colangelo get up off his arse and do the job that he gets paid very well to do? That is the huge failure on his part. And should be the last straw for all the mistakes he's made as our GM.

This draft puts Colangelo in Babcock Territory, when the latter passed on drafting Andrew Bynum. Like Babock, Colangel should be fired ASAP, as in tomorrow. Then we can get on with the rebuild, which will never happen while he's here to screw things up.

I'd be surprised if one of the highest paid GM's in the NBA, the Raptors' President of Basketball Operations, didn't do his homework. It's probably more like he made an error in judgement or assessment.

Drummond was a high risk, high reward prospect, a project. Given the Raptors desperately need talent on the roster I thought on draft night when BC was on the clock and Drummond available, he'd be picked. But to everyone's shock, he picked Ross.

BC said Ross was NBA ready and thus fit his "win now" declaration at end of last season. It turns out (so far) that Ross is no more NBA Ready than Drummond. Another error in judgement in a long series of errors he's made in the past 7 years.

[Neutral 123]

Did you even read all of JN's post? His conclusion was that yes, there were red flags, but they weren't red flags that others were saying ie him being a Spreewell type of player. He also said given that risk, he can understand not taking him top 3, but that the Raps had no reason not to take that risk with potential huge upside at 8. He never claimed that you had to be some super scout to see he could be special. Just that it wasn't guaranteed because his love of the game was in question. He was critical of the Raps passing, while you are acting as though no one could have predicted this. SMH...

[fredericklove]

Just to reiterate: our GM passed on him without even bringing him in for an interview and a private workout. Both of which would've been a good starting point to see if the alleged red flags were baseless or not. Drummond's coach, who saw the guy every day, said he was a great kid who learned quickly. That's two of the red flags right there. Sure, he might've just been mouthing the usual good things about one of his players. But that should have at least piqued a GM's interest, given Drummond's immense potential and the fact that the only thing holding him back from being the number 2 prospect in the draft. I can understand the GMs who had him in for a workout and decided against picking him, e.g. West, but to just rule him out a priori is really poor work by our GM.

Things that are difficult to stand here are posters/fans who say that ANY teenage kid or 20-21 year old is either a "character" guy or a "head case", or has a "good work ethic" or is "lazy", and so on. What the hell do we know? We can go on the kid's coach's comments, though they might be biased, or the guy's teammates (same problem), or anonymous scouts writing on the net. And we can go on what we see in the kid's college games. Which often isn't much to go on. Why would Ross be considered a "plus" kind of guy and Drummond a "risk"? Because Ross "looked like" he was working hard in college, and Drummond wasn't? People can twist things any way to suit them. Ross came from a school that played in the NIT and not the NCAAs, and in some cases that's been held against a guy. Like it was with Lillard, too. If you like the guy, though, you can point to other guys who have starred in the NBA after coming from small schools.

Bottom line with Drummond is he was the perfect guy you had to do extra homework on. Just like the Lakers did with Andrew Bynum. You do your work and reduce the unknowns and potential risks as much as you can, then draft the guy or not. Our GM didn't. Joe Dumars did.

Can't say I disagree w/ you, BC leaving everything for Ed to handle was pretty stupid thing to do, basically BC giving up what he does best and leaves it to someone else. Cos if anything, I say BC would have probably found something more about Drummonds that most others don't, like what he did in the early days on finding the gem like Amare. The fact that you said it too that we had no intention to bring him into the camp (altho I thought Drummond had a list of where he wants to go tryout for and Tor wasn't on his list), but nonetheless I agree, raps or maybe BC should handle the draft thing himself and do more research on Drummond cos if there's a team who would risk it all to take a talent who's high risk high reward like a Drummond, it would be the Raptors. But like I said, his flaws and red alert at that time were pretty scary for any teams to take which makes sense but really good job on Dumars tho cos if anything, I can see them taking a guy like Rivers cos basically they needed a guy who's a household name or can flat out score for their team. Now I guess they are in good hands w/ Monroe, Drummond and possibly tanking for studs this year and next year.

[fredericklove]

Did you even read all of JN's post? His conclusion was that yes, there were red flags, but they weren't red flags that others were saying ie him being a Spreewell type of player. He also said given that risk, he can understand not taking him top 3, but that the Raps had no reason not to take that risk with potential huge upside at 8. He never claimed that you had to be some super scout to see he could be special. Just that it wasn't guaranteed because his love of the game was in question. He was critical of the Raps passing, while you are acting as though no one could have predicted this. SMH...

Yeah he said the part that Raps had no reason not to take that risk, did I disagree? I even said I can understand the Ross vs. Drummond debate, which basically for myself to agree on JN's take that we might or shoulda(?) take that risk. For me to say his fundamentals were a huge issue, JN might have a different saying since admittedly all anti-drummond people were attacking on his fundamentals, quite frankly the fundamentals were pretty bad tho that's no mystery.

JN mentioned where there are periods that where he had motor he would dominate, there's flashes that's for sure but there are times he played like he had no idea what's going on. Maturity issue was a big concern for him in result that he wasn't able to showcase his consistency every game, tbh it's combination of everything involved - not just maturity issue which pretty much top ends of the draft refuses to gamble on.

And really what SMH? Why, you predicted he would do so well right now? Tell me one person here who actually thinks he's not going to be a long project and struggle right off the bet, I can't recall anyone and even scouts to think that he's going to do really well early in his career.

[Neutral 123]

16 and 7 in 20 minutes. 6-8 from the line....

[tracey_nice]

6-8 from the line and i think 6 of those ft's were attempted hack-a-drummond.

[hillbilly hare]

Just to reiterate: our GM passed on him without even bringing him in for an interview and a private workout. Both of which would've been a good starting point to see if the alleged red flags were baseless or not. Drummond's coach, who saw the guy every day, said he was a great kid who learned quickly. That's two of the red flags right there. Sure, he might've just been mouthing the usual good things about one of his players. But that should have at least piqued a GM's interest, given Drummond's immense potential and the fact that the only thing holding him back from being the number 2 prospect in the draft. I can understand the GMs who had him in for a workout and decided against picking him, e.g. West, but to just rule him out a priori is really poor work by our GM.

Things that are difficult to stand here are posters/fans who say that ANY teenage kid or 20-21 year old is either a "character" guy or a "head case", or has a "good work ethic" or is "lazy", and so on. What the hell do we know? We can go on the kid's coach's comments, though they might be biased, or the guy's teammates (same problem), or anonymous scouts writing on the net. And we can go on what we see in the kid's college games. Which often isn't much to go on. Why would Ross be considered a "plus" kind of guy and Drummond a "risk"? Because Ross "looked like" he was working hard in college, and Drummond wasn't? People can twist things any way to suit them. Ross came from a school that played in the NIT and not the NCAAs, and in some cases that's been held against a guy. Like it was with Lillard, too. If you like the guy, though, you can point to other guys who have starred in the NBA after coming from small schools.

Bottom line with Drummond is he was the perfect guy you had to do extra homework on. Just like the Lakers did with Andrew Bynum. You do your work and reduce the unknowns and potential risks as much as you can, then draft the guy or not. Our GM didn't. Joe Dumars did.

Can't say I disagree w/ you, BC leaving everything for Ed to handle was pretty stupid thing to do, basically BC giving up what he does best and leaves it to someone else. Cos if anything, I say BC would have probably found something more about Drummonds that most others don't, like what he did in the early days on finding the gem like Amare. The fact that you said it too that we had no intention to bring him into the camp (altho I thought Drummond had a list of where he wants to go tryout for and Tor wasn't on his list), but nonetheless I agree, raps or maybe BC should handle the draft thing himself and do more research on Drummond cos if there's a team who would risk it all to take a talent who's high risk high reward like a Drummond, it would be the Raptors. But like I said, his flaws and red alert at that time were pretty scary for any teams to take which makes sense but really good job on Dumars tho cos if anything, I can see them taking a guy like Rivers cos basically they needed a guy who's a household name or can flat out score for their team. Now I guess they are in good hands w/ Monroe, Drummond and possibly tanking for studs this year and next year.

Yeah, the thing about Drummond having a "list" of teams was mentioned before, but I don't think in general that it'd be hard to convince a guy and his agent, or especially his agent, that you are really high on the kid and if the problem was Jonas then you can say that you are thinking of trading Jonas for a position of need, blah blah blah. Hard for agents and players to pass up more guaranteed money by being drafted earlier, i.e. over the course of their rookie deal it adds up to about 1.5 million. Especially if you give him a promise at 8.

[Tolverines]

Lol, not even close. There are countless teens with way better seasons.

[Pchu]

Before the draft, I said that he has a 25% chance of reaching his potential. It looks like he is doing just that right now. It's hard to judge a guy like this. He was useless in UConn. While you can say it's a negative environment and all, Drummond's play was underwelming to say the least. We have seen guys like this flop before.

Drummond was picked 9th, which means 8 teams passed on him. You could make a strong argument that Drummond could be the best player in the draft, but no one want to take that chance because he could be a huge bust. Could the Wizards use Drummond instead of Beal? Wouldn't the Kings be better of with Drummond and not Thomas Robinson (who is really struggling)?

[MikeM]

It's just so frustrating because this is almost exactly like when Colangelo picked Amare Stoudemire except this time he didn't!!

19 year old, 9th overall, red flags, raw athletic big man. Teams passing because of "red flags" ie. Kid had bad grades or whatever LOL.

The problem really might be that BC just doesn't believe in having big men. We had 4 big men that get minutes and 3 of them play in the paint. I think that's just way too many for Mr. Evolution Of The Game to handle.

Drummond and Valanciunas would be too old school.

[tecumseh18]

Lol, not even close. There are countless teens with way better seasons.

Um, "countless"?

Lebron had an 18 PER on 39.5 mpg. Pretty impressive. Not too efficient at the time with a 48.8% TS. But he was a rookie who was leading his team.

Who else ya got?

[Fairview4Life]

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... der_by=per

There's a list sorted by PER of all the teenagers who qualified for the MPG leaderboard in NBA history (so guys like Jackie Butler and his 90 PER don't show up).

[Kevin Willis]

Drummond is a good young player but he's not a legend that people are making him out to be. He hasn't turned around a franchise. He doesn't start over Greg Monroe. He plays limited minutes and makes his living off of scraps. No team game plans for Drummond.

He's not Howard, Shaq, Stoudemire or Yao Ming(older). He's not KG, T-Mac or even KD and Beasley (teens). He's a good young player on a non-playoff team with limited minutes. Give him more than half a season to see what his motor really is like. Let him start. Let him see how he executes plays run for him. No-one questioned his talent but we have a decent front-line as is. Drummond, Davis, JV and Amir is a front-court to fire a coach.

A lot of teams passed on Drummond. Before the start of the last NCAA season he was seeded 1 or 2 along with Davis. Compare their seasons. Ask yourself if you put Drummond on NO can he make the same impact. If you put Drummond on Washington can he help them more than Beal. How about GS? How about Portland? On a draft that lacked seperation we needed a Ross-type more than a Drummond-type. And Ross was doing well until teams caught on to him. He will adjust. He may never be as good as Drummond but then again in 3 years Drummond can stop caring.

Such unnecessary exaggeration all in an attempt to flame BC. Comments from anger lead to bad comments.

[tecumseh18]

On a draft that lacked seperation we needed a Ross-type more than a Drummond-type.

Yes, we needed to draft an SG to play behind Debrick for the next 4 years rather than yet another a huge, athletic presence in the middle who could stand up to teams with big front courts. We have so many of those already.

Now that I've see JV in person, I see him as much more a Bosh-type than a Camby-type. I'd easily move him to PF to make way for someone like Drummond. But it will be another generation before we get a chance to draft someone like that.

[Neutral 123]

Oh please, no one said he was a legend. And yes, this is just another on a looooong list of BC failures.

[Kevin Willis]

Oh please, no one said he was a legend. And yes, this is just another on a looooong list of BC failures.

You say that no-one says he's a legend but Tecumseh says right after it will be another generation before we see another player like Drummond which makes him a once in a generation player - a legend.

[dTox]

What's weird is that alot of people were claiming Drummond to be so raw but at this point he looks even more refined offensively than Jonas, especially his passing skills.

[tecumseh18]

Oh please, no one said he was a legend. And yes, this is just another on a looooong list of BC failures.

You say that no-one says he's a legend but Tecumseh says right after it will be another generation before we see another player like Drummond which makes him a once in a generation player - a legend.

I said another generation before WE (the Raptors) would get a chance to draft a player with his characteristics. That's different from a true "once a generation" player - like a pre-surgery Dwight.

[Neutral 123]

Oh please, no one said he was a legend. And yes, this is just another on a looooong list of BC failures.

You say that no-one says he's a legend but Tecumseh says right after it will be another generation before we see another player like Drummond which makes him a once in a generation player - a legend.

'We' being the Raptors no? That doesn't mean there won't be another player of his talent, but that individual teams, can't afford to miss these kinds of opportunities. A generation wait might be a reach, but these kinds of missteps sets a franchise back years.

I'll add that the incompetence here goes far beyond choosing the wrong guy. It was a stated decision to choose a guy based on 'fit' and ability to contribute right away. What is the purpose of that on a team that isn't a contender, and won't even make the playoffs? A team like the Raps need talent. Not only is BC incompetent, he's delusional.

[Neutral 123]

Oh please, no one said he was a legend. And yes, this is just another on a looooong list of BC failures.

You say that no-one says he's a legend but Tecumseh says right after it will be another generation before we see another player like Drummond which makes him a once in a generation player - a legend.

I said another generation before WE (the Raptors) would get a chance to draft a player with his characteristics. That's different from a true "once a generation" player - like a pre-surgery Dwight.

Your post seemed pretty clear to me. These are just the types of mistakes a team that is trying to get better can't afford to make. This one was a lay up too. An easy, easy decision to make.