Official 2013 Draft Thread - Part I

[nate33]

Well, I wouldn't call Booker a mistake. He's done a lot more than your average #23 pick. Even if he never plays another game due to injury, the end result is that he was a quality backup big man and good team leader who costed just $1.3M a year.

[Knighthonor]

what a disaster year to be bad. At least it wont kill us when we move from 1 to 4

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... -with-that

This is why I am saying, Trade the Lotto Pick for next years pick. Then the Wizards get TWO,,, COUNT IT,,, TWO Next Season (Aka #Wiggins/Parker2DC)

this draft has high bust written on it. Dont risk it. go all out for next season's draft which has the chance for all star wing players....
come on....

[nate33]

what a disaster year to be bad. At least it wont kill us when we move from 1 to 4

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... -with-that

This is why I am saying, Trade the Lotto Pick for next years pick. Then the Wizards get TWO,,, COUNT IT,,, TWO Next Season (Aka #Wiggins/Parker2DC)

this draft has high bust written on it. Dont risk it. go all out for next season's draft which has the chance for all star wing players....
come on....

Easier said than done. Remember, if we trade our lotto pick this summer to some other bad team, they will be adding two lotto picks this summer. What is the likelihood that a team who added two lotto picks this summer will still end up in the high lotto and the end of next season? That pick that we traded for may end up being the 12th-15th pick in the draft, not a second top 5 pick.

[pancakes3]

The obsession to get Wiggins/Parker where there are legitimately good Centers available in this year's draft is unconscionable. The further obsession to draft both is sheer lunacy.

[TheKingOfVa360]

We need to suck next year so we have a shot at Wiggins, Im not impressed with this years crop.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

The obsession to get Wiggins/Parker where there are legitimately good Centers available in this year's draft is unconscionable. The further obsession to draft both is sheer lunacy.

Agreed.

--Nerlens Noel is just 18 and he's a dominating defender already. By the end of the season maybe he improves on offense.

--Alex Len is just scratching the surface of what he might become. He is fundamentally sound like Tim Duncan, but needs to get stronger. I would rather have him this draft than to wait a year on Parkers or Wiggins.

--Rudy Gobert is mighty thin but he is hitting near 80% of his shots in Euroleague. He plays a bit like a young KG.

They are Cs to watch, depending on which pick the Wizards select.

[WizarDynasty]

Never ever draft a center with skinny toothpick because he will never be able to hold his own against space eaters. Alex len is another toothpick that i don't like at center. If he were quicker and could be a full time powerforward i would give a thumbs up but he is very slow combined with no lower body strength. Gobbert another tweener. Never ever draft a player with poor lower body strength to anchor your defense. pg, sg, and sf can get away with poor body strengths but having poor lower leg strengths means that he is going to get abused my most starting powerforwards fighting for position on rebounds every night for the next 13 years. Classic Grunfeld move though drafting based on popular sentiment. Steven Adams is absolutely the only center that i would consider drafting in 2013 in the lottery. there are no good starting centers. If you want to spend a lottery pick on a reserve role player who may exceed against another tweener center, which usually isnt the case, then noel, gobbert, and len are the way to go.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Never ever draft a center with skinny toothpick because he will never be able to hold his own against space eaters. Alex len is another toothpick that i don't like at center. If he were quicker and could be a full time powerforward i would give a thumbs up but he is very slow combined with no lower body strength. Gobbert another tweener. Never ever draft a player with poor lower body strength to anchor your defense. pg, sg, and sf can get away with poor body strengths but having poor lower leg strengths means that he is going to get abused my most starting powerforwards fighting for position on rebounds every night for the next 13 years. Classic Grunfeld move though drafting based on popular sentiment. Steven Adams is absolutely the only center that i would consider drafting in 2013 in the lottery. there are no good starting centers. If you want to spend a lottery pick on a reserve role player who may exceed against another tweener center, which usually isnt the case, then noel, gobbert, and len are the way to go.

If Len is drafted by the Wizards, I foresee him playing PF next to Seraphin at C. He is not quick but he has the perimeter shooting skills of a PF. I agree with you that his lower body strength is a concern.

I don't believe EG drafted popular sentiment with Vesely, but Len is popular for a reason. He can play.

I have to look closer at Steven Adams. I know the Aussie has the body to play C. WD, I believe you probably like a C like Robin Lopez over a guy like Javale McGee. Javale will never have the leg strength to hold post position but Lopez can root a guy out, easily.

I think Noel is a defensive PF much like Larry Sanders and John Henson. Even Anthony Davis plays more like a PF IMO. Regardless, he is going to become an all-time great IMO.

[AFM]

I would take Shabazz over any of those dudes.

[Flippopotamus]

Should trade the pick imo, this class is weak and I don't see any of these guys being a key building block that we need with a number 1 overall selection

[Knighthonor]

Should trade the pick imo, this class is weak and I don't see any of these guys being a key building block that we need with a number 1 overall selection

I agree, trade that crap for a next season lotto.

[Knighthonor]

I would take Shabazz over any of those dudes.

Why? He not looking any better than Beal IMO. Waste of a pick so far. He not shown anything yet to be worth it for a team like this that need game changing talent. I will change my views of him once he improves.

[Ed Wood]

I agree, trade that crap for a next season lotto.

We're not allowed to justify a trade with the rationale that the other team is just dumb I'm afraid to say, that's a privilege reserved for whoever is trading with us. So if you're going to advocate trading a pick in what is generally considered to be a weak draft for a comparable pick in what is considered (from a great distance) to be a strong one you are obliged to provide some sort of motivation for the other team. You might notice that trades like that don't actually occur, which suggests such motives may be hard to come by.

That and you're basing your acclaim for next year's draft basically on **** all real information right now, which isn't a very good way of doing business.

Anyway, to expand on his previous mention, I'm not sure there's another player in the country who's been as impressive thus far as UNLV's Anthony Bennett. He's converting over 60% of his two point field goals, which is very nice, but has even managed to convert about 36% of his three point attempts while taking over two a game, and a less surprising but still very good 78% of his free throws on over 7.5 per game. He's rebounding very respectably, nearly 12 per 40, and is chipping in over over three blocks and about a steal over the same period. No single thing he's done is overwhelming but everything has been excellent, as encapsulated in his PER of 35.6. He's a big guy in the mold of Patrick Patterson in that he has usable perimeter skills but also fulfills his obligations in the interior, but he's off to a (sample size caveat here) much better start to his college career.

Two other guys who've done well to this point are Cal's Allen Crabbe, who should be a definite candidate for a second player in a two or three man draft, who's scoring very effectively and has demonstrated over the course of his career proven himself to be one of the better volume perimeter shooters in college (161/400 from three for his career, 40.25%) and Stanford's Dwight Powell, who was a pretty big deal as a recruit, but a non-entity in college until this year. He's managed 22.5 points on a TS of 68% this year, however, and that's a combination that certainly merits attention.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Anthony Bennett helped UNLV destroy the local team, UH. I missed that game but I heard a lot about him and his play through local coverage. He's an even better pro prospect than UNLVs Mike Moser.

You mentioned sample size. Bennett plays in a good conference, the Mountain West. He will get to play Jamaal Franklin and San Diego State twice. Both programs are ranked in the top-25. New Mexico is also a top-25 team that will play UNLV. I looked at the Runnin' Rebels schedule, and they play UNC soon. We will have a very good idea of how good Anthony Bennett is after he goes head-to-head against McAdoo and other good players.

http://www.nbadraft.net/players/anthony-bennett

Anthony Bennett comes out of Canada. Tristen Thompson is also out of Brampton, Ontario. Corey Joseph and Andrew Nicholson are from Ontario, too. The developmental circuit must be good to produce such high-caliber talent.

[Mizerooskie]

Never ever draft a center with skinny toothpick because he will never be able to hold his own against space eaters. Alex len is another toothpick that i don't like at center. If he were quicker and could be a full time powerforward i would give a thumbs up but he is very slow combined with no lower body strength. Gobbert another tweener. Never ever draft a player with poor lower body strength to anchor your defense. pg, sg, and sf can get away with poor body strengths but having poor lower leg strengths means that he is going to get abused my most starting powerforwards fighting for position on rebounds every night for the next 13 years. Classic Grunfeld move though drafting based on popular sentiment. Steven Adams is absolutely the only center that i would consider drafting in 2013 in the lottery. there are no good starting centers. If you want to spend a lottery pick on a reserve role player who may exceed against another tweener center, which usually isnt the case, then noel, gobbert, and len are the way to go.

Agreed.

There are countless examples of teams making this utter failure throughout draft history:

Orlando in 2004
Toronto in 1996
Denver in 1991
Indiana in 1988
San Antonio in 1987
New York in 1985
Houston twice in a row (!) in 1983 and 1984

I'm sure I missed some failures, but damn, I hope the Wizards don't duplicate those teams' level of draft success.

[WizarDynasty]

Never ever draft a center with skinny toothpick because he will never be able to hold his own against space eaters. Alex len is another toothpick that i don't like at center. If he were quicker and could be a full time powerforward i would give a thumbs up but he is very slow combined with no lower body strength. Gobbert another tweener. Never ever draft a player with poor lower body strength to anchor your defense. pg, sg, and sf can get away with poor body strengths but having poor lower leg strengths means that he is going to get abused my most starting powerforwards fighting for position on rebounds every night for the next 13 years. Classic Grunfeld move though drafting based on popular sentiment. Steven Adams is absolutely the only center that i would consider drafting in 2013 in the lottery. there are no good starting centers. If you want to spend a lottery pick on a reserve role player who may exceed against another tweener center, which usually isnt the case, then noel, gobbert, and len are the way to go.

Agreed.

There are countless examples of teams making this utter failure throughout draft history:

Orlando in 2004
Toronto in 1996
Denver in 1991
Indiana in 1988
San Antonio in 1987
New York in 1985
Houston twice in a row (!) in 1983 and 1984

I'm sure I missed some failures, but damn, I hope the Wizards don't duplicate those teams' level of draft success.

Please tell me which of these failures had poor lower body strength? and might i add that a player with a four year track record of dominant post play in college doesn't have poor lower body strength. I don't think tehre is one example of the history of NCAA of dominant post player in college that also had poor lower body strength that couldn't hold his position in the paint?
So again, when you cite a "failure" who displayed extremely poor lower body strength before being drafted...that's when I guess we figure out whey we shouldn't want to duplicate that team. I guess i am just having trouble figuring out who these "failures" with poor lower body strength are?

[Mizerooskie]

Look at all that Lower body strength! My eyes are blinded by it!

[WizarDynasty]

pictures can be very misleading, show me a video of hakeem displaying poor lower body strength on rebounds and post defense. I've seen quite a few of the crappy center prospects in this draft.
Kareem would look skinny two but he had very heavy bones and didn't get pushed around easily at any level. Not the case with most the crappy defensive center prospects in this draft.
Lower legs strength and bone density is heavily genetic.
guys who haven't developed lower body strength by age 18 just aren't meant to man the post full time. they are defensive specialist. I compare them to the a third down back in football that can catch the ball but he can't take the pounding on every down because he does't have the frame.
You need a certain frame to be a dominant post player. We should have drafted Drummond if we wanted a center prospect.

[pancakes3]

In all fairness, Drummond is doing about a thousand times better than I expected. I will publicly admit that I was wrong about him.

Austin Rivers and his 28.3% shooting? I've got a big ole sack full of "I told ya so's" to hand out.

[Ed Wood]

So thin big men are bad unless they're good; fire up the stone tablet because we're gonna want to engrave that one.

edit: And there's plenty of back patting to go around with Rivers, pancakes, did anybody like his propects?