2012 NBA Draft - Part II

[Ruzious]

Sev, speaking of yet another G-town center, does Roy Hibbert meet your criteria? He improved a helluvalot more than Robinson, and he's going to his first all-star game. But really - if a player's per minute stats haven't changed a lot, logically - why would there be any red flags?
Edit - Doc beat me to it. I would have beat him, but a telemarketer got to me. Hmm, his voice sounded like Doc's.

[fugop]

Blake Griffin's freshman year was also not indicative of the player he would become. He posted decent numbers, 15 and 9, but nothing like his sophomore year.

[pancakes3]

When I look at the current crop of All-Stars, I see three types (excluding Internationals):

1. HSers who made the jump straight to the NBA (LeBron, Dwight, KG)
2. One-and-doners (Rose, Durant, Love, Melo, Bosh)
3. Guys who stayed 2-4 years in college (Duncan, Griffin, Wade)

not to be snarky but doesn't this break down to: "there are all stars to be found, regardless of years played in college, so we can't dismiss players one way or another" ?

and as edwood reminded us, there is no surefire way of predicting success. it's all one big craps shoot.

[doclinkin]

Rajon Rondo, maybe.

[Severn Hoos]

Yep, good call(s) on Hibbert. He's one that I missed on my scan of players. Question is - is he really an "impact player" (whatever that means)? If he was in this draft, would you draft him at #3? (Remember, he was picked outside the Lottery.) Would you trade the #3 pick in this draft for Hibbert? Would you trade our pick right now (unprotected) for him?

Point is - he's a nice player, would absolutely love to have him (esp. compared to McGee). Kind of like what I expect Barnes will turn out to be. And Sullinger too, for that matter. And Roy's a Center, which is harder to fill - and conversely, "easier" to make an All-Star Game. A decent-to-good true C will almost automatically be a top-10 guy at his position. A decent-to-good PF will probably be bottom half among starters.

Yeah Ruz, I don't mean to reach for something to complain about here, though I will make one clarification I misstated earlier: Robinson's numbers are virtually identical to his numbers last year as a Sophomore, but those numbers were a huge jump from his Freshman year. So he was mediocre/nondescript as a Freshman, Diamond-in-the-rough as a Sophomore, and BMOC stud as a Junior.

I guess what I'm saying is an echo of a previous thread - that the cream rises to the top. There are plenty of guys who show great potential as 18 year olds who flame out. But there are precious few who don't show elite potential as 18 year olds who then acquire it later on. Does it happen sometimes? Sure, but it's very much the exception to the rule.

What I do see is a lot of guys who were overlooked as 18 year olds who go on to be very solid NBA contributors, and yes - borderline All-Stars. And that's where I think Robinson will end up. But if we think he's going to turn the franchise around, we'll be disappointed, I suspect.

[Benjammin]

Severn, I'm not really interpreting people thinking that Robinson will turn the franchise around. I do believe that his skill set, personality, and intangibles will help to change the culture of the Wizards in a positive way. That's not a bad thing if the Wizards aren't so fortunate to get the top pick and select Davis.

[Severn Hoos]

When I look at the current crop of All-Stars, I see three types (excluding Internationals):

1. HSers who made the jump straight to the NBA (LeBron, Dwight, KG)
2. One-and-doners (Rose, Durant, Love, Melo, Bosh)
3. Guys who stayed 2-4 years in college (Duncan, Griffin, Wade)

not to be snarky but doesn't this break down to: "there are all stars to be found, regardless of years played in college, so we can't dismiss players one way or another" ?

and as edwood reminded us, there is no surefire way of predicting success. it's all one big craps shoot.

True - but there really hasn't been a recent case of a guy who was unheralded coming out of HS, invisible as a Freshman/Sophomore, and then became an All-Star 1st/2nd option in the NBA. (Maybe Westbrook, who as #114 in DX's scouting rankings coming out of HS)

Are we drafting a 3rd option? Then the knocks against Barnes/Sullinger/Beal/Lamb don't make much sense to me. Because those guys could definitely all be solid 3rd options, regardless of whether they were picked 3rd, 6th, 10th, or wherever. (Ben - thanks, and I also agree with your point, but think those other guys - OK, maybe not JLamb - would also bring skill set, personality, and intangibles to change the Wiz culture.)

I've always been a Sullinger fan, and have warmed to Barnes. Not discounting Robinson or MKG, but I might be inclined to go with the "sure thing" in the former pair if given the choice. But I also trust (generally) the collective eye of the board, and there's a lot of love for MKG, and some strong supporters for TRob, so am open to them as well.

If we don't get Davis, we'd better get one of those 4. Drummond, PJII, or just about anyone else would have me pretty depressed.

[Severn Hoos]

Blake Griffin's freshman year was also not indicative of the player he would become. He posted decent numbers, 15 and 9, but nothing like his sophomore year.

Actually, 15 & 9 in 28 minutes equates to PER, WS, pace-adjusted per 40 Scoring & Rebounding that are almost identical to Robinson's stats this year as a Junior. And as you point out, Griffin's Sophomore year was a huge jump from that level. Robinson's Freshman year isn't even on that radar.

[nate33]

Carlos Boozer averaged 13 and 6 in his first two years and then averaged 18 and 9 in his junior year.

Also, while I agree that there appears to be a trend that star players are good in their freshman year, doesn't Robinson deserve an asterisk due to his situation? After all, there were two lotto picks in his frontcourt when he was a sophomore. How often does that happen? Would Kevin Love have made an impact as a freshman if he played on Florida's lineup behind Horford and Noah?

[The Consiglieri]

The worst case scenario is Barnes at #5

Clearly you haven't been a Wiz fan for very long.

One need only read from the book of Ji to understand that this team will go on a late season run as veteran squads begin to falter from the shortened season and decide to rest their legs for the playoffs. In an attempt to showcase Dray for draft day trades we unearth him from the bench and the lazy groundhog smells the familiar April air, shakes off the sloth from his long slumber and begins ballin like an allstar as he usually does. The Wiz' youth pep and vigor will undo all efforts at a proper tank as we leapfrog three four spots in the standings, then on lotto day watch as we're jumped by the '9th seed' Knickerbockers who slid in the standings when Jeremy Lin suffered a mild temporary eye injury from media overexposure. Wiz pick 8th. Perry Jones!

Half of our final 12 games are against teams that won't be sniffing the playoffs (Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, New Jersey), 3 of the other 6 games are against playoff teams that can be expected to play to win (New York, Indiana, Orlando), Chicago and the 2 against Miami could be different scenarios but with both squads neck and neck for now, for that 1 seed, they could be fighting, while Chicago, Indiana, and Orlando will face us with no rest. It's a weird scenario, but overall, the b.s. winning streak strikes me as at least somewhat unlikely. Everyone of the matchups with a potential playoff team will have something at stake save possibly that very last season ender, and the games against the crummy teams have a balanced rest schedule. I think we'll be okay that way.

As a few have mentioned this seem is so freaking awful, has so few essential pieces, that to argue that we must do this or that is essentially insane. The only must is to get the best player possible. Shooters? Defense? Inside presence on the offensive end, defensive end, rebounding etc. All irrelevant. What we need is simply the best available player that isn't a PG period. That's all.

I also think the FA talk is a pipe dream. Do players rush left and right for Milwaukee? Golden State? Detroit? Atlanta? This team is awful, and not insignifigantly, much worse than all of those teams, save maybe Detroit. No FA worth a damn is coming here. If most laughed (and they did), at the idea of DeAndre Jordan signing with Golden State (and this being why they lost Lin), why would we think we could do better than GS at learning even a midlevel interesting FA. The target teams are obvious for all of them? A combo of big money, marketing, tax friendly, and competitive combinations. We aren't friendly for any of these angles save possibly big money.

We have to do this the hard way. We have to land the pices in the draft, and pray we can keep Wall till we have them. I suppose I'm not leaving much room available for other possibilities, and technically it's conceivable we could get lucky again, like we did with Arenas (though not by the same means), but I find it highly unlikely, especially when you consider the player interest angle, but also what seems to be Leonsis' objective. My guess is that they will target veteran glue guys, but probably wont be able to get much save for guys that are either past it, or guys that are never gonna be much save third or fourth tier complementary guys. That might happen. Players that matter, building blocks? I don't see us landing any of those veteran studs to build around till the summer crop in '13 or the trade deadline that same year.

It's awful, but its gonna take more time, a lot more time, and there's no guarantee of anything. We might end up in no mans land like Milwaukee, or Atlanta, we might failt totally, or we might land something of consequence and really have it built and going whole hog by '13 or '14 at the latest, the only thing for sure is there are no short cuts.

[The Consiglieri]

and at 6 we have Sullinger. So i guess that is our worst case scenario. which is a little better option then last year's worst case scenario - which happened. but there is also the possibility of the 3 years ago worst case scenario which we made worse when we assumed we'd get harden traded out early and could have gotten rubio.

my pessimistic top 3 (right now) is robinson, barnes, sullinger. the 1st two provide strong skills we dont have and the other provides good skills we dont have.

ive been leaning towards barnes under the assumption that we could overpay and get illyasova but it is never good to make assumption with grunfeld in charge.

It's much, much, much better than last year. Our worst case scenario this year is what would have been gone when we selected last june, these guys, Barnes, Sully, would not have even been on the board when we were looking at Vesely or a trade down. This year our worst case scenario appears likely to be a solid starter. That's not bad at all. I would be very surprised if we weren't top 2-3 bad, our worst case scenario in my view is finishing 4th worst, and I still believe it highly unlikely that the lotto top 3 is composed entirely of squads outside of the top 3 worst. I think we'll pick top 6 worst case, and probably somewhere between 1 and 5, my 1-5 would be:

1. Davis
2. Drummond (trade out)
3. MKG
4. Thomas Robinson
5. Bradley Beal

I suspect our top 5 is:

1. Davis
2. Barnes
3. MKG
4. Thomas Robinson
5. Andre Drummond (trade out)
6. Sully


I have to admit I have no idea about 5 and 6, i just figure Drummond is somewhere in there.

[LyricalRico]

^ I also think that the Wiz probably have Barnes too high on their list.

[Dat2U]

My updated rankings (for now).

TIER 1

1. F Anthony Davis

TIER 2

2. F Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
3. F Thomas Robinson

TIER 3

4. C Andre Drummond
5. F Harrison Barnes
6. F John Henson
7. G Bradley Beal
8. C Meyers Leonard
9. F Jared Sullinger
10. G Jeremy Lamb
11. F Quincy Miller
12. C Tyler Zeller
13. F Perry Jones III
14. F Terrence Jones
15. G Damien Lillard

TIER 4

16. F Tony Mitchell
17. G Tony Wroten
18. G Austin Rivers
19. F Mason Plumlee
20. F Arnett Moultrie
21. C Patric Young
22. F Terrence Ross
23. F LeBryan Nash
24. F Evan Fournier
25. F Mike Moser

[pancakes3]

I just want to ask why people think 6'9 is too short to play PF in the league. Both Robinson and Sullinger are listed as such.

[dobrojim]

I'm not sure anyone really thinks that. It's just that if you're dreaming
about the ideal PF, the guy is probably 6-10 or bigger in addition to
being a stud athlete, strong, quick with great hops and hands.

DIdn't Griffin actually measure out under 6-9?

I'd say 6-9 is fine as long as the guy doesn't have alligator arms

[The Consiglieri]

I'm not sure anyone really thinks that. It's just that if you're dreaming
about the ideal PF, the guy is probably 6-10 or bigger in addition to
being a stud athlete, strong, quick with great hops and hands.

DIdn't Griffin actually measure out under 6-9?

I'd say 6-9 is fine as long as the guy doesn't have alligator arms

I don't think he's athletic enough to dominate at the 4, the height thing hurts too, though the butt's nice (as odd as that is to say) and will help him. In the end, i think accidents of genetics gave him nice positioning to dominate in college, but to be merely league average to potentially good at the next level. I'd rather bet on somebody with more upside, but as many have said, if we get screwed in the lottery, I wont cry over getting a Barnes or a Sully, the guys will be great third or fourth pieces, the problem will be that we'll be still looking for that elite difference maker because neither of them are it (and admittedly they may be only 1 or 2 in this draft).

[dobrojim]

I not clear on exactly who is really being discussed here.

Sully and less so TRob are shorter than the ideal PF.
Meh. Either could turn out to be solid NBA players.
Or perhaps not. The fact that they are shorter than
one might dream for is clearly part of the question
about their respective ceilings. This is not an unreasonable
point of view.

[Zonkerbl]

6'9" is too short if you can't jump, which is apparently his problem. 6'9" with Booker's agility and jumping ability is, well, Blake Griffin.

I won't kick Sullinger out of bed. He might be a good fit next to McGee.

[llcc25]

I not clear on exactly who is really being discussed here.

Sully and less so TRob are shorter than the ideal PF.
Meh. Either could turn out to be solid NBA players.
Or perhaps not. The fact that they are shorter than
one might dream for is clearly part of the question
about their respective ceilings. This is not an unreasonable
point of view.

According to Kenny Smith, Sullinger plays taller than 6'9'' by virtue of the fact that he has one of the biggest rumps for a big man. He noted that this is a great asset (no pun intended) for Sullinger given the fact that he uses this to his advantage on both the offensive and defensive end.

[DCZards]

I just want to ask why people think 6'9 is too short to play PF in the league. Both Robinson and Sullinger are listed as such.

If a team lists a player at 6-9, it's a good bet they're closer to 6-7 or 6-8.