Draft Results: Damian Lillard, Meyers Leonard, Will Barton.

[lucky strike]

I really can't recall reading anything negative about him recently by people that get paid to coach/scout/write about the NBA....they may be out there but I just can't recall seeing any of it once SL started.

And I don't think you can fault the team at all for not being able to trade down with Toronto. Considering that they took Terrence Ross if anything they were looking to move down themselves not up. Well unless they really really wanted Barnes. And if Toronto takes Barnes at #6 then who knows if Golden State takes Lillard at #7 (or someone trades up to the #7 spot to nab him before PDX can get him at #8).

Just way to many hypotheticals to use that as a reason for him being a bad pick because you weren't able to pick up an additional asset (which likely wouldn't have been all that big an asset).

[PDXKnight]

I really can't recall reading anything negative about him recently by people that get paid to coach/scout/write about the NBA....they may be out there but I just can't recall seeing any of it once SL started.

And I don't think you can fault the team at all for not being able to trade down with Toronto. Considering that they took Terrence Ross if anything they were looking to move down themselves not up. Well unless they really really wanted Barnes. And if Toronto takes Barnes at #6 then who knows if Golden State takes Lillard at #7 (or someone trades up to the #7 spot to nab him before PDX can get him at #8).

Just way to many hypotheticals to use that as a reason for him being a bad pick because you weren't able to pick up an additional asset (which likely wouldn't have been all that big an asset).

Personally I wouldn't have been too upset if Lillard were taken ahead of us considering that we still could've had Drummond on the board. That said I highly doubt someone would move up to 7 to nab Lillard especially if Barnes were still on the board at 7. Even if Toronto would've took him at 6 the chances are teams would be trading up for Drummond rather than Lillard.

[lucky strike]

I think the moral of the story is that trading up or down in the draft to ensure you get a specific player and an acceptable asset in return (to fairly compensate you for taking the risk that the targeted player might be nabbed by someone else) is really hard to do.

If there was some rumor that Toronto was trying to trade up with us then I might see how it could be used as a valid criticism against the Lillard pick but since there was nothing I just count the whole thing as unreasonable talk....similar to "why didn't Portland just buy another mid 1st rounder".

I feel like you're going to be really wrong about Lillard's contribution (personally i see him putting up statistics close to Kyrie Irving's rookie year) but I guess it's just fun conversation until they start playing the real games.

[Shem]

All is a strong word, and I'm betting if either of us had the chance to talk to every single scout and sports writer we'd find plenty of people who see things differently. The way I see it a lot of people are high off of Lillard's vegas games which is understandable. I just still wonder if they could've gotten away with moving down 2 conditional on Toronto not drafting Lillard, pick up an asset along the way, and wind up better than they would have with lillard at 6. I can understand the pick and why many like it, and I'm sure I get called out for not being 100 percent sold on it if Lillard turns out well. Just a hint though, reverse psychology can be effective sometimes.

Well, you're more than welcome to find someone out there who is down on Lillard's game. But I'm sure if it was out there, you would have already posted it. BTW, Ben Golliver posted this earlier this morning:

http://www.blazersedge.com/2012/7/26/31 ... e-round-up

It has a bunch of quotes about Lillard's game which must be giving him doubts about what he thought of the draft.

Oh, and Golliver gave the our draft a "C":

Unless Lillard really translates. Draft was a C, IMO.

https://twitter.com/blazersedge/status/ ... 5307555840

[DusterBuster]

Oh, and Golliver gave the our draft a "C":

Unless Lillard really translates. Draft was a C, IMO.

https://twitter.com/blazersedge/status/ ... 5307555840

Exactly why giving out draft grades night of the draft is beyond pointless. I'll never get why people put so much credence into these stupid grades that media members put out. Even most of the guys who put these things out hate doing them because of how stupid they are.

[TBpup]

I still feel very uncomfortable with drafting Lillard when Barnes was clearly the better player (plus I'd rather have Dragic + Barnes than Lillard + Batum hands down).

Clearly? Given the opportunities rookies have had so far, Barnes didn't even outperform Portland's own Will Barton. I don't think anyone is convinced Lillard is 100% the answer because no one knows yet. However, given his opportunities, he showed about as much as could be expected. Comparing him to Rose, D-Will, Rondo and Paul is actually quite a compliment to him since those are probabaly the top four PGs in the league and all are veterans. If Lillard gave you HALF of what those players give in his rookie year, you call it a big success.

[mojomarc]

I still feel very uncomfortable with drafting Lillard when Barnes was clearly the better player (plus I'd rather have Dragic + Barnes than Lillard + Batum hands down).

Clearly? Given the opportunities rookies have had so far, Barnes didn't even outperform Portland's own Will Barton. I don't think anyone is convinced Lillard is 100% the answer because no one knows yet. However, given his opportunities, he showed about as much as could be expected. Comparing him to Rose, D-Will, Rondo and Paul is actually quite a compliment to him since those are probabaly the top four PGs in the league and all are veterans. If Lillard gave you HALF of what those players give in his rookie year, you call it a big success.

+1. And as I have pointed out ad nauseum, Barnes in Portland would have been a disaster unless he had a very good PG with him. This played out in spades in SL, where Barnes basically showed he is Martell Webster with more consistency. Barnes may end up better at some point, but the consensus is that Lillard is ready for big minutes from day one. At this point, that is probably all we can say for certain. But the main concerns I've heard the "we should have taken Barnes" folks say are that Lillard doesn't have a great first step/quickness and that he is a player that can't make his teammates better. At least in SL, those fears were 100% baseless. So unless there is a new concern about him, the naysayers just don't have a point IMO.

[sabi]

Lillard measured on par with rose at the combine so that question mark was answered before the draft. He has all the tools of a star and some great skills to boot. He is not your Drummond type prospect all potential and no skills lillard is the real deal.

[PDXKnight]

I still feel very uncomfortable with drafting Lillard when Barnes was clearly the better player (plus I'd rather have Dragic + Barnes than Lillard + Batum hands down).

Clearly? Given the opportunities rookies have had so far, Barnes didn't even outperform Portland's own Will Barton. I don't think anyone is convinced Lillard is 100% the answer because no one knows yet. However, given his opportunities, he showed about as much as could be expected. Comparing him to Rose, D-Will, Rondo and Paul is actually quite a compliment to him since those are probabaly the top four PGs in the league and all are veterans. If Lillard gave you HALF of what those players give in his rookie year, you call it a big success.

+1. And as I have pointed out ad nauseum, Barnes in Portland would have been a disaster unless he had a very good PG with him. This played out in spades in SL, where Barnes basically showed he is Martell Webster with more consistency. Barnes may end up better at some point, but the consensus is that Lillard is ready for big minutes from day one. At this point, that is probably all we can say for certain. But the main concerns I've heard the "we should have taken Barnes" folks say are that Lillard doesn't have a great first step/quickness and that he is a player that can't make his teammates better. At least in SL, those fears were 100% baseless. So unless there is a new concern about him, the naysayers just don't have a point IMO.

The problem here TB is that you're basing your assessment on the summer league and at this point draft projections hold more weight than any SL stats.

Mojo, I thought we should have made more of a run at Dragic and I'm quite convinced that he'd be better than Lillard. PHX got him relatively cheap and if Portland paid a bit more we probably could have swayed him a bit. Ultimately we probably could have let Batum walk if we had Barnes and Dragic and our cap space would be better spent. Only time will tell I suppose but I had AD, Robinson, Beal, MKG, Barnes, and Waiters (in no particular order) pinned as the clear best 6 before the draft began and I feel that to change my rankings based on the summer league would be unfair at this point.

You both may be right and I think we certainly agree that Lillard isn't a 100 percent guarantee, but i'm sticking by my guns until I see this draft class play some games. I think we can all agree that it will be interesting to see how this class pans out considering that we had 2 high picks. I imagine in a few years there will either be plenty of regrets or plenty of sighs of relief, but as you said tb, its too early to tell and I admit that much.

[PDXKnight]

All is a strong word, and I'm betting if either of us had the chance to talk to every single scout and sports writer we'd find plenty of people who see things differently. The way I see it a lot of people are high off of Lillard's vegas games which is understandable. I just still wonder if they could've gotten away with moving down 2 conditional on Toronto not drafting Lillard, pick up an asset along the way, and wind up better than they would have with lillard at 6. I can understand the pick and why many like it, and I'm sure I get called out for not being 100 percent sold on it if Lillard turns out well. Just a hint though, reverse psychology can be effective sometimes.

Well, you're more than welcome to find someone out there who is down on Lillard's game. But I'm sure if it was out there, you would have already posted it. BTW, Ben Golliver posted this earlier this morning:

http://www.blazersedge.com/2012/7/26/31 ... e-round-up

It has a bunch of quotes about Lillard's game which must be giving him doubts about what he thought of the draft.

Oh, and Golliver gave the our draft a "C":

Unless Lillard really translates. Draft was a C, IMO.

https://twitter.com/blazersedge/status/ ... 5307555840

You are quite mistaken if you think I'm so vested in this topic that I would look for an array of evidence against Lillard, as a matter of fact I'm avoiding it in order to keep my view my own rather than reflect someone else's opinion. Gotta stay original eh? Not to mention I would rather have some hope for Lillard. As negative as I've sounded in this thread it may surprise you that I haven't entirely cancelled Damien out yet, I just think there are some question marks that are gonna naturally follow him until he plays a real nba game, and its worth being a bit realistic until he does.

[lucky strike]

I think the problem with the "making a run at Dragic" plan is that there's no guarantee that Portland could have gotten him. Free agency is difficult especially for a place like Portland in the midst of a rebuilding year. The Suns got him for 8.5/yr but who knows how much Portland would have had to outbid them. And there's the chance that he simply wouldn't have wanted to come here at all.

Lillard is doing the exact same thing in SL that he did in college. The knock against him was that maybe the only reason he put up those numbers in college was the inferior competition. But he fact that he's doing the same thing against better competition is very promising.

[JustBlaze52]

I think the problem with the "making a run at Dragic" plan is that there's no guarantee that Portland could have gotten him. Free agency is difficult especially for a place like Portland in the midst of a rebuilding year. The Suns got him for 8.5/yr but who knows how much Portland would have had to outbid them. And there's the chance that he simply wouldn't have wanted to come here at all.

Lillard is doing the exact same thing in SL that he did in college. The knock against him was that maybe the only reason he put up those numbers in college was the inferior competition. But he fact that he's doing the same thing against better competition is very promising.

I agree. I also like the fact that Lillard isn't one dimensional. He's great at changing his pace like Roy was for driving purposes, he can shoot the lights out, and also has shown the ability to be effective off of the ball. He made a nice baseline cut and lay-in against the Hawks I believe.

It's those latter two things that separate him from being Bayless-esque offensively.

Defensively he has some work to do, but he has all of the tools and desire (which is more important than anything) to do so. He even talked after summer league about that being his main focus to address before training camp.

He has also shown great court vision. I wasn't disappointed with his decision making in any of the summer league games. When there was a pass he made it, and if there wasn't he took the shot. A lot of players just weren't hitting... LMA, Wes, and Batum will.

I didn't like a couple of deep pull-up three pointers (half of which he made). Honestly I thought that was his only flaw... but that has a lot to do with being young and not being used to playing with other players that can score.

[mojomarc]

Mojo, I thought we should have made more of a run at Dragic and I'm quite convinced that he'd be better than Lillard.

I am perfectly happy that our GM decided to underpay for a potentially great PG who may not pan out than to overpay for one based on 35 games.

[Downtown]

I agree with lucky strike. Portland had absolutely no way of knowing that Dragic would sign with them as a free agent. So their option would have been to take a different player at the draft at #6 and hope they could sign Dragic? I think it was common knowledge that Dragic was going to be a hot item. Only with Houston trading Lowry to Toronto and then giving Lin $14.9mil for his third season of a contract did it take Dragic out of a larger pool of teams going after him. The Blazers had no way of foretelling that was going to happen.

They also had no way at the time of the draft to know that Minnesota would make such a big offer to Batum. So they figured they had Batum wrapped up easily and there wasn't a need for Barnes. With them having worked out both Leonard and Drummond they knew Drummond was going to be a project so they went with a different, and lower drafted project in Leonard.

And since the draft and free agency were so close together they also had to have had Hibbert as their main target for a while beforehand so they didn't want to burn the #6 on Drummond when they had targeted Hibbert. I think Leonard may have been an insurance pick but I don't really know.

So to summarize they could have drafted Barnes instead of Lillard because they thought they were getting Dragic and Batum was going to be too costly to match. I suppose they could have taken that gamble but by drafting Lillard they had at least secured the pointguard position with a guy they felt comfortable with based on Lillard's pre draft workout where it was reported he wowed the Blazers, and they knew they could match any offers for Batum.

It's easy to move the pieces around in hindsight but at the time they had to make decisions on different criteria. So I guess the hindsight debate is whether Dragic and Barnes is better for Portland than Lillard and Batum. Honestly, that could be a 50/50 arguement but I would bet not too many people would have brought it up, or even had thought about it before the draft.

[cucad8]

I'd way prefer Batum and Lillard to dragic and barnes. It's not really close for me either at this point. Lillard will be the best of the four soon enough.

[TBpup]

The problem here TB is that you're basing your assessment on the summer league and at this point draft projections hold more weight than any SL stats.

Nothing is being based on Summer League. It was just an observation of the opportunities so far and given those opportunities, Barnes had yet to outplay Barton let alone Lillard....that is all.

Agreed about Dragic in that going after him would have somewhat been like going after Hibbert. We could have made a significant offer and still not ended up with him. Besides, Dragic's career numbers are 8 points, and 3.3 assists per game. Only once in his career (last season) has he averaged more than that and he was rewarded with an $8+ MM contract. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to think that Lillard will easily average that in his rookie season and for far less money.

[Moonbeam]

As negative as I've sounded in this thread it may surprise you that I haven't entirely cancelled Damien out yet, I just think there are some question marks that are gonna naturally follow him until he plays a real nba game, and its worth being a bit realistic until he does.

You previously said that Lillard would be a veteran minimum-caliber player and then that he would be lucky to be the 8th man on a team. Even Bayless, who is the poster child for caution when it comes to Summer League performance, is better than that. It is that vehement pessimism that makes it seem like you are simply negative for the sake of being negative. I know that you are passionate about the Blazers and are the furthest thing from a troll, but it has struck me as odd to see you calling out Lillard with such vitriol.

[DeBlazerRiddem]

I agree with lucky strike. Portland had absolutely no way of knowing that Dragic would sign with them as a free agent. So their option would have been to take a different player at the draft at #6 and hope they could sign Dragic? I think it was common knowledge that Dragic was going to be a hot item. Only with Houston trading Lowry to Toronto and then giving Lin $14.9mil for his third season of a contract did it take Dragic out of a larger pool of teams going after him. The Blazers had no way of foretelling that was going to happen.

They also had no way at the time of the draft to know that Minnesota would make such a big offer to Batum. So they figured they had Batum wrapped up easily and there wasn't a need for Barnes. With them having worked out both Leonard and Drummond they knew Drummond was going to be a project so they went with a different, and lower drafted project in Leonard.

And since the draft and free agency were so close together they also had to have had Hibbert as their main target for a while beforehand so they didn't want to burn the #6 on Drummond when they had targeted Hibbert. I think Leonard may have been an insurance pick but I don't really know.

So to summarize they could have drafted Barnes instead of Lillard because they thought they were getting Dragic and Batum was going to be too costly to match. I suppose they could have taken that gamble but by drafting Lillard they had at least secured the pointguard position with a guy they felt comfortable with based on Lillard's pre draft workout where it was reported he wowed the Blazers, and they knew they could match any offers for Batum.

It's easy to move the pieces around in hindsight but at the time they had to make decisions on different criteria. So I guess the hindsight debate is whether Dragic and Barnes is better for Portland than Lillard and Batum. Honestly, that could be a 50/50 arguement but I would bet not too many people would have brought it up, or even had thought about it before the draft.

+1, I love the contextual analysis, some people think you can ignore what was happening on the ground at the time.

Portland has a good chance at having drafted the best PG and C from the draft. I think they were very satisfied with it at the time and talking about "what if's" now does no one any good.

Talking about how good we would be if we drafted Player A and signed player B for X amount of money is making assumption upon assumption and creates an imaginary fantasy scenario that only plays out perfectly in your head. I call it revisionist history, because you basically go back and make up a set of moves and the result without any sort of facts or objective truth to it. I know I have belabored this point before, and some people just don't get why I object to it, but there it is.

[King d]

What do you think about the Billups comparison for Lillard? I'm starting to love it and see a lot of similarities between the two. 04-06 Billups was a beast

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OznyMGLVGVo[/youtube]

[b33nine]

Lillard = Billups
Barton = Hamilton
Batum = Prince
LMA = Sheed
??? = Wallace

Portland = '15 NBA champions!?

All joking aside, I actually like Hamilton as a hopeful comparable for Barton.