2018 NBA Draft Talk

[nickhx2]

btw when i mean wing i mean someone who can play SF? for once? is that so much to ask?

fwiw since trading for a 3rd pick was mentioned, i wonder who out there might entertain offers for our what we do have.

bev/lou provide the best value for us i think, but don't see them going anywhere. i bet cleveland would be willing to deal their pick if lebron came back (though i think he's gone).

[esqtvd]

sacto would have to be monumentally stupid to trade the #2 for our two picks.

anyway, i don't see the FO doing much other than picking two guys that will help the team and provide a solid core around harris. i'm hoping either carter or mikal bridges will fall to us, but realistically i'm hoping we come away with shai and a wing with good defensive potential.

Agree. I'd say the 12 & 13 might get us something like the 6 or 8.

[Re-]building the core is a good strategy, hoping to make moves and attract FAs later. HOU's core is The Beard [trade] and CP [for practical purposes a FA/S&T]. And as great as the GSW core was--it won the title--you have to question where they'd be without Durant right now.

Geez. The NBA is one tough town. You have a budding dynasty and you need to land maybe one of the top 10 players of all time to keep it.

[mkwest]

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Prospect Interviews via Hornets

Miles Bridges was a fan of the "Lob City" era Clippers.

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Lawrence Frank said that the Clippers have interviewed 20 players so far. Frank wants to draft 2 BPA regardless of position. He believes this is a deep draft.

[Ranma]

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Miles Bridges was a fan of the "Lob City" era Clippers.

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[Ranma]

Lawrence Frank said that the Clippers have interviewed 20 players so far. Frank wants to draft 2 BPA regardless of position. He believes this is a deep draft.

President of Basketball Operations, Lawrence Frank discusses the Clippers strategy going forward with the 12th & 13th picks in next month’s NBA Draft.

[Ranma]

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[Quake Griffin]

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[MartinToVaught]

sacto would have to be monumentally stupid to trade the #2 for our two picks.

The Kings are monumentally stupid, so there's that.

[TucsonClip]

Even 14th? Say a Kobe, who went at #13...

Look, we're not disagreeing here. I'm just saying never say never.

Completely different with a HS guy who has every school in the country gunning for him. So, yes, you can change this rule back in two years when guys can jump from HS to the NBA again. Now? It really makes no sense.

Same scenario could arise with a foreign guy. In fact it did. Dunleavy blew it, is all. But he just as easily could have blown it anyway. Busts come in all forms.

https://www.clipsnation.com/2011/8/16/2365803/yaroslav-korolev-los-angeles-clippers

They made a promise. Promises have very little upside, but they have a very specific downside - what happens if a significantly better player drops to your draft position, for whatever reason? Now your stuck drafting the guy you made a promise to and passing up a golden opportunity. When the Clippers draft spot rolled around at 12, there were two players who were universally projected as top 10 picks still on the board - Danny Granger and Gerald Green. Granger is the guy everyone always talks about, since he turned into an All Star. In the interest of intellectual honesty, I like to include Green in the discussion, since he was projected just as high as Granger in 2005. Green of course went on to be just as big a bust as Korolev, so I guess you never know.

Now, I'm not a big EuroFan so I'll agree about Kobe being different. Too many unknowns about these Eurodudes, esp the level of competition. But the problem here was the particular player, Korolev. Just didn't have the right stuff. But suppose it had turned out he did and he was the next Dirk? Or Tony Parker?

And at the moment, we have the Doncic case. Say we're at #3, see a huge dropoff after the top 3, and the Kings and Nets are sitting at #4 and #5. Doncic is antsy and is considering opting out of the draft. What would y̶o̶u̶ Jerry West do?

Why would Doncic need a promise to stay in the draft? I find it very unlikely he doesnt come over. If he thinks he can pick his team, which is what his agent, Billy Duffy, might be attempting a promise at 12 means jack. Dude is a top 3 prospect.

[Ranma]

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[esqtvd]

Completely different with a HS guy who has every school in the country gunning for him. So, yes, you can change this rule back in two years when guys can jump from HS to the NBA again. Now? It really makes no sense.

Same scenario could arise with a foreign guy. In fact it did. Dunleavy blew it, is all. But he just as easily could have blown it anyway. Busts come in all forms.

https://www.clipsnation.com/2011/8/16/2365803/yaroslav-korolev-los-angeles-clippers

They made a promise. Promises have very little upside, but they have a very specific downside - what happens if a significantly better player drops to your draft position, for whatever reason? Now your stuck drafting the guy you made a promise to and passing up a golden opportunity. When the Clippers draft spot rolled around at 12, there were two players who were universally projected as top 10 picks still on the board - Danny Granger and Gerald Green. Granger is the guy everyone always talks about, since he turned into an All Star. In the interest of intellectual honesty, I like to include Green in the discussion, since he was projected just as high as Granger in 2005. Green of course went on to be just as big a bust as Korolev, so I guess you never know.

Now, I'm not a big EuroFan so I'll agree about Kobe being different. Too many unknowns about these Eurodudes, esp the level of competition. But the problem here was the particular player, Korolev. Just didn't have the right stuff. But suppose it had turned out he did and he was the next Dirk? Or Tony Parker?

And at the moment, we have the Doncic case. Say we're at #3, see a huge dropoff after the top 3, and the Kings and Nets are sitting at #4 and #5. Doncic is antsy and is considering opting out of the draft. What would y̶o̶u̶ Jerry West do?

Why would Doncic need a promise to stay in the draft? I find it very unlikely he doesnt come over. If he thinks he can pick his team, which is what his agent, Billy Duffy, might be attempting a promise at 12 means jack. Dude is a top 3 prospect.

It's a hypothetical.

[mkwest]

Clippers value the 30 minutes they get with each prospect at NBA draft combine

"The biggest thing for us is the 30 minutes we get to spend with them in the interview," said Trent Redden, the Clippers' assistant general manager who was part of their big contingent here. "Although they have been coached better and better, you still get a little bit of their perspective on things you had questions about. You get to find out what type of person they are. That's the biggest part that I get out of it."

The get-togethers, [Lawrence] Frank said, are when the Clippers sought to get a read on “what’s real versus what is kind of a façade. We’re just looking for true honesty and we look for the characteristics that we value. Is he humbled? Is he over himself? Like, can he laugh at himself?

"Again, they are 19, 20, 21. They are young men. But just the self-awareness to know your strengths and weaknesses as people. Then we are looking at how competitive are they? Because ultimately, at the end of the day, that is usually the difference-maker — the competitiveness, the thirst, needing that competition."

[Lonnie] Walker, who is only 19, was asked what he knows about West.

"My father is old school and also going to Miami, Coach [Jim Larranaga], he's very old school so you tend to know about people like them," Walker said, smiling. "But it was great talking to [West]. He was very laid back. He talked to me about a lot of things, but he also taught me a lot of things. Just telling me how to prepare for the NBA. Even if I wasn't to go to the Clippers, just how to present myself as a man and how to be ready for the challenges that I approach."

Brad Turner, LA Times

[QRich3]

Why would Doncic need a promise to stay in the draft? I find it very unlikely he doesnt come over. If he thinks he can pick his team, which is what his agent, Billy Duffy, might be attempting a promise at 12 means jack. Dude is a top 3 prospect.

Yeah I think all Doncic is doing with the "no-NBA" thing is trying to get all the NBA talk off his back, he's playing the freakin final 4 and all everyone asks is about Phoenix and Sacramento, which are places he's probably never been in, or close to. Guy's about to play one of the most important games in basketball, so it's understandable he doesn't even want to think about the NBA at this second. He's coming over 100% though, and I very much doubt he gets to pick 3.

[Ranma]

Lonnie Walker IV’s favorite Animal Planet Show? Planet Earth 1 & 2!

The former Miami Hurricanes PG speaks about his desire to improve his game and to learn as much as he can about anything and everything.

[mkwest]

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[Quake Griffin]

The earth is an illusion?

lolwut.

[ejftw]

According to NBADraft.net's Twitter (on phone, too lazy to link) they believe the Bulls have promised Chandler Hutchinson at #22 and Lakers have promised Mitchell Robinson with #25.

[mkwest]

According to NBADraft.net's Twitter (on phone, too lazy to link) they believe the Bulls have promised Chandler Hutchinson at #22 and Lakers have promised Mitchell Robinson with #25.

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[Ranma]

According to NBADraft.net's Twitter (on phone, too lazy to link) they believe the Bulls have promised Chandler Hutchinson at #22 and Lakers have promised Mitchell Robinson with #25.

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I want to remind everyone that NBAdraft.net is not Draft Express (DX), which is now part of the ESPN Insider network, and that their credibility with regards to reporting news is dubious. At the same time, I'm not at all saying that they're lying either. It's just that they seem to lack the connections and good judgment to discern what is smokescreen passed on by teams, agents, players, or whomever. At times, they seem so desperate to want to be involved that they don't care what news and rumors are being spread no matter how questionable it is to the point that they serve as willing accomplices or pawns as mouthpieces.

Remember, that during the 2016 NBA Draft, they "broke" news that the Clippers promised to draft Ben Bentil with our first round pick, which was eventually used to draft Brice Johnson instead. mkwest posted the original tweet in that year's draft thread, which has since been deleted and retweeted with a rephrasing to include "rumored" and noting the Clippers as a "possibility" instead. While the DX guys will pass along rumors themselves, they're usually much more discerning with what to report or at least will be quicker to note how questionable particular rumors are based on the respective circumstances.

The Bentil rumor didn't make any sense at the time, except for NBAdraft.net trying to prop itself as a legitimate member of the media. God Shammgod tried his hand at quite a few things in the basketball business and is supposedly a player development coach with the Mavericks. But it also looked like Shammgod wanted to up the profile of the player he was representing at the time in order to build his rep to recruit future clients, so he apparently took advantage of NBAdraft.net's desire to be more involved on the basketball reporting scene by telling them of this so-called promise that never materialized. The funny thing is that I believe NBAdraft.net has been around longer than the DX group.

In any case, NBAdraft.net is doing a better job of presenting the information in a more objective manner rather than try to push the "exclusive" scoop angle. I can actually see the rumored promises to both Hutchison and Robinson as making some sense at those respective spots and teams, but I'm much more skeptical of Robinson actually getting one.

While Hutchison was already thought of as a safe option late in the first round, Robinson--while an athletic and talented 7-foot prospect--has red flags about his character, mentality, and commitment. He moved around to quite a few different high schools before settling in on one where he became a McDonald's All-American, but then committed to play for a college only to back out twice resulting in him not playing a single game of collegiate basketball. Unless he's wowed a team with a private workout that went under the radar, which is I guess is possible, I don't see how a team would commit this early to drafting a prospect in the first round with such a questionable background, especially since it seems like his camp is purposely ducking interviews and workouts.

It also seems like a major coincidence to have two players receive promises from two different teams at practically the same time, especially with it being so early in the pre-draft process. What? Did they both work out together in the same clandestine workout? Maybe it was actually the Hawks who gave them both such promises since they also have the 19th and 30th overall picks in the first round in addition to 3rd overall, but that is not how GM Travis Schlenk operates.

Like I said, things don't seem to entirely line up and Hutchison is the more proven prospect albeit with the lower ceiling while Robinson sounds like the poster child for what not to do as an NBA draft prospect.

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[Ranma]

Livingston was a generational talent pre-injury. I like Shai, but thats some really, really high praise I dont think is warranted. However, the size, frame, switchability, ect. makes some sense. If you said similar to Livingston a few years ago, with upside and a better jumper, I would agree.

I absolutely concur. Livingston was gifted as a playmaker with his court vision and feel for the position while SGA is seen more as a combo guard. Not only that, but Livingston also tested with elite level agility whereas Gilgeous-Alexander didn't even participate in such drills at the pre-draft combine. With the league heading toward position-less basketball, a player like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has more value now than he would in the past but I still don't see him as much more than a utility player to be used off the bench, especially early on but he'd need to further develop his body and polish his skills. Personally, I'm still an advocate of my PGs having natural playmaking instincts for the position with maybe a few exceptions here and there depending on the roster construction.

I love the DX guys but the Shai-Shaun comparison, like their comp of Miles Bridges and Justise Winlsow, just doesn't ring true even if the respective side-by-side physical dimensions line up surprisingly well.

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