Gomes is going to be cut or traded. Most likely cut, it seems. Cunningham is okay, but not a big enough deal to worry about his minutes, as far as I'm concerned. And Babbitt averaged 20/10 against the NCAA tourney opponents that his team played. Seems like perfectly good production against quality opponents. Since Gomes is not going to be kept around, Portland swapped out one small forward (Webster) for another (Babbitt). Remains to be seen how that works out, but considering Webster's stagnation since he was drafted, I think it was worth the risk. Webster may still break out, but I'm a lot more dubious about it now than a couple of years ago.
We got a younger SF starting his rookie scale contract and saved millions of bucks in the next few years. I have always (well, the last couple of years, at least) been a Webster defender, but this was a good move even as we all gotta admit Martell could still emerge as worth his contract. Ed O.
After some din-din at Macaroni Grill with the family, I was listening to Courtside on the way home. Mike Rice is livid that Webster got traded. The quote that got me was "you always knew what you were going to get from Martell". I was wondering if Rice meant you knew Martell would be inconsistent, because that's my take on Webster.
Well, kudos to Mike Rice for saying something negative about the organization... even if I disagree with him, it would be fantastic to be able to think of employees of the Blazers as honest. Webster WAS inconsistent, but I don't mind that if he was very good when he was good. Other than a few highlights, he simply failed to deliver far too often. Ed O.
Even if Rice is dead wrong on Martell, it is great to see a Blazers employee do something besides pump sunshine -- no disrespect to MB, Wheels, Tone, et al. because I know who writes their checks and it's never a good policy to shit where you eat -- I felt oddly comforted by his mini rant.
Nah, inconsistency was only a vice when it afflicted Outlaw. With Webster, it was just part of his charm!
You're probably right about Gomes. I think Cunningham is going to be an NBA starter (yes, he's that good) somewhere. Babbitt (or however it's spelled) in a few years may be a back-up. But we'll see. I hope he plays well and can bring something to the team. I think he's either get mostly DNP's or play the D league his first year.
People will always apply revisionist logic to every draft. If someone pans out that is picked after EW, then they'll yell that we passed on them TWICE. Unlike last year's draft, there is no such obvious person. "Worst draft" won't depend on who we draft as much as who we didn't.
Heh. Good luck with that one. Babbitt's one of the most NBA-ready prospects. At his age, if the Blazers thought he was only D-League material, he wouldn't have been drafted.
It's not revisionist logic if you call it draft night. Honestly, I have no idea why we traded for 34 two days before the draft, but I can't think that Armon Johnson was the target. IMO, I think we just missed on Whiteside, and Armon was the fallback.
Against juco players 3" shorter and unathletic he looks great. Now maybe he can step in and play with the pros (and I hope he does), but if I had a dollar for every poster here who stated some college player was so NBA ready to come in and ball like he'll be an all-star, I would, in fact, be rich. I just prefer to adopt a hopeful wait & see approach. I mean, ABM tells me over and over about how NBA ready Freeland and Kaponean are to come over and flat out dominate, but so far they can't even make they team.
After listening to the players today, I'm gonna be optimistic; I think it will go down as a very good draft. We got arguably the best shooter in the draft and the 2nd best athlete. All three emphasized toughness, something we didn't have much of until Cunningham and Pendergraph got drafted. So I'm happy.
And against NCAA tournament qualifiers, he averaged 20/10....which were approximately his overall averages too. I don't think he'll remotely be an All-Star. I don't think he'll even be starter-level as a rookie. He's simply not a raw prospect who needs to be developed in order to reach the NBA. As I said, if at his age, he still needed significantly more development time before playing in the NBA, he wouldn't have been drafted at that spot.
They gave the Dubs 2 million bucks about 12 hours after they worked out Armon Johnson, that could be a coincidence, but with Mills status up in the air, Bayless probably more of a 2 than a 1 and not quite the shooter to compliment Brandon I think they are looking for, I would guess they were looking for an upside pick at point guard with athletcism and long arms and a little bit of playmaking (Kevin Pelton's player comp tool has him as 98% similiar to Ramon Sessions) to pick up that third 1 guard spot ... I don't exactly hold out hope that Johnson will ever be this team's starting point, but 2 million is a lot of scratch to move up hoping that Whiteside would tumble out of the first round, I really think he was their target (however head scratching or odd it might seem).
I like this draft! traded martell who i liked and thought was decent but he was taking minutes away from batum who i love and is way better. got a shooter in babbit who can take spot minutes at SF (from what ive been reading) and got PG prospects that seem decent enough to me. While it sucks we have a clog now at the PG spot they are all Rookies/Sophs except Bayless and miller, but they (The rooks) can wait their turn
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