bayless would be the 3rd or 4th guard taken in this draft depending on whether you consider xavier henry a guard or forward(and whether or not he went ahead of bayless). and if you're talking about the prospect that bayless was coming out of college, he'd be right behind the top 4 as far as best player available.
Man, you are so wrong. He'd definitely still be a lottery pick. I'm not sure where, exactly, but any 21 year old kid who gets real minutes on a 50 win team and shows so much growth between year one and two is a decent prospect.
Really? Let's review. Shooting: very erratic. Playmaking: adequate for a SG, subpar for a PG. Defense: willing, but generally ineffective. What about his performance makes anybody think he is still a top prospect? If his shooting improves, he can still have a decent career.....but so has Steve Blake, and he was a second rounder.
He does one thing exceedingly well: He gets to the foul line. And I don't mean "exceedingly well" compared to other sophomores. I mean compared to legit starting shooting guards. Per 36 minutes, he averages 6.7, which is better than freakin' Brandon Roy. That's crazy-good for a guy with absolutely no reputation among the refs and a pretty limited jump shot to set up the drive. Teams know that driving and drawing fouls is his bread and butter, and they still can't stop him from doing it. That's a heck of an elite skill to build a pretty darned good basketball player around.
I agree, that is a very useful skill. The problem is, teams tend to adjust to one-trick-pony players. He has to either develop a consistent outside shot, or improve his drive-and-kick, to really be an impact player.
I think Joel would have the most trade value (out of the players who may be on the block). He is either a productive center or a salary paid by insurance (assuming he doesn't come back injured and try to play)
You'd think so. But I find myself often comparing him to Sergio. El Chacho was a one-trick-pony too, and it was a pretty similar trick. Use the dribble drive to penetrate, but instead of drawing the foul, he looked for the dish. Teams played him for it and he was basically useless. Hence, Sergio's best PER as a Blazer was by far his first season. With Bayless, though, he actually got drastically BETTER after teams figured him out. His first season his PER was 8.3, the second was 14. Yes, he's completely one-dimensional, but unlike Sergio it seems to be a dimension that can't really be stopped. And as refs get to appreciate his game more, he's only going to get more of those 50:50 calls go his way. With a kid as young as he is who is coming off the bench, I'm pretty happy to see he's got one elite skill that can't really be stopped. It's a nice foundation to build on. He can try to expand on his other skills, but if they aren't working on a given night he can always justify playing time with his ability to draw fouls. That's something Sergio could never do. If he wasn't successful on the drive-and-dish, he was useless. He never had the luxury to develop other parts of his game.
