2025 Draft Prospect Thread

[Diop]

off topic

the all french hornet team

parker /maledon
batum
salaun
diaw / moiso
diabate / ajinca

don't forget Frank Ntilikina

damnit. i forgot french frank. I'm still keeping salaun In my starting lineup over Frank.

ok, re-do

parker /maledon
batum / ntilikina
salaun
diaw / moiso
diabate / ajinca

wow Congrats Salaun. That's quite the honour.

He'd be running around like a maniac receiving lots of passes from Diaw and Batum which he stuffs up

[MPM]

That team might win more games than we did last season.

So...think I'm done pondering unless we learn someone shot someone. Think we all know it's one of Ace/VJ/Tre. I've prepped myself to be fine with any one of the three.

[driveandkick]

That team might win more games than we did last season.

So...think I'm done pondering unless we learn someone shot someone. Think we all know it's one of Ace/VJ/Tre. I've prepped myself to be fine with any one of the three.

Kon will at least be in the conversation, I think more so than Ace

[amcoolio]

Yeah I have no confidence in the FO making the right pick. I'm operating under the impression we will be horrible next year and hope to win the lottery again

[EmpireFalls]

Yeah I have no confidence in the FO making the right pick. I'm operating under the impression we will be horrible next year and hope to win the lottery again

To be fair to the FO, if our core 3 players are going to continue to be made of glass, the lottery is our best hope.

[countryboi]

Yeah I have no confidence in the FO making the right pick. I'm operating under the impression we will be horrible next year and hope to win the lottery again

this is not a strategy that has worked in 20 plus years maybe is time to do something else? whatever the Rockets and Pistons are doing we need that

[LofJ]

Yeah I have no confidence in the FO making the right pick. I'm operating under the impression we will be horrible next year and hope to win the lottery again

this is not a strategy that has worked in 20 plus years maybe is time to do something else? whatever the Rockets and Pistons are doing we need that

Both the Rockets and Pistons got serious and hired coaches with head coaching experience on winning teams. They also went out and acquired the best veterans they could to complement their young players.

The problem is we've never timed it correctly. We drafted LaMelo and then immediately went out and acquired vets before a good enough core was in place. Then once it was clear we needed better coaching they went out and got the guy only for him to back out and leave us in a terrible situation. So we went back to building the core with a proven unsuccessful coach. Only to replace him with an inexperienced assistant while still tanking to add talent.

It's not an unfixable situation however. Detroit realized they made a huge mistake with a coaching hire and immediately corrected it. Do that and improve the complimentary veteran players and this team might actually be decent.

Taylor Jenkins and Mike Malone are unemployed. And Jenkins even has connections with ownership from his time in Atlanta.

[driveandkick]

Yeah I have no confidence in the FO making the right pick. I'm operating under the impression we will be horrible next year and hope to win the lottery again

this is not a strategy that has worked in 20 plus years maybe is time to do something else? whatever the Rockets and Pistons are doing we need that

Both the Rockets and Pistons got serious and hired coaches with head coaching experience on winning teams. They also went out and acquired the best veterans they could to complement their young players.

The problem is we've never timed it correctly. We drafted LaMelo and then immediately went out and acquired vets before a good enough core was in place. Then once it was clear we needed better coaching they went out and got the guy only for him to back out and leave us in a terrible situation. So we went back to building the core with a proven unsuccessful coach. Only to replace him with an inexperienced assistant while still tanking to add talent.

It's not an unfixable situation however. Detroit realized they made a huge mistake with a coaching hire and immediately corrected it. Do that and improve the complimentary veteran players and this team might actually be decent.

Taylor Jenkins and Mike Malone are unemployed. And Jenkins even has connections with ownership from his time in Atlanta.

I agree, but even if we nail the veteran additions it won’t matter a whole lot if these dudes keep getting hurt. We say this all the time but if they get hurt again this season I have no clue what options were left with aside of just continuing to try and build another young core. It’s wild

[Braggins]

One guy people haven't been talking about much recently that I think could go higher than expected is Liam McNeely. His shooting percentages were rough, but Ive seen a lot of people saying he had to play PG for UConn despite being a true wing and it ruined his shot diet. His shooting stroke looks really good, he measured decently well at the combine, and hes a lot more athletic than Kon Knueppel.

[Bassman]

One guy people haven't been talking about much recently that I think could go higher than expected is Liam McNeely. His shooting percentages were rough, but Ive seen a lot of people saying he had to play PG for UConn despite being a true wing and it ruined his shot diet. His shooting stroke looks really good, he measured decently well at the combine, and hes a lot more athletic than Kon Knueppel.

Liam has potential to be a worker bee…solid bench contributor. He's being mocked between late and mid first round. This draft has lots of potential worker bees. Even some good ones where Charlotte will pick twice in round 2. But nailing pick 4 is critical…can’t make this another disaster rerun a la last year.

[fatlever]

Read on Twitter

um.... nope. maybe in a trade down.

[JMAC3]

Read on Twitter

um.... nope. maybe in a trade down.

CMB has a twitter cult following because he has a high BPM.

[Braggins]

People keep mentioning MKG when discussing VJ, which doesn't make sense at all to me, but the real MKG pick would Collin Murray-Boyles.

[fatlever]

Read on Twitter

um.... nope. maybe in a trade down.

CMB has a twitter cult following because he has a high BPM.

Yeah I don't doubt it all he's the type of guy that would impact winning and be someone you could plug into a lineup from day one. And one of these near playoff teams in the back half of the lottery could do well to pick him up. But yeah just not an option for us. Still have to go for that top end talent.
Same reason at the end of the day I just can't get on board with kon at 4. I'm pretty confident that that's a high floor guy that could come in and immediately get minutes and make the team better. But his ceiling is probably decent starter. And we're just not in a position yet to draft that kind of player in the top half of the lottery. Maybe one day we will have that luxury.

[fatlever]

People keep mentioning MKG when discussing VJ, which doesn't make sense at all to me, but the real MKG pick would Collin Murray-Boyles.

Yeah it's not similar. that's just ptsd talking.
I detailed a couple of days ago why the MKG pick didn't work and it wasn't just about the fact that he couldn't shoot. So much of his problems were related to confidence and injuries. He already had very low self esteem and very low confidence and then getting hurt multiple times in his first two years wrecked his confidence in his ability to play the way he wanted to play. Tack on all of that multiple shooting coaches each one trying to change his jumper, wrecked his confidence even further. Dunlap did him no favors by putting him in the shame corner. The player development the Hornets hat around him and how they implemented it should be studied by NBA teams as a cautionary tale as to how not the handle a player like Mkg. We did not have the infrastructure in place to deal with some one like him.

And I'm still not sure we have the infrastructure in place to deal with certain types of personalities and certain types of players that need some development. I think that's why you have seen several of the Hornets podcasters mentioning that ace isn't a great fit for this team at this time. nata Has definitely been on that train saying that he doesn't believe that the Hornets Development Staff can get the best out of ace and that may be this locker room as it is today isn't quite the place to get the best out of him. I'd like to believe that the current front office and player development staff and coaching staff is leagues better than what we had previously but that is still to be determined.

This is the hardest part about doing armchair analysis when you don't really know players personalities you don't know how they interact with people. And you don't know the ins and outs and the inner workings of each team's player development and coaching staff. Now the personalities that are on the team the maturity level the professionalism. There's no way to know that from reading And watching Youtube videos.

I was just watching that Gilbert Arenas Javaris Crittenton Documentary the other day that really made the point about how personalities and team culture can have such a huge impact. We mostly see these guys as names on a page or players on a screen yet don't really know what they're like 24/7 when they spend hours upon hours with each other. I mean I can't imagine how insufferable it must have been to be on a team where Gilbert Arenas is getting paid $100 million and acting like an absolute **** **** clown to everyone in the organization. And the Wizards just let it happen because he's the face of the franchise. And I used to love Gilbert Arenas. He was probably my favorite player at that time outside of the Bobcats. But I had no idea that he was an insufferable **** childish prick. All that to say that it's so much else that goes into whether or not a team will succeed or whether or not players can develop and chemistry can work. I wouldn't be surprised that two to three years ago the Hornets locker room was about as immature and unprofessional of a locker room that there was in the league. And I think the new owners and front office identified that immediately and have been doing their best to you change some of that.

[Braggins]

This may be a hot take, but I would not be surprised if Kon doesn't go top 10. He has to do his combine tests at a later date, so teams will have athletic testing for him, and I think if that ends up really bad it could happen.

[countryboi]

People keep mentioning MKG when discussing VJ, which doesn't make sense at all to me, but the real MKG pick would Collin Murray-Boyles.

Yeah it's not similar. that's just ptsd talking.
I detailed a couple of days ago why the MKG pick didn't work and it wasn't just about the fact that he couldn't shoot. So much of his problems were related to confidence and injuries. He already had very low self esteem and very low confidence and then getting hurt multiple times in his first two years wrecked his confidence in his ability to play the way he wanted to play. Tack on all of that multiple shooting coaches each one trying to change his jumper, wrecked his confidence even further. Dunlap did him no favors by putting him in the shame corner. The player development the Hornets hat around him and how they implemented it should be studied by NBA teams as a cautionary tale as to how not the handle a player like Mkg. We did not have the infrastructure in place to deal with some one like him.

And I'm still not sure we have the infrastructure in place to deal with certain types of personalities and certain types of players that need some development. I think that's why you have seen several of the Hornets podcasters mentioning that ace isn't a great fit for this team at this time. nata Has definitely been on that train saying that he doesn't believe that the Hornets Development Staff can get the best out of ace and that may be this locker room as it is today isn't quite the place to get the best out of him. I'd like to believe that the current front office and player development staff and coaching staff is leagues better than what we had previously but that is still to be determined.

This is the hardest part about doing armchair analysis when you don't really know players personalities you don't know how they interact with people. And you don't know the ins and outs and the inner workings of each team's player development and coaching staff. Now the personalities that are on the team the maturity level the professionalism. There's no way to know that from reading And watching Youtube videos.

I was just watching that Gilbert Arenas Javaris Crittenton Documentary the other day that really made the point about how personalities and team culture can have such a huge impact. We mostly see these guys as names on a page or players on a screen yet don't really know what they're like 24/7 when they spend hours upon hours with each other. I mean I can't imagine how insufferable it must have been to be on a team where Gilbert Arenas is getting paid $100 million and acting like an absolute **** **** clown to everyone in the organization. And the Wizards just let it happen because he's the face of the franchise. And I used to love Gilbert Arenas. He was probably my favorite player at that time outside of the Bobcats. But I had no idea that he was an insufferable **** childish prick. All that to say that it's so much else that goes into whether or not a team will succeed or whether or not players can develop and chemistry can work. I wouldn't be surprised that two to three years ago the Hornets locker room was about as immature and unprofessional of a locker room that there was in the league. And I think the new owners and front office identified that immediately and have been doing their best to you change some of that.

I will die on the hill that we failed MKG and he should have been what the Thompson twins are now.

[fatlever]

In terms of impact, yes... I mean the Twins are clearly much more athletic.
But I never understood why mkg couldn't at least be tony allen lite.
Every week he existed in the NBA his confidence got worse.. Except for that random seven game blip in 2016.
I mean you start with summer league and then you look at his first month in the league and it just went downhill from there. And I still go back to a game that I saw in person when we played the Pelicans somewhere around December of his rookie year. And he was having a fantastic game. Confidence was high. He and Anthony Davis were going at each other. he was looking for his offense. And then he got scratched in the eye and missed agame. And when he came back it was like he was very timid. He never looked the same to me after that.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201212290CHA.html
He was the best player on the floor this game.

But even after this he was still an impactful player. But after that double shoulder injury he just mentally fell apart I think.
The failure of MKG as a player is one of the things that bothers me the most when I think back on the past 15 years. I mean we were five years into his career and he still couldn't dribble with his left hand. How was that not a point of emphasis for his development? I think you could have stuck him on a dozen other nba teams as a rookie and his career path would have been very different.

[driveandkick]

This may be a hot take, but I would not be surprised if Kon doesn't go top 10. He has to do his combine tests at a later date, so teams will have athletic testing for him, and I think if that ends up really bad it could happen.

I think there is a better chance he goes #3 than falls out of the top 10

[fatlever]

he's def going to utah... lol.