If you guys have not read this, it is an excellent story about the curse of the 1986 draft class. More than just Lenny Bias: http://blogs.hoopshype.com/blogs/tomasson/2011/06/15/bias-not-the-only-sad-story-in-cursed-86-draft/
I stood next to Washburn his rookie year in Oakland. My buddy and I were shaking our heads in disbelief of what we saw that first game in preseason. We had never seen an athlete so "fucked up" in warm ups. (Well at least not since high school) One look at his eyes told the whole story. He missed a free throw attempt by two feet. As a Blazer fan I was laughing my ass off at this guy who all the Warrior fans were bragging about. As for my buddy who was a die-hard Warrior fan.......his cockiness took a huge hit. He tried to brush it off, but he knew that day that Washburn would not live up to expectations. Too bad because the guy had all the physical tools. 'The lights were on, but no one was home"
"Baskerville Holmes" is one of the greatest names of all time. How can a man ever live up to a name like that? Evidently he cannot. Ed O.
Also: Cleveland had a good draft, didn't they? Even if Daugherty was done at such a young age, they got three key starters (Brad, Ron Harper, Mark Price) on a team that was repeatedly VERY close to being really good. Ed O.
Would have been a great core if not for injuries. I'm not sure if I'm talking about Cleveland then or Portland now. I do know that I'd get a kick out of Roy re-inventing himself from a high-flying scorer to a lock-down defender after injury, ala Ron Harper.
Especially considering Cleveland didn't even have the 1st pick until right before the draft. They traded Roy Hinson for it. i wonder who the GM for Philly was that screwed that up?
Yup, that's what I was getting at with my next sentence. Though it can still be a fine core. Aldridge is better than he was and Oden can still be a superstar, if he can have a season of health. They're going to need someone like Batum to take a major developmental step, though.
I know you're a big Batum fan but do you see him making another huge step? He's so quiet it's tough to tell what kind of self motivation he has. Obviously experience contributes a lot and he's still fairly young. I'm starting to think that at 25 this is about as good as he's going to get physically. I was kind of disappointed in his last season because he didn't seem to move forward much... although I am compairing him to Aldridge who turned into a beast over the last off season and maybe that's not a fair comparison.
Batum is 22. He's said he's hired a trainer and is really going to focus on getting stronger in the off season. I never thought Batum had star potential, but I think can still become a good 3-4th guy if he continues to identify his weaknesses (mainly strength, ball handling and aggressiveness) and work on them.
As JDC said, he's still 22, a few years from his prime. I did think he had star potential, due to his demonstrated ability at 20, but his relative stagnation has tempered my expectations a bit more. That said, every player does not improve in a linear path from 19 to 26. Some players take a route of stagnation years and then years of big jumps forward. I still think he has pretty good potential, especially if he adds some strength and works on his awareness on offense. I still think he has a chance to make a big step towards being a "top supporting player" (the category I put players like Andre Miller or prime Tayshaun Prince into....not good enough to drive a team to success themselves, but very good players to put around stars/superstars).
What do you expect out of him? He wasn't a lottery pick. The guy was picked in the late 20's and in my opinion has outplayed any expectation I ever had of him! Rudy on the other hand..............
Rudy was the 24th pick in the 2007 draft. Batum was the 25th pick in the 2008 draft. One slipped because he wasn't gonna come over right away, and the other slipped because of an alleged heart issue. I think that Batum was actually considered (and still is, fortunately) the better prospect. Ed O.
He was pick #68 and never played a game, but Jerry Baskerville did. In 1976 when my friend and I wrote up rosters (I had the whole league memorized) we thought the name was pretty funny. If you combine the Hound of the Baskervilles and Sherlock Holmes, you get the 1986 guy a decade later. http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/baskeje01.html
