What would you expect from Freeland if he comes over next season?

I've got to say that Freeland is already way better than I thought he would ever be. This is a guy from England (where nobody plays basketball) who didn't start playing until late. And now he's one of the top big men in the second best league in the world. Every year this looks like less of a wasted pick. And we still have his rights! Here's that year's draft from Orlando's pick of Fran Vasquez (who is probably about on a par with Freeland, albeit less of a scorer and less improved) down to Milsap. Anyone care to count how many of these are still providing good value to the team that drafted them?

(Of course, Milsap wouldn't be either, if Utah hadn't've matched...)

Code:

11. Orlando             Fran Vazquez
12. New Orleans         Hilton Armstrong
13  Philadelphia        Thabo Sefololsha
14. Utah                Ronnie Brewer
15. New Orleans         Cedric Simmons
16. Chicago             Rodney Carney
17. Indiana             Shawne Williams	
18. Washington          Oleksly Pecherov
19. Sacramento          Quincy Douby
20. New York            Renaldo Balkman
21. Phoenix             Rajon Rondo
22. New Jersey          Marcus Williams
23. New Jersey          Josh Boone
24. Memphis             Kyle Lowry
25. Cleveland           Shammon Brown
26. LA Lakers           Jordan Farmar
27. Phoenix             Sergio Rodriguez
28. Dallas              Maurice Ager
29. New York            Mardy Collins
30. Portland            Joel Freeland

31. Portland            James White
32. Houston             Steve Novak
33. Atlanta             Solomon Jones	
34. LA Clippers         Paul Davis
35. Toronto             P.J. Tucker
36. Minnesota           Craig Smith
37. Minnesota           Bobby Jones
38. Golden State        Kosta Perovic
39. Milwaukee           David Noel
40. Seattle             Denham Brown
41. Orlando             James Augustine
42. Cleveland           Daniel GIbson
43. New Orleans         Marcus Vinicius
44. Orlando             Lior Elyahu
45. Indiana             Alexander Johnson
46. Utah                Dee Brown
47. Utah                Paul Milsap

MAN, that was a shitty draft! LaMarcus and Rondo are probably the only players from that draft likely to be all-stars next season.

 

Where have I heard this before?

 

I was watching a set of video highlights for Jonas Valanciunas, who is either withdrawing from the draft because of buyout issues, or staying in and getting picked as high as #4, according to several mocks, and I noticed that a lot of them were against Unicaja and Freeland. And it looked like Valanciunas was DOMINATING. So I looked up the stats from those games:
First game, Unicaja wins 98-91
Second game, Unicaja loses 70-65

Notice that actually Valanciunas plays very short minutes, and hardly at all in the win for his team (whose PG is Khalid El-Amin!). Not only did Freeland get better stats (albeit in more minutes) in both games, our own Nedzad actually got better stats in FEWER minutes. In fact, the first of those games was Nedzad's best game evah. Now, of course Valanciunas is very young, but it's still sort of encouraging.

 

bring over nedzad!

 

marc gasol?

 

Seems unlikely, especially as he's just acquired Spanish citizenship (and thus is more useful to Spanish teams who have to keep below a quota of non-Spaniards).

 

yeah i was kidding, but hey, he cant be worse than earl barron