So many people lament the fact that we chose Meyers Leonard with the 11th pick in the 2012 draft. I'm just curious, who would you have taken instead? Let's assume you can't trade the pick and you have to choose someone. You be the GM, who would you have taken instead of Meyers? http://nbadraft.net/nba_final_draft/2012
Lamb is the person most have said in the past. He hasn't been incredible but he is also stuck behind some pretty good players. Henson has also been good in limited minutes if we had to pick a big. I don't think Lamb would get much time on our team either but he would allow us to go Center this year (Steven Adams) instead of CJ. I fine with how things turned out though. I think McCollum is going to be a good player in this league.
That's really the problem, there isn't a clear better choice than Leonard. The whole draft looks pretty crappy after Drummond was taken. Sullinger is probably the best choice, but I remember everyone was concerned about his health. I think it was his back.
The real question is the reverse. Who in the 1st round wouldn't be contributing more to the Blazers right now than Leonard is?
the guy I was really intrigued by in this last draft was Steven Adams. Solid size for a 5/4, very athletic & a nose for D. Sort of like passing on top shelf PG prospects because they'd drafted Telfair the year prior, I wonder if having Meyers had anything to do with Olshey passing on the big Kiwi... 17 points 10 boards & 3 blocks on Friday STOMP
Someone who can be bothered to find it should bump the real-time draft thread from 2012 to see what we all thought of Leonard at the time and who we wanted.
I dunno. I'm pretty sure he was going to be our pick but CJ dropped and they felt they had to go with the higher rated prospect.
I was really hoping we could have used freeland and the pick for Drummond, who was picked only 3 earlier. The way freeland has been playing now, I'm actually fine with the Leonard pick. We have a good 2 more years to develop Leonard, now that we have a legit back up at center.
Amazing that Leonard was even available for us to draft by that point. Biggest steal ever for the Blazers.
I wanted Leonard at the time of the draft, and had high hopes for him. I defended him last year, but he's slowly lost me. Now I see him as a guy who might have a future as a jump shooting PF.
Yeah he can really shoot the ball. He will never be a defensive rebounding center but that doesn't mean he can't have some value as an offensive stretch 4 off the bench. Especially with LaMarcus' role in the offense, he could stand in a lot of the same outside spots. I'm not sure if TRob is the answer as a backup PF. We need to put players in roles that best suit their current skills, not a role of what the team had hoped a player would become.
If I could do the draft over instead of Meyers I'd easily take any of Lamb, Henson, Zeller, Jones, Sullinger, Wroten, Plumlee, Ezeli, Crowder.
I wonder what type of big man we could get for Claver & Freeland? I really like Freeland but sometimes you can't keep everyone you like if you want to better your team.
