After watching Josh Smith go berserk last night on the supposed best team in the NBA (not to mention reading years of posts on here of Blazer fans desperately drooling over what he could do for this franchise), it reminded me of how we passed on him in the draft. Curious as to how bad of a decision that was, I decided to take a look back at the 04 draft, most commonly remembered as the day that the Magic went potential over a proven commodity and opting for a much skinnier Dwight Howard with the 1st overall pick, over College Player of the year Emeka Okafor. Also worth mentioning here in Blazerland, we had 3 1st round picks in that draft... only one of them is (barely) still on an NBA roster. Join me won't you!? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_NBA_Draft To our credit (?), we weren't the only team, or the earliest team, to make a terrible draft pick that year. The Raptors started things off in grand fashion by taking Rafael Araujo at 8 - a pick that was confusing at the time and only went downhill from there. Cleveland got into the mix by taking Luke Jackson 10th overall, who then went on to get hurt and subsequently do absolutely nothing in his pro career. The Warriors and Sonics followed that up with big men: Biedrins and Robert Swift respectively. While Biedrins isn't in the same embarrassingly bad category of Araujo, Swift and Luke, he's had injury problems in his own right and has never been a great fit in the Warrior's fast paced offense. Then came the Blazers pick at 13. Ahh the memories... Coming out of the Jailblazer years (sort of), we needed to get younger and add a promising player or two. Also, we saw a big opportunity with Adidas hitching their wagon in a huge way to Sebastian Telfair. Passing on knuckleheads like JR Smith (sporadic talent since day-1 be damned), big men like Kris Humphries and Al Jefferson (we didn't need any bigmen at the time) and athletic/no-position freaks in the form of Dorrell Wright and Josh Smith, Telfair seemed to be the "safe" pick. The other aforementioned players all went in the next 7 picks (along with bust Kirk Snyder and Jameer Nelson). Whoops. I assert that this decision is still haunting us. Nelson was looked at as having less upside at PG than Telfair. However he's looked like a stud at times (many of them in the playoffs). JR Smith lived up to his knucklehead status, however is also explosive and deadly when focussed. Even after bouncing around a handful of times, he's provided more impact than Telfair ever did. Wright took a long time to develop and was never the player Miami wanted him to be, however he started coming out of his shell last season, and really came on this year for GS. Jefferson and Humphries are who they are, solid pieces. Jeff provides scoring and rebounding, Humprhies with hustle, defense and toughness. Then there's Josh Smith. From the word go, Smith brought length, athleticism, defense, intensity and excitement to Atlanta. Though not the brightest bulb in the box, I can't help but wonder how this franchise would be different if we'd've selected him instead of Telfair. Also worth mentioning is what happened after this handful of picks... We took Krhyapa and Sergei Monia. Noteworthy picks behind the 2 of them? Kevin Martin - stud, Delonte West (still a solid NBA player), Tony Allen, Sasha Vujacic, Beno Udrih, Anderson Varejao, Chris Duhon and Trevor Ariza. Monia was almost an instant bust and the most impactful things that Telfair and Viktor did for the franchise was be salary throw-ins for the trades for Brandon and Lamarcus - hardly irreplaceable contributions. We've all bemoaned the lack of perimeter defense these last few years, but what would it look like w/ Josh Smith and Tony Allen out there when we needed stops? We've needed a dependable knockdown shooter forever now, yet passed on Vujacic, Martin, and earlier on JR Smith. It's also worth noting that the JSmiths, Telfair and Wright are all - still - only 25 years old. No front office bats 1.000, but when you miss THAT badly on a crucial draft (we'd just begun to rebuild if you don't recall), the ripple-effect can cost you for years...
Oh hell almost every team can go back on every draft and pick out do-overs. Let's just focus on lamenting broy's knees.
There's a reason why we hate Patternash so much. I recall Mike Rice practically screaming on the radio during the draft for the Blazers to draft Jefferson. I also recall Mo being very high on Jameer.
As long as we are ragging, don't forget the further consequences of that Telfair pick; thinking they had our PGOTF, they traded down the next year, passing on the opportunity to draft Chris Paul.
logical conclusion, would you rather have B-Roy and LMA or Al Jeff, CP3 and a low lotto pick from 2006 (Redick?) to go with a young Z-bo?
Those were some horrible drafts and horrible front office moves. I cringe everytime I hear addition by subtraction.
Terrific contribution. My point was that Blazer fans keep rolling out the same old gripes. Oden and his injuries vs. Durant and his superstarness, not using RLEC and NVEEC, etc. but I don't think ANY respect is truly given to how awful this draft was for us. Of course you can do this for every team, and as I said, I understand that no GM is perfect, but MY GOD those are some colossal misses. I truly don't think its an exaggeration to say that we're still feeling its impacts. 7 years later, that's saying something...
Yes and yes and yes. I did the Usenet mock draft that year, iirc, and I took Jackson and Telfair... not great picks, BUT I took them lower than they were actually drafted. Jackson at 13 and Telfair at 23 were still reasonably good picks. Josh Smith was gone by 13. I passed on Martin twice. PatterNash was a terrible decision-making duo. Ed O.
