pistontr wrote:knight and monroe was bad choices. leonard/thopmson and hayward/george was avaiable.
monroe is bench player now and knight is a chucker not a pg.
I could not disagree more.
Knight was projected to go as high as third overall. Kawhi Leonard at 15 and Knight at 8 were in entirely different ranges. It was between BIsmack Biyombo and Knight at #8 with a minority wanting Kemba Walker. We had Tayshaun, Jerebko, and Daye on the roster. Nobody can say that Kawhi would have been the same player on the Pistons that he is on the Spurs (better team, better system, better organization, better coach, etc..), just like I would bet against Thompson being as effective he is on a system that isn't Golden State's. Knight played the most minutes on the team as a rookie.
The 2010 draft was going to be a bigman. We were ecstatic when Monroe fell; the alternative would have been Cole Aldrich or Ekpe Udoh or even Ed Davis. Those are terrifying scenarios. Monroe played the second most minutes on the team as a rookie.
They were the right picks, now and then. Drafting Drummond made Monroe expendable, but that does not mean that he didn't have tremendous value at #7 overall. Knight wasn't moved because he was ineffective, but because Joe doubled down on Josh Smith and Brandon Knight and a playoff push to save his job.
Say what you want about Joe, but drafting Monroe->Knight->Drummond was the last intelligent stretch of decisions that he made with the team.