Fez's summer plan: The bullet points

I also think stashing prospects in Europe has to stop.

FIBA teams are offering big money now and it's keeping guys over there.

Not once has this method worked out. Freeland could have helped the past two season but he's now in the drivers seat whether or not to come over to the NBA or sign with Barcelona.

 

Yeah, that's why Ricky Rubio will NEVER come over.

 

It worked out for Minnesota. It has yet to work out for Portland after five draft picks since 2005 were used on talent-to-stash in Europe.

Granted, Freeland is the only player that is a legit NBA prospect of the bunch but with his rapid development he's going to be very hard to pry away.

 

You're looking at it solely from a talent perspective. Here's another way to look at it:

Code:

28. Dallas              Maurice Ager
29. New York            Mardy Collins
30. Portland            Joel Freeland

Assume Freeland NEVER plays for Portland. Who made the best pick? The two teams who paid guaranteed money for THREE YEARS on Ager and Collins, or the team that paid NOTHING and took up no roster spots? This is why teams will continue to pick foreign players with low first-rounders, because of the guaranteed money for those picks. (It's also the reason it's easy to pick one of these picks up on draft night - teams would rather dump them than use them, half the time.)

And, hey, look at the foreign players picked in that part of the draft:

Code:

2006
27. Phoenix             Sergio Rodriguez
30. Portland            Joel Freeland

2007
24. Phoenix             Rudy Fernandez
28. San Antonio         Tiago Splitter
30. Phailadelphia       Petteri Koponen

2008
20  Charlotte Alexis Ajinca - PF  
24  Seattle Serge Ibaka - PF  
25  Houston  Nicolas Batum - SF  

2009
22.	Trail Blazers	Victor Claver		SF
23.	Kings		Omri Casspi		SF
25.	Thunder		Rodrigue Beaubois	PG
30.	Cavaliers	Christian Eyenga	SF

2010
17 	Chicago Bulls 		Kevin Seraphin F, 6-9, 265 France 

2011
20.	Timberwolves	Donatas Motiejunas	PF
23.	Rockets		Nikola Mirotic		SF

In general, the ones that came over (with the possible exception of Ajinca and Eyenga) have proved to be at least worthy of a first-round pick, and the ones that haven't, haven't cost their teams a dime!

 

Rudy didn't come over?

 

The drafts haven't been great but its not like we picked busts with every pick.

I don't like the pick but we had a need at backup PG and PF/C. Smith was all over the board depending on what site you went to, espn had him at the 40th best player going somewhere in the early second. Sports Illustrated had him going at 29. Rotoworld had him going 20th. nbadraft had him at 38th, draftexpress had him at 36. We reached for him i'm not saying we didn't. There were rumors that the trade for Felton wouldn't go down if we picked Faried. The only PG we passed on that I kinda liked was Norris Cole. He looks decent but also plays next to 2 superstars and 3 all stars.

Babbit went pretty much were people expected him to go. He is showing that he can be an NBA player who is best coming off the bench, just like both Bledsoe and Bradley. I don't buy into the hype from Bradley at the moment, I don't think he can keep up what he is doing. Another big thing is we didn't draft Babbit we traded for him. We probably told Minnesota to draft him but I can't remember reading anywhere that confirmed that.

The pick was steal at the time. He dropped a lot because of the fact it was known he needed to have surgery going into the draft. His game relying so much on his athleticism and the fact teams didn't know if he would regain it let him slip.

I got nothing here, horrible pick I didn't like it. Was impressed a couple of games but overall seemed to just not be an NBA quality player.

We picked Claver because he was an intreaging prospect with a lot of talent. A Batum type player. Whats better picking a player to stash in Europe with the intent to bring him over in a year or two or drafting guys who would NEVER see the floor? Batum/Bayless/Webster/Outlaw/Rudy/Blake. Were would Casspi/ Beabouis every find minutes behind all of them?
As for Dejuan Blair yea i'm annoyed we didn't pick him but we weren't the only ones who passed on him. Most teams thought it was to much of a risk. As for Cunningham he is a rotation player in Memphis, currently on end of the bench material. Pendegraph is end of the bench material, more of a locker room guy then anything else.

We have had 8 picks, i'm not going to count Babbit since it was a draft day trade.
We have had 3 first round picks and still own all 3 players, Babbit looks like he could be a good bench player, Williams same thing but injury prone, Claver is an unknown but a player we still have the rights too and could bring him over.
We have missed on our second round picks but the second round is such a crap shoot almost every team has a hard time finding starter level talent in the second round. The fact that every one of our second rounders, save for Diebler who we picked this year, is actually fairly impressive. Most second rounders don't pan out and are out of the league within 3 years.

What I am getting at is if you look at our drafts and what happened that day not taking hindsight into account then I don't think we did a bad job the last 3 years. Certainty not great but not horrible. In Hindsight they aren't impressive drafts and our second rounders haven't worked out (which is the usual thing with second rounders) but none of our first rounders are busts yet. Smith certainty looks like it but you don't give up on a player in their rookie year.
Besides the Faried complaint which pretty much everyone agrees on, most of your complaints are coming from the second round in the draft. A total crapshoot that no team has a great track record with and your lucky to have 2 starter, 3 rotation players and a total of 5 other players still in the league after 3 years from the entire second round.
I don't think we are a great drafting team but i'd put us somewhere in the middle of the pack.

 

Fair enough Rhal...nice post

I would just like to see the draft run under a different set of eyes and not Chad Buchanan's, I just don't think his track record is good at all...

 

I said about Diebler:

Well, it looks like he might have other tricks - he had 9 rebounds in a road win in the Greek Playoffs. But that boxscore also gives us some idea of his competition: his counterpart on the other team who put up gaudier numbers was Brent Petway, a summer-league fill-in for the Blazers a few years ago. (As I recall, Petway was a real dunker.)

 

Depending on the coach (MDA) how about this idea?

Batum for Derrick Williams?