Draft Board Update

Well, I might but I want to know

1. Is he batsh*t crazy?
2. If so, when was the last time a batsh*t crazy big man matured in the NBA and became a productive player with the team that drafted him?
3. If that guy exists, was he more crazy or less crazy than Cousins?

Although it’s purely on potential…I think he’s gotta be on your top 10 list somewhere. How do his numbers compare to Chris Bosh during Bosh’ freshman year?

I slam the whole hoopus scoring system. I apologize if that offends anyone. But it has so many holes. Artisom Parakhouski over Hassaan Whiteside? Hoopus score, yes. But It’s obvious who will be a better pro. On to player discussion…. I go back and forth but today I’m back on the Wall bandwagon. It’s kind of like the vikings when they had Chester but they drafted AP, even though he was the same position. You just don’t pass up a player who could end up being the best player at his position as a pro. Period. The problem is who knows if we could move some of our other PG’s and get value. That is the conundrum we’re in. That being said we won’t get the top pick anyways. We’ll be lucky if we can get turner. I’ve been pimping Anderson all year, glad he’s getting some kudos.

Putting Turner with Flynn would allow us to have the perfect facilitator at the 2 when Flynn comes off the bench.

Drafting Wall gives us a “get out a jail free card” and allows for us to trade Flynn because we “had to take Wall”.

Getting the #3 pick is going to be devastating.

While reading this I realized I’d love to know what Darko’s Hoopus score was, but I don’t think you do Euro’s yet, right?

When talking about Wall, is anyone else concerned that teams are essentially saying – ‘Here John, you beat us’ – and he responds by not dominating? Or phrased differently, Wall is playing on a team with two other potential top ten picks in Cousins and Patterson, while Turner is playing with…wait for it…no one who DX has rated to go in the first or second round. Just an armchair observation, but it seems like the great ones in the NBA recently often came from programs where they were the undisputed top dog AND didn’t have much surrounding help – Melo, DWade, and Lebron all come to mind, as does Durant and even Oden. To be clear, I’m only softly suggesting that it may be a corollary relationship, but there are quite a few high profile guys who played with a bunch of fellow first round picks in college who never become more than a number 2 guy in the NBA (guys like Westbrook, Mayo, and Love come to mind, or Ellington and Lawson). I guess my expectation for Wall, if he’s as good as everyone says, is that he would have done more given that Cousins is who made other teams adjust their defenses to open things up more for Wall. I’m not sayin’ but I’m just sayin’.

Your right on the TV coverage. I’m going on what the experts say and a small amount of footage. Another example is Favors. Not even on your list. Also this Taylor kid wasn’t even mentioned on this site until a week or 2 ago. Maybe he is a diamond in the rough. We’ll see…

Since we’ll be in the Top-5, I guess we need 5 guys to have targeted.

1) Evan Turner – slowly but surely, I’ve crawled over to the Turner Camp for the Wolves. Ideally, if we won the lottery, we could draft Wall and get back Turner and change… maybe even a future unprotected 1st, like McHale gave up for Marbury (wasn’t a bad idea at the time.)

2) John Wall – has a higher ceiling than Turner, but a lower chance of reaching it, I think. Two things worry me about Wall: 1) His awkward jumpshot. When he catches and shoots, he barely jumps off the ground — it’s basically a set shot. Whether that matters or not, I don’t know, but the whole “point guard with bad shooting mechanics” thing got tiring with Bassy, and while Wall is clearly going to be a better pro than Telfair, I still worry that he could have some Rondo-like problems where defenses decide to sag off him 5 feet. 2) Maturity. He seems a little immature, and that could mean nothing or it could mean that he’ll demand a trade shortly after we draft him, ala Marbury. Not something to completely dismiss. But since his upside is something along the lines of Dwyane Wade, he’s obviously worthy of the #1 or #2 pick.

3) Derrick Favors – if we draft 3rd or worse, it’s obviously a crushing blow to the franchise. Favors at least has the physical upside of Dwight Howard or something close, so we take a big swing on him, and hope it pays off. Not sure how he’d fit into our front line, but Rubio-Favors sounds a lot like Nash-Stoudamire, which sounds a lot like the team Kahn is trying to build.

4) Wesley Johnson – now we’re getting depressed at this point. Johnson looks like a future Martell Webster or something — nice player and definitely a good starter, but nothing that’s going to drastically help a team like the Wolves.

5) Cole Aldrich – a legitimate center that could do the things Darko shows glimpses of during the first 0:45 of his stints. If we had a center that defended aggressively, with the size to alter a lot of shots, and also make his free throws, that would help the team now and in the future. Probably not much bust potential for Cole — I think we all have a pretty good idea of what his future looks like. Somewhere between Joel Pryzbilla (with better FT%) and Andrew Bogut.

namely the Taylor and Parakhouski rankings, as well as the Favors omission. The rest, while some are not the way I’d rank them, I would accept the reasoning for the rankings.

I think that while Taylor has the athleticism and ability to drive the lane, he basically has no jumper and does not have a strength in playmaking like some of the other SFs in the draft. On top of that, I find his defense to be overstated when compared to a player like Ebanks or even Aminu – both who play the same position as Taylor. The final point is that he is not a strong rebounder – ranking last in my quality opponent production sheet for SFs.

Parakhouski, well, much smaller sample size watching him play, but he seems like a below the rim player whose only real strength translating to the NBA level being his rebounding. Defensively he’s not a force inside, he doesn’t have that good of a faceup game, and he doesn’t possess good vision which makes Monroe special. We’ll see how his scoring translates, because as I said he’s a below the rim player who routinely was turned away or forced into tough shots yesterday by a smaller player who didn’t have NBA-level ability… but right now I think he’s a value in the late-1st, but not worthy of the 9th spot on your board.

I’ve watched more than my fair share of Ohio State games this year. Here is my eyeball report on Evan Turner:

1. There’s a reason he runs the offense. He sees and directs other players around the floor well before they know where (and why) they’re going.
2. According to published stats, he’s running the point at only 2-3 inches shorter than our current suspended 20/10 dominant low post scorer. Purely guessing, but I would bet 50/50 that Turner’s standing reach exceeds that of probably Al, and likely Love.
3. He appears slow, almost sluggish on the court. Whether that’s due to being relatively lacking in athleticism, conservation of energy, or because he’s mentally two steps ahead of teammates and the opposition and therefore doesn’t have to move around as much, I have yet to determine.
4. I’m completely unconcerned about his outside shooting. It’s not bad now, and it will likely improve (see also Brewer, Corey).
5. Ohio State’s cast is not up to par with Kentucky’s, but they play better as a team than the Cats do. Plus, I like Thad’s coaching ability over Caliapari’s any day.
6. Turner is a potential triple-double every night in the grind-it-out Big Ten (although Ohio State’s tempo is a little quicker than most of the rest of the conference). At an NBA pace playing 30 minutes-plus, he’ll likely be the closest the Wolves ever get to having a player with LeBron-like numbers.
7. Wall seems to be an okay character putting on his best face. Turner is the real deal:

To meet him is to discover a rarity, a considerate and polite old soul who lacks the pretentiousness and peacock preening that ordinarily comes part and parcel with the talent.

Bottom line, I think the Wolves may even trade up to get a shot at Turner, and they should.

He plays against weak competition, but he scores a ton of points with a ton of threes, and he’s a 6’7" athlete. He reminds me of Kevin Martin or Danny Granger, and he’ll probably be available with the Utah pick.

He is the X factor in this draft. Has anyone seen him play 2 or more games this year on TV? He’s up to #5 on draft express. We all know what the experts say, what the draft sites say. We need somebody to go out and find someone’s dog who’s owner’s sister used to date a guy who watches Marshall basketball and get him in here pronto ;-)

but is there any concern that John Wall may StarBury us once his rookie contract is up?
It is more a draft-time debate, but the idea creeps into my head whenever I hear about his star power and marketing potential.

if Kahn will deal one or two assets this summer (perhaps Pek & Utah pick) for 1st rounders about 3 or 4 years from now? It might be smart to save a couple bullets for a couple years in case they are needed for the last piece, or to overcome an injury.

Reading all of this reinforces my view of how important it is for us to get a top 2 pick. While we may end up with a great player at 3 or later, it seems like much, much more of a crapshoot this year.

I don’t know whether I’ve looked at the full lottery odds before, but I just did and it ain’t pretty. As the second-worst team, we’d still only have a 38.7% chance of getting one of the top 2 picks. If we pass one team up, the chances drop to 31.3%. Pass two teams up and it’s down to 24.5%. Ugh.

Seed E(pick)
1 2.6
2 3.0
3 3.4
4 4.0
5 4.7
6 5.5
7 6.5
8 7.6
9 8.7
10 9.8
11 10.8
12 11.8
13 12.8
14 13.8

SnP, I asked around. Move Anderson waaaaaaaaay down the board. Kid is an unwilling and unable defender. Might be one of the worst defensive wings in the draft.

The not knowing either the score of the game or the time remaining after a made jump shot by Nova was stupid, no arguing that. If you watched the rest of the game, however, you forgive him for that moment. The guy has an outstanding defensive BBIQ and offensively he’s been stellar the last 10 or so games – not forcing shots, not making poor passes, understanding spacing, and playing the PG role at times.

does anyone think the t-pups should give Renardo Sidney a look? Potentially with the Utah pick, or the high 2nd rounder (if indeed it is still the theirs). Just a thought.