..if he is on the Wolves. He’s a very good player with a scorer/shooter like Durant around him on the wing, but I think that he’d be further behind where he is right now if he were on the poor shooting/interior defending Wolves. Also, I haven’t put much thought into the buyer beware list right now but off the top of my head Favors, Cousins, and Stephenson jump to mind…although I like Stephenson’s game a lot more than I thought I would.

I get that he could be special, but right now he’s really not.

He was supposed to be the ~12th pick in the draft, and if I redrafted that class (without considering team need) he still falls in about that range.

1. Rose
2. Lopez
3. Love
4. Gordon
5. Mayo
6. Beasley
7. Gallinari
8. Randolph
9. Speights
10. Westbrook

So maybe he was a little better than we thought, but given that Presti’s next choice at #4 was probably Brook Lopez, I’m not sure he deserves any credit at all for “finding” Westbrook.

was in the Buyer Beware section, which means no. And as long as Rubio keeps putting up solid numbers in Europe, the wolves will never have to.

Westbrook is a key part of OKC right now. Dude’s got game, and has proved it for quite some time now.

If it means, this guy is definitely going to suck balls THEN YOU ARE CORRECT, SIR, THEY REALLY MISSED THE BOAT ON WESTBROOK.

If it means, this guy has high-upside but there is no guarantee THEN YOU ARE INCORRECT, SIR.

I think it’s the latter.

That’s one thing to keep in mind. A short player who scores and can dribble the ball up the floor is sometimes a better fit than someone trying to set people up all by themselves.

Also, Sessions has been ordinary, at best, this year. I liked the acquisition, because he had some hugely productive games last year and I figured he was a bargain at that salary. But he has hardly done anything to get me excited about him. He seems like a career backup who can’t hit a three to save his life and shoots free throws slightly better than Shaq. He is by no stretch of the imagination a great passer, either. He might have a better idea than the rook how to feed the post or get the team into the offense with the first pass, but he’s hardly some wizard that is dropping dime after dime. Hopefully, that’s what we can expect in Rubio.

….but there seems to be a direct correlation between his high usage rate and the Wolves giving up a lot of ponits:

Player situation g poss min +/- offrtg defrtg reb% usg%
Jonny Flynn season total 40 2429 1184 -276 98.2 109.7 0.043 0.234
behind more than 20 points 12 215 97 14 108.1 113.6 0.06 0.286
behind 16-20 points 21 171 75 33 101.8 102.3 0.02 0.287
behind 11-15 points 31 299 139 -1 102.9 113 0.04 0.275
behind 6-10 points 36 382 183 -31 95.7 109.9 0.051 0.253
behind 1-5 points 39 641 301 -11 96.5 105.5 0.036 0.223
tied 40 148 81 -60 89.4 105.7 0.051 0.182
ahead 1-5 points 38 373 198 -110 93.8 109.2 0.042 0.21
ahead 6-10 points 18 154 86 -99 99.6 120.6 0.042 0.183
ahead 11-15 points 7 41 20 -2 117 113.4 0.033 0.198
ahead 16-20 points 2 6 4 -7 66.7 132.2 0.143 0.112

In other words, when he factors in on a lot of possessions, the Wolves have a terrible +/-. The fewer possessions he factors in, the better they do.

Benjamin Franklin Sucks!

Gordon’s season took a terrible turn when Sampson was fired/bought out after the scandal. He was probably putting up numbers that would look good in the Hoopus Score, before that.

I like reading the Hoopus Score as an additional layer to draft conversation — obviously it’ll have some bad picks (Chalmers over Mayo?) but when you see names like Ryan Anderson, Marcus Thornton, and DeJuan Blair rated high (as they should be) it comes out pretty decent. It’s just a matter of sorting through the “surprises” and figuring out which are statistical flukes and which will carry over to the pros.

Never made it big, but was in alot of “edgy” alternative (read: low budget) porn that was coming out of NYC at that time. Not much of a talker but could deliver the money shot consistently and was well-liked by directors because he was low maintenance.

Maybe a little bit, but I could see him being one of the top 15 players from that draft sometime down the road.

very much appreciated

Ebomb hit on a lot of the points I was going to make, so I’ll just add to what he’s already said.

I think the error in guard evaluation lies less with the system, and more with us. Westbrook and Rose have tons of potential, but they are hugely overrated based on their current production so far. Make no mistake, Rose is still my #1 overall choice if the draft is redone, but that’s based on yet unrealized potential. As yet, he’s merely a slightly above average point guard.
Westbrook is even more overrated. Scoring a lot of points on efficiency as bad as his hurts a team. His passing is surprisingly good, but he still turns the ball over a lot. Evans’s production is legit, but I also think he’ll struggle as teams discover better ways to defend him. And Gordon’s lower projected rating has already been explained elsewhere in the comments.

Overall, I think the system is great. It has its flaws, but a lot of it can be easily accounted for. If there is a logical reason for Anothony Randolph to be rated lower by the system (he’s a potential pick), you can keep that in mind and rate him higher. If a consensus top 10 guy is listed as the 30th best prospect, you take it with a grain of salt and rate him lower, but not all the way lower. Conversely, you don’t need to take CDR in the lottery if you know he’ll be available in the early second round. To let these easily accounted for quirks of the system obscure the system’s remarkable reliability for finding steals and busts would be a waste of a very good resource.

I think the Flynn pick only becomes genius if Flynn becomes a better distributor either with experience or with better teammates. The pick becomes a train wreck if Curry can develop into a much better player or Lawson can stay healthy and learn to defend. I tend to agree with your premise that the Flynn pick will be neither train wreck or genius, and that he will offer a genuine NBA skill as a shot creator which as long as its evaluated correctly by the coaching staff and given the proper role, will certainly add value to this team going forward.

Gordon or Terry. A microwave scorer off the bench who can handle the ball.

Not a homerun, but not bad for the 6th pick.

I made a comment comparing him with Foye, and I ended up saying that as of right now I would take Flynn over resigning Foye back in the future. The primary reason is because – for the roles they would occupy – I think Flynn offers more flexibility and upside: he’s younger and cheaper, still a pretty capable scorer but better at getting his own shot, and can legitimately play PG for stretches (and isn’t a SG in a PG body). But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Jonny is and will always be a scorer. We’ll see if his defense and distributing improve over time. I think what’s most important right now is that we recognize his role and the coaching staff starts to recognize it too.

Tony Parker has a few rings, is just as poor of a defender, and is just as much of a scoring guard. Parker averaged 5.3 Assists per 36 minutes in his rookie campaign compared to Jonny’s 4.1 but I think we can all state affirmatively that that 01-02 Spurs team was quite a bit more talented than the current Wolves team.

I don’t know Jordan’s game all that well, but it seems like his athleticism is his best trait but his IQ is fairly low, which is Hollins in a nuthsell.

Players after Flynn I wouldn’t mind having: Casspi, Jennings, Daye, all for different reasons of course. Now is that at 6? Well hell, that’s a total crapshoot then. In this draft it was all a crapshoot (at least in terms of who should go where) between picks 6 and 26. Guess that means we got to roll the dice first.

I’d say there’s a lot more desire than ability. Which is worth something, to be sure, but it’s not everything.

It’s a lot like Kobe’s false reputation as the league’s best clutch scorer. He makes the most clutch baskets because he’s shooting them every time, regardless of what happens around him. We remember the makes but not the misses.

The same with Jonny, we love to remember the layup against Utah, but he’s also had some really, really bad late game shots like the airball that could have beaten Houston in the 3OT game or last night’s fadeaway prayer from 3. It’s nice that he has the moxie, but let’s not give him too much credit here.

on the birth of Phalen to you.

I still believe that trading Mayo + Foye for essentially Love + Rubio may go down as a master stroke of genius. Granted two GM’s made it possible, but IF Rubio comes over and IF Love and Rubio continue to progress, then we may have struck gold.

I disagree. I think Jonny Flynn can get to the hoop whenever he wants. It’s his best asset. I think there are games when he’s not getting calls and there are games where he’s wild and out of control near the rim. Both of these will dramatically improve by his sophomore year.

would probably be easier to use green. Then it would be like a stop light.