Tag: NBA (Page 3 of 8)

L had a game early Thursday evening and then wanted to stay and watch her teammates play in the second game, so I didn’t make it home until the late teens of the NBA Draft. Thus no extensive breakdown this year.

Gradey Dick was, apparently, the star of the show for his outrageous suit. I got a few texts about him from non-KU people. I heard a lot of commentators destroying him for his fit. Many of them are people who do deep dives on players for their personal prospect rankings. I’m not sure why his outfit surprised anyone. Surely they’ve seen the Tik Toks Gradey has been posting for years. I would have been surprised if he didn’t wear something garish and attention grabbing.

I was hoping he would go to Orlando at 11, but Toronto at 13 isn’t a bad spot. It’s a strong organization that has nurtured young players. They need shooting. Seems like a good spot.

I thought it was funny how a guy like him, with a known skill that is coveted in the NBA of now, became a semi-boring pick since he doesn’t appear to have some huge, untapped potential. He’s probably going to be a very good shooter no matter what his role is. He has the ability to be one of the best shooters in the league if all goes perfectly. He’ll get stronger and smarter, which should make him a passable defender. He is great without the ball on offense. Maybe that doesn’t scream All Star, but does check so many boxes of what organizations want from their complementary players.

The Pacers entered the draft as one of the most intriguing organizations because of the five picks they possessed. A couple trades whittled that down to four selections, but gave them lots of options.

I was following from the summer league stands and was shocked when I saw Bilal Coulibaly’s name come up as their first pick at #7. I flipped to Twitter and saw that they were trading him to Washington for Jarace Walker, who the Wizards took with the next pick. I guess the Pacers got two future second round picks for doing the swap. The NBA Draft is so weird sometimes.

I loved the Walker pick. He slots in nicely next to Myles Turner on the defensive end. He is a great piece to complement Tyrese Haliburton on the offensive end. He can even do a little playmaking from either the wing or the high post. If he can develop a jump shot and/or get better at attacking with the ball, he might become a home run pick. Even if he can’t do those things – and he’s only 19 so he has plenty of time – he seems like an upgrade at the big wing slot.

I wasn’t as big of a fan of the Pacers’ other picks.

They took Ben Sheppard at 26. Sheppard is supposed to be a great shooter and decent athlete. In the film I saw, his body needs a lot of work. He reminded me of those late ‘80s role players who weren’t super strong or athletic. I have low expectations.

In the second round they took two athletic guards, neither of whom project as great shooters or have a ton of size. Mojeve King is a 21-year-old product of the G-League. Isaiah Wong was a terrific college player but needs to make great improvement to his game to have a chance to be an NBA player.

There was a lot of whining here about the Pacers not drafting Indy native and IU alum Trayce Jackson-Davis, who went at 57 to Golden State. The Pacers needed size, he’s athletic, and made major improvements to his game last year that made him much more NBA-ready.

The Pacers’ GM Chad Buchanan went on local radio Friday and basically said that TJD’s agents told him he didn’t want to play for the Pacers. He offered that comment in context of the other players who TJD would be competing with. I guess he saw the combination of Walker and returnees Jalen Smith and Isaiah Jackson as too much to fight against if he wanted serious playing time this year?

I thought it was a little funny that, during the draft, TJD Tweeted out something along the lines of the teams that passed on him will regret it. Which is fine. But maybe don’t tell some organizations you don’t want to play for them, then get upset when you drop.

Buchanan also said the Pacers tried hard to trade up for every spot from 10 to 20 to get Cam Whitmore, who had the big fall of the night, but couldn’t find any takers.

I believe that, ideally, the Pacers would have used their draft picks to get an established veteran back in a trade. There were concerns about adding so many rookies to a roster that is already young. I guess they couldn’t find a trade partner that suited their needs.

Overall, I’ll give them a solid B for their draft. Not great, but not terrible either, and if one or two of those guards hit it could become a very nice draft class.

Jalen Wilson went to Brooklyn at 51. He’ll be playing for a fellow Jayhawk in Jacque Vaughn, a coach who has always looked to develop his young guys. Word was Jalen did not shoot well in his NBA workout process. While people admire his rebounding and will, there are real concerns about his game given his lack of athleticism if he can’t develop a shot. He’s been working on that for two years. Seems like he has one more summer to make it happen if he wants to play in the NBA as opposed to heading overseas.

I have a couple posts in various states of readiness that I figured I would focus on for today.

Until I turned on the local news at 7:00 AM this morning to catch the weather – storms were blowing through at the time – and saw a blurb on the crawl at the bottom of the screen saying Kevin Durant had been traded to the Phoenix Suns.

WHAT?!?!

I jumped over to ESPN and got the details.

Holy shit!

There are several NBA podcasts in my queue and I try to listen to at least a few each week. There had been rumblings that maybe the Suns would look into getting Durant. It seemed like more of a “Here’s something that conceptually could happen, but the odds against it are pretty high” type of rumor, though.

Then the damn thing happened! And I love it.

I don’t love it because I’m a fan of the Suns or KD or the Nets. Rather, I love the chaos and the jaw-dropping, HOLY SHIT-edness of it. This is one of those sports moments that I will remember for a long time and that will reverberate around the league for years.

You have Phoenix, with a new, aggressive ownership group who are only in place because their previous majority owner was a really bad guy, wasting no time in giving the franchise, which was in the NBA Finals two years ago but faltered in last season’s playoffs, a massive jolt for another chance to win a title.

You have Brooklyn, who went all-in with the highly combustable trio of KD, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden, throwing in the towel, now trading all three away in about a year. We will learn more about their motivation in the coming hours and days, but it sure seems like the majority owner grew tired of that group’s lack of commitment and love of drama and decided to do a hard reset as quickly as possible. I love that he was super petty and refused to send Kyrie to the Lakers, his preferred destination.

And you have Durant, who orchestrated bringing that group together in Brooklyn, also realizing it wasn’t going to work and agreeing to do what he did when he left Oklahoma City for Golden State and join an established group as the gun hired to put them over the top.

None of this seemed likely or even possible until late last week, when Kyrie requested a trade. A request which came just a couple days after he said the Nets were in great shape because there were no guys on the roster who were “half-in.” Good luck with that time bomb, Dallas!

I had been keenly awaiting this year’s trade deadline since the fall, figuring the Pacers would move veterans to augment their rebuild. Then they won a lot more than expected until Tyrese Haliburton got hurt, re-signed Myles Turner, and chose to only make some minor deals.

It was still a monumentally entertaining trade window, with a number of pretty significant trades that were then overshadowed by Brooklyn cleaning house.

Well, done, NBA! A+!

I loathe the NFL draft. It is the most over-hyped event in sports. Primarily because there are very few players picked in that draft that make an immediate and profound impact on their teams. For every Joe Burrow, there are dozens and dozens of players that take two, three, even five years to acclimate to the professional level, complete their physical maturation, and become difference makers in the NFL. And yet we hear about the next draft for roughly 11.5 months of the year on ESPN and other sports media outlets.

The NBA draft is only slightly better these days. I think I was bombarded by at least two new mock drafts a day, every day, for the month leading up to the draft. And I do not subscribe to a bunch of NBA-specific news sources. It seems like every day brought a “reshuffled” mock draft, in which the guys going 14 and 15 were swapped, all in the name of getting more clicks.

It is exhausting.

And then we get last Thursday.

In a draft where there was a consensus belief that three players were well above the rest of the crowd, and could go in any order, people flipped out when one of those players went first when they thought he was more likely to go second or third. Sure, the tea leaves were leaning towards Orlando taking Jabari Smith at number one rather than Paolo Banchero, but it’s not like the Magic took a huge risk and picked Shaedon Sharpe. Yet all the talk after the draft was what a surprise Banchero at number one was. I hated it.

My conspiracy theory is that the NBA asked Orlando to take Banchero first so the entire draft could be framed as another piece in the endless Coach K retirement party.

OF COURSE K had a video message ready for Paolo. Because it’s about the kids, not him.

OK, those are my rants for the night.

I must give ESPN props for giving us the option of watching multiple feeds. Most importantly, this allowed me to avoid Stephen A. Smith on the main, ABC feed. It also meant I got to watch Jay Bilas, who knows way more about all of these players and is more concerned with educating the viewers that SAS.

I complained about all the pre-draft coverage, but I will admit I paid pretty close attention to the local beat writers as they explored how the Pacers prepared for the players that might be available when they picked at number six. There were persistent rumors they might trade up, notably with Sacramento at four. Or they might package current players like Malcolm Brogdon, Myles Turner, and/or TJ Warren to add picks in future years.

At a minimum it was expected that even if the Pacers kept the number six pick, we’d hear about some of those veterans moving on draft night.

And then we got a dud. Sacramento surprised some by taking Keegan Murray at four, then Detroit took Purdue’s Jaden Ivey, who the Pacers coveted.

I think the draft got interesting right at six. The Pacers had a range of options from safe to stretch, with several steps between those extremes.

Bennedict Mathurin was the safest of those options. A great athlete with some size and a good stroke. He may never be an All Star (although the Pacers think he is capable of that), but he also seems to have a decent floor and is a good match for Tyrese Haliburton. If things work out he’s a really solid piece for a decade.

With their second round picks the Pacers got Gonzaga point guard Andrew Nembhard and Baylor wing Kendall Brown. Decent picks, both. Nembhard should slot in on the bench the Pacers clear out some of their veteran guards. Brown is the classic, second round stretch pick for a guy with tons of athletic talent but not much game. You hope he figures it out and turns into a rotation player in a few years, but the risk is low by taking him at 48 (or having Minnesota take him and then swapping rights).

Once the Pacers got their pick out of the way, it was time for Ochai Watch. L was very interested in where the KU guys went. She and her AAU buddy said they wanted to go see the Pacers play whatever team picked Ochai this coming season. I think they might both be a little in love with Och. Which I get.

It was interesting to read the pre-draft buzz about Ochai, and how indicative it is of the way we think about NBA prospects. Because he’s 22 he’s viewed as a finished product by some, and they don’t see much room for improvement in his game. Others know that he started concentrating on basketball late, has made a dramatic leap in ability and hoops knowledge over the past five years, and believe there is still room for him to clean up the holes in his game.

Cleveland at 14 is an interesting spot for him. They have a lot of athletic perimeter players already, although they have been struck by the injury bug often. It seems unlikely Och will be asked to start from day one, and instead will be a shooter and defender off the bench. But if the roster falls apart like last year, the opportunity for a greater role could pop up quickly.

People get hung up on whether a player is a lottery pick or not. It’s cool that Och was the final lottery pick. But I would have been fine if he dropped a pick or two and maybe slid to a team that is a slightly better match than Cleveland. I don’t think Ochai cares.

Then it was on to CB Watch. I kept hearing rumblings that Christian Braun would be a first round pick. But those primarily came from KU people and I didn’t trust them. I didn’t see a single mock draft that had him in the first round. I did read one analyst who thought he would have a better NBA career than Ochai, though.

And then Denver shocked me by taking him at 21. TWENTY ONE!?!?!

I thought that was a reach, but Denver is also in a position where they are poised to win, have a very good roster (when healthy), and can pick based on specific needs to tighten up holes in their depth. Take the guy who may never be spectacular but can probably accept the role you’re offering on day one rather than a guy with upside but who won’t be ready to contribute for a couple years.

Most of all I was thrilled for CB. He became a bit of a cult figure for KU fans during the national title run, with his massive shots in big moments and constant shit talking.[1] There may not have been a more confident KU player since Mario Chalmers. And homey bet on himself by declaring and staying in the draft and won big time. Good for him!

If you had bet that CB would go 27 picks before Kendall Brown eight months ago, you would likely have made a lot of money.

My joke to KU friends after CB went at 21 was that we needed to launch David McCormack watch. That was funny, but suggesting Christian would go at 21 seemed pretty funny at the start of the draft, too.

I have a hard time getting into the guts of the draft because those generational talents come along so (seemingly) seldom these days. With all the changes in the game, you’re almost seem better off picking in the 5–12 range and hoping the wing you select becomes an all-world shooter and turns into a star based on that, rather than picking at the very top of the draft. Looking at the list of number one picks over the past decade, so many of their careers have been interrupted by serious and/or lingering injuries that they never/have yet to live up to expectations.

Of course it’s not fair to judge a draft just on the number one pick. And my perspective is forever colored by growing up in the ‘80s, when each draft was filled with fully-formed stars-in-waiting. Who knows, this might be the year when six or seven of the top ten turn into All Stars and we look back on the 2022 draft as one of the best and deepest in recent memory.