2024 NBA Draft Thread

[FarBeyondDriven]

With a draft class as good, deep but flat as this one I can't fault teams for taking chances on raw players with high upsides especially if they have multiple picks in the top 32 like the Jazz. Cody, Salaun and the other young guys are projects. Small market teams are just hoping they hit on a lottery ticket. It's way too early to write him and it's cringe for people taking laps. I viewed Cody as potentially having a Cam Johnson like role and career. CJ was 23 y/o as a rookie and didn't establish himself as a decent starter/role playing 3 and D wing until he was 25 y/o. Let's revisit in a few years. It's been a brutal start though, no doubt about it. He looks overwhelmed and out of his depths. Until they make trades I'd send him down so he can play 30 mpg and gain some confidence.

[Catchall]

With a draft class as good, deep but flat as this one I can't fault teams for taking chances on raw players with high upsides especially if they have multiple picks in the top 32 like the Jazz. Cody, Salaun and the other young guys are projects. Small market teams are just hoping they hit on a lottery ticket. It's way too early to write him and it's cringe for people taking laps. I viewed Cody as potentially having a Cam Johnson like role and career. CJ was 23 y/o as a rookie and didn't establish himself as a decent starter/role playing 3 and D wing until he was 25 y/o. Let's revisit in a few years. It's been a brutal start though, no doubt about it. He looks overwhelmed and out of his depths. Until they make trades I'd send him down so he can play 30 mpg and gain some confidence.

I still like Cody Williams. He looks good running the floor, defending different positions and moving the ball. I think the talent is there. It's just going to take some time and some work to bring it out.

[FarBeyondDriven]

With a draft class as good, deep but flat as this one I can't fault teams for taking chances on raw players with high upsides especially if they have multiple picks in the top 32 like the Jazz. Cody, Salaun and the other young guys are projects. Small market teams are just hoping they hit on a lottery ticket. It's way too early to write him and it's cringe for people taking laps. I viewed Cody as potentially having a Cam Johnson like role and career. CJ was 23 y/o as a rookie and didn't establish himself as a decent starter/role playing 3 and D wing until he was 25 y/o. Let's revisit in a few years. It's been a brutal start though, no doubt about it. He looks overwhelmed and out of his depths. Until they make trades I'd send him down so he can play 30 mpg and gain some confidence.

I still like Cody Williams. He looks good running the floor, defending different positions and moving the ball. I think the talent is there. It's just going to take some time and some work to bring it out.

I've caught a few games and he does what he too often did in college despite having more talent than most of his competition, which is, he floats around. Same issue I had with Andrew Wiggins that has haunted him throughout his career. He doesn't appear to have an NBA player's mentality. Or maybe he lacks confidence because he knows he's so slight and his jumper needs work. I've seen nothing that suggests he should be in the NBA at this point. I can't for the life of me understand why Sensabaugh is getting 12 mpg and provides offense and 3pt shooting while Williams is getting nearly 19 mpg and provides zero except maybe defense. But if you're tanking anyway, why not give Sensabaugh all those minutes and send Cody down so he can get his own 30 mpg. This isn't isolated to the Jazz. It's b.s. politics like this that prevent so many young guys from developing. Like, this strategy is hindering the development of both of these players. It's just asinine. Sensabaugh needs minutes and conditioning to overcome his lack of defense. He's closer to a fully realized NBA player than Cody is so why not prioritize his development? Hell, maybe he increases his value for a potential trade.

[Catchall]

With a draft class as good, deep but flat as this one I can't fault teams for taking chances on raw players with high upsides especially if they have multiple picks in the top 32 like the Jazz. Cody, Salaun and the other young guys are projects. Small market teams are just hoping they hit on a lottery ticket. It's way too early to write him and it's cringe for people taking laps. I viewed Cody as potentially having a Cam Johnson like role and career. CJ was 23 y/o as a rookie and didn't establish himself as a decent starter/role playing 3 and D wing until he was 25 y/o. Let's revisit in a few years. It's been a brutal start though, no doubt about it. He looks overwhelmed and out of his depths. Until they make trades I'd send him down so he can play 30 mpg and gain some confidence.

I still like Cody Williams. He looks good running the floor, defending different positions and moving the ball. I think the talent is there. It's just going to take some time and some work to bring it out.

I've caught a few games and he does what he too often did in college despite having more talent than most of his competition, which is, he floats around. Same issue I had with Andrew Wiggins that has haunted him throughout his career. He doesn't appear to have an NBA player's mentality. Or maybe he lacks confidence because he knows he's so slight and his jumper needs work. I've seen nothing that suggests he should be in the NBA at this point. I can't for the life of me understand why Sensabaugh is getting 12 mpg and provides offense and 3pt shooting while Williams is getting nearly 19 mpg and provides zero except maybe defense. But if you're tanking anyway, why not give Sensabaugh all those minutes and send Cody down so he can get his own 30 mpg. This isn't isolated to the Jazz. It's b.s. politics like this that prevent so many young guys from developing. Like, this strategy is hindering the development of both of these players. It's just asinine. Sensabaugh needs minutes and conditioning to overcome his lack of defense. He's closer to a fully realized NBA player than Cody is so why not prioritize his development? Hell, maybe he increases his value for a potential trade.

When Cody is on the floor, he's the 5th option on offense. Guys aren't even looking to give him the ball. He's just out there to get his feet wet. He gets maybe 1 or 2 shot attempts on any given night. It's not that he's not engaged per se, it's that he's being frozen out.

Also, the Jazz have the worst playmaking in the entire league right now. Guys like Clarkson and Sexton, and even Keyonte, aren't able to set him up. If they could, Cody would be scoring on some slashes to the rim.

[JMAC3]

I would advise anyone who has Knecht shares right now to sell them.
The dudes profile is screaming that he is due for a massive regression.

Worst defender on Lakers in EPM. 6%
Shooting 67% at the rim which is going to plumet.
Crazy low assist rate for a perimeter player.
Steal and Block rates crazy low.

[HadAnEffectHere]

Cody Williams in the G-League looks pretty catastrophic.

Jazz in a really rough situation where they drafted six guys over the last two years and only really have two guys who have much chance of being rotation players (Filipowski and Hendricks, neither of whom have much star upside)

Collier will be a rotation player if he learns how to shoot, but ehhhhhhh.

[JMAC3]

Cody Williams in the G-League looks pretty catastrophic.

Jazz in a really rough situation where they drafted six guys over the last two years and only really have two guys who have much chance of being rotation players (Filipowski and Hendricks, neither of whom have much star upside)

Collier will be a rotation player if he learns how to shoot, but ehhhhhhh.

This is because Jazz refused to bottom out. It is hard to land building blocks when the highest picks you had were 9 and 10.

They took big swings on guys like Keyonte, Collier and Sensabaugh who were all polarizing prospects.

Cody Williams probably is never a star at this point, but he has the tools to turn into a solid rotation piece.

[HadAnEffectHere]

Cody Williams in the G-League looks pretty catastrophic.

Jazz in a really rough situation where they drafted six guys over the last two years and only really have two guys who have much chance of being rotation players (Filipowski and Hendricks, neither of whom have much star upside)

Collier will be a rotation player if he learns how to shoot, but ehhhhhhh.

This is because Jazz refused to bottom out. It is hard to land building blocks when the highest picks you had were 9 and 10.

They took big swings on guys like Keyonte, Collier and Sensabaugh who were all polarizing prospects.

Cody Williams probably is never a star at this point, but he has the tools to turn into a solid rotation piece.

Ehh, he completely broke his jumpshot over the summer and without a good jumper, he's going to be in Turkey within 3 years, we'll see.

[HadAnEffectHere]

Cody Williams is struggling so badly in the G League that we're headed for the real possibility that he gets his third year option declined unless he picks it up.

Shooting 31% from the field and 22% from three.

[BlazersBroncos]

Cody Williams is struggling so badly in the G League that we're headed for the real possibility that he gets his third year option declined unless he picks it up.

Shooting 31% from the field and 22% from three.

Its very early for that but I was never a Cody guy. He has the rough combo of both being absurdly skinny while also not being an elite athlete. He is only slightly above average height for a SF at 6'7 (I thought he might come in 6'8 or even 6'9 which would give him more runway for teams to take swings on - like Zhaire Williams).

EOD its just so, so early. But if you forced me to bet I would say his median is a career like the aforementioned Zhaire - but with a chance he doesnt even make it that far (Williams flashed a bit early in MEM).

I am a Blazers fan and we drafted Nolan Smith R1 and within 5 minutes of watching him it was clear he was nowhere near a NBA player. Cody had those vibes when I saw him play for UTA - but the caveat is he is much younger than Nolan was.

[Chi town]

My guy Buzelis is starting to get rotation mins and he is certainly impacting games. Especially defensively. In a small shooting slump but had his 3 ball up to 40% on good volume before the dip. Isn’t asked to much but shoot 3s and dunk but he has shown flashes. Looks a lot like a younger Franz.

[zimpy27]

This. The shock was never about the percentages (although they certainly helped drawing attention to it).

Isn't this more of a scheme thing from one extreme to another in terms of spacing requirements?

Seems to me that Dunn just doing what he's asked to do on offense and is fine with it because he's limited.

Scheme requires him to do different things but is not the reason he looks so different. He was scared to shoot in college and for a good reason – he absolutely sucked at it. He is now comfortably shooting in the NBA and the early results being so positive (also looking at pre-season here) is the cherry on top. If Dunn wasn't a much improved shooter already, the Suns would not have him shoot so many 3s (he probably wouldn't play at all) and he would not look anywhere near as comfortable shooting the ball.

So now it's been 16 games since his 5 game hot start.

Ryan Dunn is at 47% TS and shooting 25% from 3.
He plays 17 minutes a night and puts up 5 shots a game.

This is probably expectations now? Or still exceeding?

[The-Power]

Isn't this more of a scheme thing from one extreme to another in terms of spacing requirements?

Seems to me that Dunn just doing what he's asked to do on offense and is fine with it because he's limited.

Scheme requires him to do different things but is not the reason he looks so different. He was scared to shoot in college and for a good reason – he absolutely sucked at it. He is now comfortably shooting in the NBA and the early results being so positive (also looking at pre-season here) is the cherry on top. If Dunn wasn't a much improved shooter already, the Suns would not have him shoot so many 3s (he probably wouldn't play at all) and he would not look anywhere near as comfortable shooting the ball.

So now it's been 16 games since his 5 game hot start.

Ryan Dunn is at 47% TS and shooting 25% from 3.
He plays 17 minutes a night and puts up 5 shots a game.

This is probably expectations now? Or still exceeding?

I thought I was very clear that the positive surprise was him taking 3s comfortably (and not the hot streak). He still does that, so nothing has changed for me in that regard.

[HadAnEffectHere]

Review of Collier's rookie season.

Isaiah Collier is the best PG on the Jazz's roster
Collier is having statistically the worst season in NBA history

Scouts basically nailed t hat he had no chance of getting to the line or scoring at the rim in the NBA... He still has a chance to be a good NBA player, but it involves him shooting 10 threes a game and making >=40% of them.

[God Squad]

Cody Williams is struggling so badly in the G League that we're headed for the real possibility that he gets his third year option declined unless he picks it up.

Shooting 31% from the field and 22% from three.

I wouldn't write him off yet. Gradey looked pretty bad in the G-league and he's been one of the bright spots for the Raptors this season.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/gleague/players/d/dickgr01d.html#nbdl_totals-sc

[FarBeyondDriven]

Review of Collier's rookie season.

Isaiah Collier is the best PG on the Jazz's roster
Collier is having statistically the worst season in NBA history

Scouts basically nailed t hat he had no chance of getting to the line or scoring at the rim in the NBA... He still has a chance to be a good NBA player, but it involves him shooting 10 threes a game and making >=40% of them.

it's impossible to properly evaluate someone like Collier, playing on a tanking team, getting less than 17 sporadic minutes per game playing with scrubs. At this point it's just noise. The Jazz are more concerned with proving whether Keyonte George can be a part of their core going forward. He was always going to be prioritized over Collier. It'll take a trade or injuries for Collier to get run this season. We might have to endure people calling him a bust for a couple of years and then all of a sudden he's getting starter minutes and showing out which seems to happen all the time. You'd think people would learn their lessons about writing young players off completely but they never do.

[MemphisX]

Jaylen Wells is legit one of the best rookie perimeter defenders I have watched. The fact that he is shooting 40% from 3 is a great bonus.

[Chi town]

Jaylen Wells is legit one of the best rookie perimeter defenders I have watched. The fact that he is shooting 40% from 3 is a great bonus.

Kid is a stud. Love his game. He’s making up for awful Bane has been. Smart too.

[HadAnEffectHere]

wrong thread

[FarBeyondDriven]

Jaylen Wells is legit one of the best rookie perimeter defenders I have watched. The fact that he is shooting 40% from 3 is a great bonus.

when he was the same age as the freshmen and sophomores taken in the 2024 draft he was playing Div II ball. The lesson being, these kids all develop at different paces and landing spots and opportunities play a major role in whether they hit or not. So maybe people should relax before condemning young prospects and entire draft classes.