Lots of team representatives are converging on the NBA Draft Lottery tonight with whatever lucky things that they can find.

A lot of luck tonight could mean picking up Greg Oden to man the center position. I don’t think any team in the league, except perhaps Houston, wouldn’t trade their center for Oden.

Along with hearing who might pick up whom if they ended up with a high pick, we also get to hear all of the people talking about what could make the draft lottery better. Read the rest of this entry »

We already know that Jeff Van Gundy doesn’t like it. His team isn’t likely good enough yet for a chance at winning it all. I don’t think beating Utah, Dallas, and either Phoenix or San Antonio is in the cards. And even if they did, they still have to get past whoever comes out of the East. That’s a tall order, especially since they’re likely to be playing every single one of those teams on the road.

They’re too good, however, to get a chance at one of the premier players coming into the league (although a chance at a sleeper obviously exists).

Having a weighted system for the first three picks and a system of drafting in reverse order of the record obviously brings some parity to the league. That’s good, but some of the teams manage to stay bad for a decade, in spite of having top 10 picks year after year.

Do we really want to see Oden go to the Grizzlies or the Celtics? Read the rest of this entry »

At first glance, the picks seem perfect, and most sports writers have tended to agree.

Ronnie Brewer is a large shooting guard, a good defender, and a great scorer, though not necessarily the lights out shooter that the Utah Jazz were hoping to pick up in J.J. Redick.  Most sports writers had Brewer higher on the draft board than Redick, so time will only tell whether Orlando made a mistake in picking up the Duke star rather than going after Brewer.

Dee Brown is the old teammate of Deron Williams, the Jazz’s starting point guard, when they made a run in the NCAA Tournament that ended in a loss to North Carolina in the final game.  If nothing else, it gives Deron Williams a reason to stay with the Jazz for quite some time.  At the most, the lightning quick but undersized shooting guard will be able to spell Williams at the point and make some waves as a backup at the shooting guard position.

Paul Millsap, though undersized for the power forward position, led the NCAA in rebounding for 3 consecutive years.  In most statistical categories, being good in college does not necessarily translate to being good in the pros, but rebounding is one of those categories where good rebounders tend to remain good rebounders.  With Jerry Sloan as the coach, he is certain to continue to get good playing time if he continues to rebound.

Second round picks don’t normally have a great shot of making the NBA team that drafts them for any real length of time, if they make it at all, but look for Brown and Millsap to join Brewer for many successful years for the Jazz and in the NBA.

I also had to mention one other scenario that GM’s don’t normally get credit for.

A good second round pick.

The GMs who picked up Gilbert Arenas, Michael Redd, Manu Ginobili and other All-Stars or near All-Stars should have gotten much better marks for their drafts, but because the drafts were graded the day after, rather than 3 years later, they didn’t get the proper grade that they deserved.

I get a kick out of the fact that teams get graded on their performance in a draft before those players actually play a single NBA game, let alone a season or three.

Since sport writers don’t seem to be able to figure out who the best players are going to be with more than a 20% accuracy, why do they think they can grade how a team does in the NBA Draft with any better than 20% accuracy?

(To be fair, of course, I ought to mention that NBA teams on average don’t choose players with any more accuracy than sports writers, ant that gets a lot of GMs fired).

Let me give you some real examples:

Case #1:  Utah Jazz

The Utah Jazz are given top grades every year, never falling below a B- from any of the top sportswriters (at least not since I can remember).  In the last 5 years, the only players that are currently in Utah from any of those drafts are 2 out of 3 from last year (and maybe that’s just because the Jazz haven’t had the opportunity to trade them yet).

For getting top grades, you wouldn’t think that would be the case.

Of course, there is the possibility that Utah traded them too early, but some of them were injury-prone and got injured, some of them weren’t protected in an expansion draft, some of them were busts, some of them were insubordinate to Jerry Sloan (who isn’t necessarily the easiest coach to work with), and some of them were just buried so far down the depth chart that a new start might end up being a good thing.

Case #2: Toronto Raptors

Toronto drafted Chris Bosh, Rafael Araujo, Charlie Villanueva, and Andrea Bargnani in the top ten over the past four years.

I’m pretty sure they received good grades for Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani.  Chris Bosh has worked out.  Andrea has yet to play.

They received mediocre grades for drafting Araujo, who everybody thought was NBA ready but was drafted a little too high.  It turns out he was not ready.  Could he be serviceable in the future?  Yes.  Did he work at all for the Toronto Raptors?  Only if you count that he was traded for Kris Humphries, and Humphries might pan out.

They received poor grades for drafting Villanueva.  In fact, they were the laughing stock of the draft.  A year later, everybody is trying to get Villanueva.  He was one of the top 5 picks of the draft (after the first year).

Case #3: Detroit Pistons

After getting the #2 pick in the draft, Detroit drafts Darko Milicic rather than Carmelo Anthony or Dwyane Wade.  Of course, Detroit is in the strange position of being a top NBA team with no real needs and also having the second best pick in the draft.  Needless to say, they are given top grades for drafting one of the 3 superstar potentials in the draft (with Wade, of course, being overlooked by all of the sports writers not writing for the school newspaper in Marquette).  He still might develop well in Orlando, but Joe Dumars certainly didn’t deserve a top grade for drafting him at #2 to a Detroit team that couldn’t even use him.

Sports writers’ Grades:

Waiting proper amount of time to grade: F

Guessing right: C+ (surprisingly enough, they don’t guess wrong ALL of the time)

Giving readers something to read the day after: A