Webster was all over the place in mocks. I remember seeing him anywhere from 5 to 20. When a player came straight from HS it was always hard to predict were they would go. Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2
Well, maybe early on but he was always a projected lotto pick since the McDonald's game and the Jordan Brand Classic. He killed it in his workout in Portland with Paul Allen watching and after that it was a wrap that he'd be a Blazer. What a fucking disaster.
I remember Gerald Green also being all ove the mock drafts too that year. What i don't remember is Martel kiiling it at the draft combine. I know he was projected to go in the lottery, i juts don't remember anyone raving about him but us. Lillard has impressed more people than Martel did. That is all I am saying. It's just not his 1-on- none workouts with us.
^So if I take the time to go look (I'm working right now), you are saying Webster wasn't supposed to be a lottery pick in the '05 draft?
nbdraft.net had him at 6 to us, the rest of the mocks I found had him being picked late in the lottery.
No that is not what I am saying at all. I was making a point that a lot of people are high on Barnes because of the hype he got comming out of highschool and not what he as done in college. I admitted I am doing the same for Beal and Rivers. We are projecting near allstar staus on some of these guys based on their hype and combine numbers. Yet at the same time we are discounting what Lillard has done because he played in a lower. conference. (Albeit much tougher competition than in HS) I was simply making an observation that it is just another reason that this is all a crap shoot. I believe Barnes will be a good player, but he has done nothing to really prove it. I see the comparison between us picking Lillard at 6 and when we picked Webster. Both are definitely lottery picks but the #6 pcik may be too high for either of them. But I feel better about picking Lillard that high based on the fact that he impressed more people at the combine than Webster did. But yes I get your boy was always projected as a lotto pick.
Barnes reminds me of another UNC guy that was highly touted coming out of high school. Marvin Williams. Barnes has good athleticism, but its too bad that he would rather hang out on the perimeter and settle for jumpers. Its already been brought up several times that many good/great players have came from small schools. You choose to ignore it and still beat that argument like a dead horse.
Haha so you read Jeff Teague is his ceiling and you preach it like its gospel. Rajon Rondo's supposed ceiling was Mookie Blaylock...I could go on and on.
What PG from a small school has made an impact in the NBA recently? I am sort of drawing a blank, and I know you follow college basketball more closely than I do. Personally, I look at Lillard and see a scorer at a small school who is going to be 22 soon... and I am thinking he'd be a reach in the top 10. Ed O.
Stockton, Nash, Hardaway, Avery Johnson, Derek Fisher, Stuckey, Maynor, Norris Cole....Good players get overlooked by college recruiters all the time for one reason or another. A players recruitment to play in college shouldn't be duplicated when he's going to the pro's. Players develop at a different rate and sometimes aren't done growing when they graduate high school at 18. Especially at PG. John Stockton was about to sign with Carroll College in Montana when at the last minute his hometown Gonzaga offered him a scholarship. He was the 16th pick, because someone took a chance on him and looked past the competition he was playing against. He never made the tournament. Steve Nash was not recruited by any american Universities to play basketball. He had to send tape in to get interest. Someone took a chance on him even though he didn't play against the greatest competition. That worked out okay for them. Russell Westbrook didn't receive his first recruitment letter until the summer before his senior year and Ben Howland was the only major program offering him. He's had the same criticisms as Lillard. Its not about where you play because players careers don't go in a perfect pattern. It would make being a GM much easier if everything was symmetrical, though. If you can ball, you can ball.
It would be interesting to look and see how many PG's Portland has drafted in 40+ years from big schools that made an impact.
Oh, boy. I lost my reply. Sorry, MZ. Here it is in the short version: No one at all recently has emerged from small college to play the PG spot in the NBA at a high level, it appears. Cole had a 7.9 PER as a 23 year-old rookie. Maynor has started four games in five season. Stuckey is, at 6'5", markedly different than the others in that he can play the SG spot, too. I don't care about how their recruitment for college went... I care about the level of competition they played against in college and I care about their age. Westbrook played at UCLA against top-tier programs and he was drafted when he was 19. Lillard is going to be a month shy of being 22 when he is drafted. Comparing Westbrook and Lillard based on how their college recruitment went makes little sense to me. I appreciate your thoughts, but it appears that I didn't overlook anyone who might have changed my mind about Lillard, and I really hope that the Blazers don't pick him in the top 10. Ed O.
I guess, but it wouldn't be very relevant to this discussion, IMO. 40+ years is way too big of a time span, and Portland has made too many PG selections to find meaningful sample size, I wouldn't think. Ed O.
How many of those players would you have traded the #6 pick for at their best? 3? That is 3 PGs in about 25 years? I'm not against drafting Lillard, but I do think that level of competition needs to be strongly considered.
OK how many really good PG's are there in the NBA? To keep it relevent in a short time span, subtract those who are over 30 and those who came from Europe. Now I am not counting those who are better than what we have, but actually those who are capable of leading a team to the finals. I think it is fare to say that number is under 10. How many big schools are there? And there is not over 10 really good PG's in the last 10 years? I am talking players that we would all agree are really good? That is not an impressive number of players. I think we need to look anywhere we can for talented ones.
MY GOD HOW HAS NO ONE MENTIONED THIS. Lillard actually reminds me a lot of Curry.. but I think Lillard will be better.
Like Faried, Steph Curry dominated the bigger schools. Outside the BigSky, which was a rarity, Lillard was not nearly the player he was playing against the likes of Sacramento State and Mayville State.
