The crazy thing about last summer's draft is that the rookies are just so bad. Wall is putting up a 16.8 PER, which is OK, but outside of that, the rest of the lottery picks are at 14.4 (Cousins) or under, with many in single digits. Just a terrible, terrible draft in terms of on-court production.
It took Kobe 4 years to get his PER above 20. Dwyane Wade's rookie PER was 17.6 Its no secret that last years draft class was one of the worst in a few years.
It's a pretty young draft. The highest talent guys were largely seen to be Wall, Turner, Cousins and Favors, in no particular order. Among them, only Evan Turner was 20 or older at the time of the draft. So, I think it's unsurprising that they're not terribly productive as rookies. They're largely rawer high risk/high reward prospects than the Elton Brand or Brandon Roy types of picks.
Wesley Johnson was almost 23 when he was drafted. 2 out of the top 4 picks were over 21 when drafted, and both of those players have a PER of under 10.3. It's a bad rookie draft class, old and young players included.
It's a bad first year of production, certainly. If several of them become stars or superstars in 3-4 years, I wouldn't agree that it's a bad draft class.
I thought Turner was a tough pick for Philly. He's basically projected to be the same player as Iggy, and there isn't a real good fit to have 2x Iggy types on the same team or on the court together. What is surprising is how bad his December was.
I'm not one to write off Turner yet. He does need to find his shot, though, if he's not going to run or get to the hoop His fortes were in the transition game, in running the P&R, court vision and being able to guard 3 positions. Don't know why it hasn't translated yet, but those are skills that should be working in the NBA. And why I still think he'd be pretty amazing on our team.
