2020 Draft

[WizarDynasty]

The Ringers new mock is out and has the Wizards trading up to 6 for LaMelo Ball.

I see this has already been covered...

Here's what they say we'll do: "The Hawks send no. 6 to the Wizards for no. 9, no. 37, and Troy Brown Jr." In other words, to move up 3 spots in the draft, we give up the #37 pick & Troy Brown. If I'm an Atlanta fan, I love this trade.

We do this in order to draft LaMelo Ball.

I can imagine giving the #37 pick to move up 3 spots, but IMO the trade as proposed is utterly ridiculous.

I wouldn't trade up for Okongwu either. Certainly not giving up a promising player like Brown.

The one thing there is in this draft is depth. Trading down makes sense. Trading up... no.

The good thing about Brown is that he knows his weaknesses. He recently said he needs to improve his 3 point shooting and moving laterally on defense. He said he needs to do that to become a good player. TBJ is preaching to the choir.

I'm the choir leader.

He should also add some muscle.

2 weeks till the draft!

Brown has a permanently damaged knee. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. If you have watched you will see it. Similar to Beals. Wizards don't have personnel that teaches good mechanics to preserve your joints and the players don't even know they are using bad mechanics until its too late.

[Ruzious]

I see this has already been covered...

Here's what they say we'll do: "The Hawks send no. 6 to the Wizards for no. 9, no. 37, and Troy Brown Jr." In other words, to move up 3 spots in the draft, we give up the #37 pick & Troy Brown. If I'm an Atlanta fan, I love this trade.

We do this in order to draft LaMelo Ball.

I can imagine giving the #37 pick to move up 3 spots, but IMO the trade as proposed is utterly ridiculous.

I wouldn't trade up for Okongwu either. Certainly not giving up a promising player like Brown.

The one thing there is in this draft is depth. Trading down makes sense. Trading up... no.

The good thing about Brown is that he knows his weaknesses. He recently said he needs to improve his 3 point shooting and moving laterally on defense. He said he needs to do that to become a good player. TBJ is preaching to the choir.

I'm the choir leader.

He should also add some muscle.

2 weeks till the draft!

Brown has a permanently damaged knee. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. If you have watched you will see it. Similar to Beals. Wizards don't have personnel that teaches good mechanics to preserve your joints and the players don't even know they are using bad mechanics until its too late.

Wait a sec - Beal's become one of the more durable players in the NBA after being injury-prone in his 1st 3 or 4 seasons, and I think he's actually become a more athletic player in that time. That doesn't seem to go with what you said.

[WizarDynasty]

The good thing about Brown is that he knows his weaknesses. He recently said he needs to improve his 3 point shooting and moving laterally on defense. He said he needs to do that to become a good player. TBJ is preaching to the choir.

I'm the choir leader.

He should also add some muscle.

2 weeks till the draft!

Brown has a permanently damaged knee. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. If you have watched you will see it. Similar to Beals. Wizards don't have personnel that teaches good mechanics to preserve your joints and the players don't even know they are using bad mechanics until its too late.

Wait a sec - Beal's become one of the more durable players in the NBA after being injury-prone in his 1st 3 or 4 seasons, and I think he's actually become a more athletic player in that time. That doesn't seem to go with what you said.

He has a very damaged wobbly knee. Pay attention, you can see how damaged it is. He uses his knees instead of bending his hips whenever he lands to absorb impact. Slowly damages your cartilage. He isn't using muscles to absorb the force, he is using his cartilage. Muscles is much better at absorbing force than cartilage over time. He uses his joints instead of deep bending his hips and using his gluteus maximus. That's why his right knee is so wobbly.

[dckingsfan]

Brown has a permanently damaged knee. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. If you have watched you will see it. Similar to Beals. Wizards don't have personnel that teaches good mechanics to preserve your joints and the players don't even know they are using bad mechanics until its too late.

Wait a sec - Beal's become one of the more durable players in the NBA after being injury-prone in his 1st 3 or 4 seasons, and I think he's actually become a more athletic player in that time. That doesn't seem to go with what you said.

He has a very damaged wobbly knee. Pay attention, you can see how damaged it is. He uses his knees instead of bending his hips whenever he lands to absorb impact. Slowly damages your cartilage. He isn't using muscles to absorb the force, he is using his cartilage. Muscles is much better at absorbing force than cartilage over time. He uses his joints instead of deep bending his hips and using his gluteus maximus. That's why his right knee is so wobbly.

My guess, every player in the NBA has damage to their knees. Some are affected more than others.

Looking at only knee damage for a player is a bit like flying the plane and only looking at the gas gauged, (opinion).

[WizarDynasty]

Wait a sec - Beal's become one of the more durable players in the NBA after being injury-prone in his 1st 3 or 4 seasons, and I think he's actually become a more athletic player in that time. That doesn't seem to go with what you said.

He has a very damaged wobbly knee. Pay attention, you can see how damaged it is. He uses his knees instead of bending his hips whenever he lands to absorb impact. Slowly damages your cartilage. He isn't using muscles to absorb the force, he is using his cartilage. Muscles is much better at absorbing force than cartilage over time. He uses his joints instead of deep bending his hips and using his gluteus maximus. That's why his right knee is so wobbly.

My guess, every player in the NBA has damage to their knees. Some are affected more than others.

Looking at only knee damage for a player is a bit like flying the plane and only looking at the gas gauged, (opinion).

It's not a guess, it's visual evidence --("you can see it with your eyes when you watch the videos---not a guess", because it can significantly impact the way they play. Beal has knee damaged because he doesn't make a conscious effort to absorb impact with his hips. My guess is that he hasn't been educated as to why he has significant damage to his right knee. Again, is all related to deep hip bend when landing. If you pay close attention Beal almost never deeply bends his hips when he lands. It shows lack of Basketball IQ on Beal's part.

Same thing was the case with Gilbert Arenas. Wizard's as an organization doesn't haven't high level "movement coaching". Again, if you pay a player 33 million dollars and want to preserve his value internal value so that he continues to be valuable to producing a winning product, then you would make sure he doesn't do mechanical movements that prematurely damage his knees. If I have break pads that I want to preserve, I am not going press the gas and the break pad at the same time continuously. It wears out the pads unnecessarily.
Why pay all this money for fancy break pads, only to allow the break pads... "knees" to wear out prematurely. When they wear out, you have to greatly reduced performance...or you have to replace the pads. It takes drafts picks to replace pads which is equivalent to currency in the NBA.
Obviously if the top the of the organization "owner" leonsis has no clue about knee damage from landings, how can he his general manager to hire experts to prevent this.
IF leonsis doesn't know that pressing the gas and the breaks at the same time prematurely wears out the break pad, then he doesn't complain when he see his "drivers" doing this activity.
Hence, this is why Wizards unlike "top tier" organization...stay at the bottom of the totem pole. They lack awareness of how to preserve their assets and thus don't act. Their inaction hurts them where are other teams act...like the Magic force their players to change their mechanics to prevent damage. If the player can change their mechanics, they know that their product wont have a long life span and the devalue that asset accordingly. Beal's knees are experiencing significant premature wear....due to his unawareness and the organizations unawareness.
Both parties are not acting on the premature wear. A top organization has HOF players that step in before the problem gets out of control. If you don't have that type of person in your organization, the problem gets so bad that it is irreversible. That is the path that Bradley Beal is on. Wall was on the same path.
We have top 4 players at their position, but their nba careers are significantly shortened because the owner and GM lack awareness of why their assets are rapidly depreciating. Other "top" organizations that study film know, but don't care because it's not their assets.
If we lived in another cultural that didn't promote selfish competition above health, then nba would actually step in and provide "free assistance".

[nate33]

He has a very damaged wobbly knee. Pay attention, you can see how damaged it is. He uses his knees instead of bending his hips whenever he lands to absorb impact. Slowly damages your cartilage. He isn't using muscles to absorb the force, he is using his cartilage. Muscles is much better at absorbing force than cartilage over time. He uses his joints instead of deep bending his hips and using his gluteus maximus. That's why his right knee is so wobbly.

My guess, every player in the NBA has damage to their knees. Some are affected more than others.

Looking at only knee damage for a player is a bit like flying the plane and only looking at the gas gauged, (opinion).

It's not a guess, it's visual evidence, because it can significantly impact the way they play. Beal has knee damaged because he doesn't make a conscious effort to absorb impact with his hips. My guess is that he hasn't been educated as to why he has significant damage to his right knee. Again, is all related to deep hip bend when landing. If you pay close attention Beal almost never deeply bends his hips when he lands. It shows lack of Basketball IQ on Beal's part.

Even if you are correct that Beal doesn't land in an ideal biomechanical fashion, that doesn't mean he currently has a bad knee. At best, it's a hypothesis that he will have knee trouble in the future.

I don't recall Beal having a single knee injury in his career to date. He had stress fracture issues in his tibia (or maybe it was fibula?) during his first few seasons because his growth plates hadn't fully fused. Since then, the only injury I recall is a strained hamstring and an injured shoulder.

[doclinkin]

Beal will be fine. Look at the size of his brothers. Beal has a football players skeleton and musculature in a basketball players body. Also, you can tell by his breath patterns that his cartilage has remarkable viscosity. Now that he is not eating white sugar his recuperative powers will hyperaccelerate and the latencies of his regenerative mutation will enable an enhanced energy level. WHat you do not recognize his that by yogic repetitive meditation he has a shadow hip bend, that you can see with the recoil when he lands, if you can iso late the video in slow motion. The Wizards trainers are working an occult level biomedical recovery program the likes of which we have never seen. Trust Ted.

[WizarDynasty]

Beal will be fine. Look at the size of his brothers. Beal has a football players skeleton and musculature in a basketball players body. Also, you can tell by his breath patterns that his cartilage has remarkable viscosity. Now that he is not eating white sugar his recuperative powers will hyperaccelerate and the latencies of his regenerative mutation will enable an enhanced energy level. WHat you do not recognize his that by yogic repetitive meditation he has a shadow hip bend, that you can see with the recoil when he lands, if you can iso late the video in slow motion. The Wizards trainers are working an occult level biomedical recovery program the likes of which we have never seen. Trust Ted.

That's a good one. Much of Beal's ahtleticism came from his football days. Beal has the same dwade type football build. The problem with football is that they don't have repetitive jump and land dynamics that are present on basketball. Football players don't develop IQ for how to prolong their knees from jump and land because the frequency is miniscule compared to basketball.
"Now a quick not..if you went back and watched beal's shooting form during draft process... you can see that he shot the ball with a very low elbow, meaning his elbow didn't go above his eyesocket. That means that he can't land backwards because the trajectory on his shot his would be too flat. His low elbow on his jumpshot ties directly to the health of his knees.
Once shooting became Beal's primary job, he needed to raise his elbow above his eyesocket while rising for his shot so that he could correct his landing pressure point on his knee. You can't force your momentum backwards with a low elbow. Beal was able to get away with shooting with alow elbow because he didn't have wear and tear on his knee. But pounding after pounding erodes your knee lining and decreases the structural integrity of your knee because you are using the cartilage in your knee to absorb the landing force instead shifting your momentum backwards and deep bending your hips...using your glutes. Beal dead drops directly straight down from his jumpshots because he shoots with a low elbow below the eyesockt. A high elbow above the eyesocket allows a player to arch his back in midair, and when he lands his upper torso and shoulders can continue to fall and his knee doesn't have to absorb the full force his body. If you back is not arch midair, then when you land, your knees have to absorb the full force of the jump.
If you don't understand what I am saying... sit in your chain now and hold your elbow at a 90 degree angle....now **** your elbow to a 45 degree angle and feel what it does to your spine Beal is never rising into the sky with a 45 degree angle...it normally with a 90 degree angle.
Based on what i see in the videos, he normally lands directly down on his knees instead of shifting his momentum backwards midair as he lands. Michael Jordan use to do the same thing on his long range jumpshots.
Normally you will see a defender bump a shooter in the air after he takes a shot. He is actually showing sportman ship by helping the shooter not to deadland on his knee. that slight push in the air backwards allows the shooter to land backwards significantly reducing the force on his knees.

and biggest problem is where Beal puts his elbow when he catches the ball. Each time i see him catch the ball, he has a bad habit of having his elbow pointing to the ground. this immediately reduces your ability to fluidity arch your elbow above your eyesocket. Rarely do I see Beal catching the basketball with his elbow point already aimed at the basket. When he catches the ball from a pass, his hips aren't already dipped before he catches the ball.
When he is shooting off the dribble i rarely see him catch his bounce just before he shoots with deeply bent hips. He doesn't start to bend his hips until after he catches the ball...either on his dribble or when catching the pass. you have to catch the ball with deeply bent hips either on the last dribble bounce or set your body up before the ball even reaches your hands to have deep bend. This obvious takes athleticism but I think Beal is capable of it with the right coaches. Some people, can't do this no matter how hard they tried because they have really poor hip bend. This isn't the case with Beal.
Casual fans that watch basektball, but don't shoot a high number of off the dribble 3 point shots won't understand what's going on, including Ted, but it has significant impact on how long 'your knees last...or break pads. Landing while moving backwards from your jumpshots...signifincantly improves your knees basktball lifespan. Same thing with landing from a dunk or layup. Landing straight down without deeply bending your hips significantly decreases your knees basketball life expectancy. So when I see this trait in college players, i immediately devalue. Unless you have in house expertise and years to retrain their landing mechanics, don't value them the same as someone who already displays these traits.
Football won't teach you this. Think about it, the only players that jump are receivers and that's only once in a blue moon. Perimeter shooting basketball players jump and land 100's of times, and the more athletic you are in executing a move, the more force you land with.
Beal has elite football athleticism, but the very nature of the game of football prevents you from having to learn how to land correctly because very few jumping in game of football except for receivers on special long distance passes and even those are dangerous. You can't learn landing mechanics from the game of football because football is low frequency jumping sport. Now volleyball, yes, you would have to learn landing mechanics especially if you are spiker.
Part of why Michael JOrdan had knee damage was because he was a high jumper in highschool. He was taught his body how to take off explosive and reach maximum heights but he never had to teach his feet how to land and absorb the impact without damage because they land on mats.
Had michael jordan developed bone structure and mechanical landing IQ while his bones were still growing to absorb that tremendous impact from his leaps jumps, his career would have lasted alot longer.
I think we see lebron's career last much longer because he displays elite level landing mechanics from his explosive jumps and he showed exceptional hip bend even in his highschool clips when landing. We need Beal and Washington organization as whole to maintain the value of hte assets we have now. Looking at this draft this year, shows just how hard it was for us to get elite guards. Wall and Beal were top 3 picks that were very very difficult to land. This entire draft doesn't have any player on level of wall or beal. Even Hachi is a top 3 pick in this draft.

[dckingsfan]

My guess, every player in the NBA has damage to their knees. Some are affected more than others.

Looking at only knee damage for a player is a bit like flying the plane and only looking at the gas gauged, (opinion).

It's not a guess, it's visual evidence, because it can significantly impact the way they play. Beal has knee damaged because he doesn't make a conscious effort to absorb impact with his hips. My guess is that he hasn't been educated as to why he has significant damage to his right knee. Again, is all related to deep hip bend when landing. If you pay close attention Beal almost never deeply bends his hips when he lands. It shows lack of Basketball IQ on Beal's part.

Even if you are correct that Beal doesn't land in an ideal biomechanical fashion, that doesn't mean he currently has a bad knee. At best, it's a hypothesis that he will have knee trouble in the future.

I don't recall Beal having a single knee injury in his career to date. He had stress fracture issues in his tibia (or maybe it was fibula?) during his first few seasons because his growth plates hadn't fully fused. Since then, the only injury I recall is a strained hamstring and an injured shoulder.

A visual view at the speed of a video would tell you next to nothing. It could be because of his ankles, knees, hips, etc. Or it could just be the mechanics that he developed.

To really know you would need MRIs and then you would need to go through a relearning process to see if it is something developmental or structural.

The rest is just us chickens talking...

[WizarDynasty]

It's not a guess, it's visual evidence, because it can significantly impact the way they play. Beal has knee damaged because he doesn't make a conscious effort to absorb impact with his hips. My guess is that he hasn't been educated as to why he has significant damage to his right knee. Again, is all related to deep hip bend when landing. If you pay close attention Beal almost never deeply bends his hips when he lands. It shows lack of Basketball IQ on Beal's part.

Even if you are correct that Beal doesn't land in an ideal biomechanical fashion, that doesn't mean he currently has a bad knee. At best, it's a hypothesis that he will have knee trouble in the future.

I don't recall Beal having a single knee injury in his career to date. He had stress fracture issues in his tibia (or maybe it was fibula?) during his first few seasons because his growth plates hadn't fully fused. Since then, the only injury I recall is a strained hamstring and an injured shoulder.

A visual view at the speed of a video would tell you next to nothing. It could be because of his ankles, knees, hips, etc. Or it could just be the mechanics that he developed.

To really know you would need MRIs and then you would need to go through a relearning process to see if it is something developmental or structural.

The rest is just us chickens talking...

Disagree but we are entitled to our opinions. But I think most people that watch about 10 separate videos "with emphasis on his knees after landing..." from shooting a 3 pointer without going backwards will notice things that they didn't pay attention to before. And hte light will turn on. It requires you to use your own eyes and trust them. Not WD's eyes.

[nate33]

Beal will be fine. Look at the size of his brothers. Beal has a football players skeleton and musculature in a basketball players body. Also, you can tell by his breath patterns that his cartilage has remarkable viscosity. Now that he is not eating white sugar his recuperative powers will hyperaccelerate and the latencies of his regenerative mutation will enable an enhanced energy level. WHat you do not recognize his that by yogic repetitive meditation he has a shadow hip bend, that you can see with the recoil when he lands, if you can iso late the video in slow motion. The Wizards trainers are working an occult level biomedical recovery program the likes of which we have never seen. Trust Ted.

[dckingsfan]

Even if you are correct that Beal doesn't land in an ideal biomechanical fashion, that doesn't mean he currently has a bad knee. At best, it's hypothesis that he will have knee trouble in the future.

I don't recall Beal having a single knee injury in his career to date. He had stress fracture issues in his tibia (or maybe it was fibula?) during his first few seasons because his growth plates hadn't fully fused. Since then, the only injury I recall is a strained hamstring and an injured shoulder.

A visual view at the speed of a video would tell you next to nothing. It could be because of his ankles, knees, hips, etc. Or it could just be the mechanics that he developed.

To really know you would need MRIs and then you would need to go through a relearning process to see if it is something developmental or structural.

The rest is just us chickens talking...

Disagree but we are entitled to our opinions. But I think most people that watch about 10 separate videos "with emphasis on his knees after landing..." from shooting a 3 pointer without going backwards will notice things that they didn't pay attention to before. And hte light will turn on. It requires you to use your own eyes and trust them. Not WD's eyes.

Agree to disagree.

BTW, I am a cycling coach also... and have worked USACycling on many pedaling stroke issues.

We have done many studies where we "thought" it was a structural issue only to find it was a developmental issue.

Only when you go through the process of trying to change the mechanics do you actually know. Sometimes this requires; MRIs and X-rays; physical manipulation techniques, stretching, yoga message; stroke technique changes through visual and the physical process and sometimes all of the above. And other times when it is working for the athlete you don't do anything and marvel at how they have developed their own techniques.

Usually an intervention starts with a video... just saying.

[WizarDynasty]

A visual view at the speed of a video would tell you next to nothing. It could be because of his ankles, knees, hips, etc. Or it could just be the mechanics that he developed.

To really know you would need MRIs and then you would need to go through a relearning process to see if it is something developmental or structural.

The rest is just us chickens talking...

Disagree but we are entitled to our opinions. But I think most people that watch about 10 separate videos "with emphasis on his knees after landing..." from shooting a 3 pointer without going backwards will notice things that they didn't pay attention to before. And hte light will turn on. It requires you to use your own eyes and trust them. Not WD's eyes.

Agree to disagree.

BTW, I am a cycling coach also... and have worked USACycling on many pedaling stroke issues.

We have done many studies where we "thought" it was a structural issue only to find it was a developmental issue.

Only when you go through the process of trying to change the mechanics do you actually know. Sometimes this requires; MRIs and X-rays; physical manipulation techniques, stretching, yoga message; stroke technique changes through visual and the physical process and sometimes all of the above. And other times when it is working for the athlete you don't do anything and marvel at how they have developed their own techniques.

Usually an intervention starts with a video... just saying.

Basketball really different from pedaling. If a player has to dip his hips in order to generate the power to jump and doesn't use that same motion to absorb the force, then something else is absorbing the force. The answer? Cartilage. Cartilage gets worn down over time. Muscles don't.
I agree that the way a person's bones grow during development are related to forces they experience. If Beal played mostly football and didn't pick up basketball until later in life, the structure of his knees would have "developed" based on forces from football which is a non jump sport for the most part. He has the athleticism to absorb the forces of the jump, but the majority of his knee structure was set by the time he got heavily involved in the forces related to shooting 1000's jumper a day.
Maybe he was into jump rope, but jump rope can't simulate running full speed, stopping and leaping, and balancing in midair to aim, and then landing to minimize damage to cartilage --1000's times a day. Don't think Jump rope at a young age, let's the knee's experience and entire musculature structure adapt to that type of force.

[nate33]

WizD, do you have any medical training or any biomechanical background whatsoever?

[dckingsfan]

Disagree but we are entitled to our opinions. But I think most people that watch about 10 separate videos "with emphasis on his knees after landing..." from shooting a 3 pointer without going backwards will notice things that they didn't pay attention to before. And hte light will turn on. It requires you to use your own eyes and trust them. Not WD's eyes.

Agree to disagree.

BTW, I am a cycling coach also... and have worked USACycling on many pedaling stroke issues.

We have done many studies where we "thought" it was a structural issue only to find it was a developmental issue.

Only when you go through the process of trying to change the mechanics do you actually know. Sometimes this requires; MRIs and X-rays; physical manipulation techniques, stretching, yoga message; stroke technique changes through visual and the physical process and sometimes all of the above. And other times when it is working for the athlete you don't do anything and marvel at how they have developed their own techniques.

Usually an intervention starts with a video... just saying.

Basketball really different from pedaling. If a player has to dip his hips in order to generate the power to jump and doesn't use that same motion to absorb the force, then something else is absorbing the force. The answer? Cartilage. Cartilage gets worn down over time. Muscles don't.
I agree that the way a person's bones grow during development are related to forces they experience. If Beal played mostly football and didn't pick up basketball until later in life, the structure of his knees would have "developed" based on forces from football which is a non jump sport for the most part. He has the athleticism to absorb the forces of the jump, but the majority of his knee structure was set by the time he got heavily involved in the forces related to shooting 1000's jumper a day.
Maybe he was into jump rope, but jump rope can't simulate running full speed, stopping and leaping, and balancing in midair to aim, and then landing to minimize damage to cartilage --1000's times a day. Don't think Jump rope at a young age, let's the knee's experience and entire musculature structure adapt to that type of force.

Or swimming or running or rowing. Sport-Specific neuromuscular assessments and specific training methods for each e.g., plyometric training vs. isometric or isokinetic strength testing, dynamic balance training vs. static balance testing depends on the sport and what you are trying to accomplish. And even athletes with injuries can continue to evolve.

But, let's agree to disagree on this one...

[nolang1]

If Okongwu’s off the board, what are some thoughts on trading the pick for Jaxson Hayes? He’s only 5 months older than Onyeka and while he was considered more of a raw, high-upside type of prospect, he actually had a very good all-around impact for a player his age (last I checked, I believe he was right after Beal on the list of best BPM for 19-year-old rookies - players that age not sucking is more uncommon than you’d assume).

Hayes is no less a ‘modern’ player than Okongwu; both have about an equal chance of becoming decent three-point shooters and Hayes moves very well defending the perimeter for his size. With the Pelicans hiring Stan Van Gundy, they might be looking to build their team with 4 shooters surrounding Zion, which could create a buy-low opportunity for Hayes.

[payitforward]

Interesting suggestion -- one no one has thought of at all: good for you!

You mention a possible "buy- low opportunity," but all the same I'm not sure NO would be willing to trade the guy they picked #5 in last year's draft for the #9 pick in this year's draft. Especially given that he played a lot for a rookie -- almost 1100 minutes -- & played quite well too.

One other thing -- not that I follow the Pels in particular -- but I haven't read anywhere that they have an interest in moving Hayes. Have I missed something?

If so, & if we should be interested, nothing says it has to be a pick that we trade for him. Might be worth bringing this up in the trade thread?

[doclinkin]

If Okongwu’s off the board, what are some thoughts on trading the pick for Jaxson Hayes? He’s only 5 months older than Onyeka and while he was considered more of a raw, high-upside type of prospect, he actually had a very good all-around impact for a player his age (last I checked, I believe he was right after Beal on the list of best BPM for 19-year-old rookies - players that age not sucking is more uncommon than you’d assume).

Hayes is no less a ‘modern’ player than Okongwu; both have about an equal chance of becoming decent three-point shooters and Hayes moves very well defending the perimeter for his size. With the Pelicans hiring Stan Van Gundy, they might be looking to build their team with 4 shooters surrounding Zion, which could create a buy-low opportunity for Hayes.

Sub 70% free throw shooting is not hopeful for adding range. Nor is .25% free throw shooting. Young bigs without a track record of significant success are projects. We have had experience with highly talented young giants who never put it together (JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche). The team has a win-now urgency in the window of Beal and Wall's contracts. We have deep holes in the roster, and if the right guy is not on the board, we would be more likely to try to trade the pick down a few spots to add depth instead of swapping for a single developmental player who has not yet put it together.

Who would you be targeting at 9?

[payitforward]

If Okongwu’s off the board, what are some thoughts on trading the pick for Jaxson Hayes? He’s only 5 months older than Onyeka and while he was considered more of a raw, high-upside type of prospect, he actually had a very good all-around impact for a player his age (last I checked, I believe he was right after Beal on the list of best BPM for 19-year-old rookies - players that age not sucking is more uncommon than you’d assume).

Hayes is no less a ‘modern’ player than Okongwu; both have about an equal chance of becoming decent three-point shooters and Hayes moves very well defending the perimeter for his size. With the Pelicans hiring Stan Van Gundy, they might be looking to build their team with 4 shooters surrounding Zion, which could create a buy-low opportunity for Hayes.

Sub 70% free throw shooting is not hopeful for adding range. Nor is .25% free throw shooting. Young bigs without a track record of significant success are projects. We have had experience with highly talented young giants who never put it together (JaVale McGee, Andray Blatche). The team has a win-now urgency in the window of Beal and Wall's contracts. We have deep holes in the roster, and if the right guy is not on the board, we would be more likely to try to trade the pick down a few spots to add depth instead of swapping for a single developmental player who has not yet put it together.

Who would you be targeting at 9?

Obviously, .649 from the line isn't a good % -- but if a guy gets to the line 6 times every 40 minutes as a rookie, then it actually is a positive. Moreover while 25% on 3-pointers obviously isn't good -- even Rui was a little better than that! -- it's not a meaningful figure: he took 5 of them all year.

OTOH, 67.4% on 2-pointers sure is good! &, in fact, his overall scoring efficiency was extremely high -- .689 -- so it seems a little unfair to ding him as you do. Especially given the 3.6 offensive boards per 40 minutes. In fact, if you look at all the rookies taken after Morant in last year's draft, only Cam Johnson & Clarke (each of them much older than Hayes, who didn't turn 20 until after the season) played better than him overall. & other than those two, only Herro & Thybulle looked as promising.

Finally -- & this bodes really well for him -- he was actually a lot better NBA rookie than he was a college player.

[Ruzious]

Interesting suggestion -- one no one has thought of at all: good for you!

You mention a possible "buy- low opportunity," but all the same I'm not sure NO would be willing to trade the guy they picked #5 in last year's draft for the #9 pick in this year's draft. Especially given that he played a lot for a rookie -- almost 1100 minutes -- & played quite well too.

One other thing -- not that I follow the Pels in particular -- but I haven't read anywhere that they have an interest in moving Hayes. Have I missed something?

If so, & if we should be interested, nothing says it has to be a pick that we trade for him. Might be worth bringing this up in the trade thread?

Yeah, I think NO targeted Hayes especially as a fit for Zion - who is to lead them to the promised land. Can't see them looking to trade Hayes now. NO's going to be a fun team to watch when they figure out how to play basketball and stay healthy.