🏀 KuBuckets Archive

After the Draft Lottery last night, I thought I'd take a swing at the lottery picks

1. Cleveland - Joel Embiid, Kansas

2. Milwaukee - Jabari Parker, Duke

3. Philadelphia - Andrew Wiggins, Kansas

4. Orlando - Julius Randle, Kentucky

5. Utah - Dante Exum, Australia

6. Boston - Noah Vonleh, Indiana (unless they deal Rondo, then they take Marcus Smart)

7. LA Lakers - Aaron Gordon, Arizona or Vonleh (unless they get Kevin Love, then they take Rodney Hood or TJ Warren) or Smart

8. Sacramento - TJ Warren, NC State or Smart if he's still there

9. Charlotte - James Young, Kentucky

10. Philadelphia - Gary Harris, Michigan State or Adreian Payne. It's also possible one of the foreign big guys comes off the board here if they want an interior force.

11. Denver - Adreian Payne, Michigan State or Cleanthony Early, Wichita State

12. Orlando - Nik Stauskas, Michigan

13. Minnesota - Doug McDermott, Creighton, or Payne if he's still out there

14. Phoenix - the player available between Hood, Early, James Young and PJ Hairston, North Carolina

Cleveland needs rim protection and Embiid can provide that. He can also help last year's #1 (Bennett) because he can defend the other team's best interior player.

Milwaukee needs a bit of everything, so they go with the most polished player in the draft in Parker. He immediately becomes a 17ppg scorer.

Philly has two picks so they can use one on the perimeter and the other inside if they choose. They go Wiggins here and then best player available at 10. Depending on how their board lines up, that could be one of about 3 or 4 guys.

Orlando also has two lottery picks and I think they will almost certainly go inside and outside. Randle is almost a definite here because he's the safest bet to be a good pro out of the next tier of players. That means they go with a guard at 12, which could be anybody in the Harris, Smart, Stauskas, Young group.

I think Utah goes Exum at 5 unless he's off the board, in which case this pick is a wild card.

Boston and LA are the other big wild cards because they will almost certainly be trying to wheel and deal before the draft, which could really change their team makeup and shake up the rest of the lottery.

Sacramento and Charlotte will both likely pick perimeter players since they already have PFs on their roster and other than Embiid, there's no true center ranked really high. They will be waiting to see what Boston and LA do.

The end of the lottery is all about getting the best available player on your board. I think guys like TJ Warren, Cleanthony Early and Gary Harris will make some teams really happy here.

I think Cleanthony Early goes around 20th and Doug McDermott will probably go 7th or 8th; he had good workout and the results showed that he is a lot more athletic than people thought.

@JayHawkFanToo

My concern with both Early and McDermott is that I am not certain either of them will ever be anything more than an average defensive player. McDermott looked good in the gym, but does that translate to the defensive end of the floor? And can he do that every night from November to April? Same with Early. Can he play at that level defensively for six straight months? I think that will cause both of them to slip a few spots.

@JayHawkFanToo

I heard the same thing... McDermott looked good and he'll go fairly high. I think he will retool his game and make it work in the league.

Give him some time and he'll become a much better defender. Defense wasn't his role in college ball. But he'll have to pick it up on d in the pros, and he will.

A big part of defense is having a high basketball IQ and McDermott has that. Smart NBA players always stick out and always find a home somewhere.

@justanotherfan

@drgnslayr

McDermott is coach's son and as such he has learned to play the right way since an early age. He has high basketball IQ and he is somewhere in between Hinrich and Collison and he will likely play the SF in the NBA; he is a well above average scorer which the NBA likes. Time will tell how well he does at the next level; I am guessing he will do well.

@justanotherfan

I don't know ANY of the pro teams well enough this year to say who needs what, so there is no point to my remarking globally on your rankings.

So I will just remark on the players themselves.

Aaron Gordon really impressed me in the NCAA tournament and I would take him ahead of Randle. I want that guy on my team.

Gary Harris seems a little low to me. Its tough being a PG at MSU, because Ratso loads up with thugs that can't shoot, so there's no one to look very good passing to. But I think Harris could blossom in the league.

Stauskas I would drop from the list. I have watched the guy repeatedly and I frankly don't see why he should go in the first round, much less in the lottery. But I don't doubt that you have weighed the supply of guys at his position and concluded its a thin crop and he's what there is for anyone that needs a trey gun at the two.

Wiggins to me is a serious crap shoot. He's such a mediocre trey shooter, so one handed, and exhibited so little toughness, that he seems to have "high risk" all over him. At the same time, he has that ridiculous physical ability and was apparently sand bagging a lot of the season to minimize injury risk, so it would come down for me to what he was willing to show in work outs. If he wouldn't work out, and show me what he could do against one of my really good perimeter players, I would pass on him. If he worked out and whipped my best perimeter player I would take him number one. I really think who ever drafts him, he is likely to be traded to Toronto, because Toronto is the best marketing tie in to the British Empire, and that's were his real endorsing value lies. And Toronto is most likely to be tolerant of his 2-3 year development time line, after which he could be the greatest player of the decade in the NBA, or a minor player. Again, he's really a weird one to try to predict. Never heard of a great NBA star that had such an ordinary season in college with so many big holes in his game.

Embiid is another high risk undertaking, but his footer athleticism would make me willing to take the risk with a Number one, if his back were fully recovered. But man, if he wouldn't work out for me either, I would not sleep well taking him, even though I would take him. Embiid is potentially the greatest athletic freak in the NBA of the next ten years. But even if he doesn't fully develop, he is at the very worst a ten year journeyman center that allows you to plough your cash into superstars at 1-4.

Parker? He can play and so you've got to take him high if he's available, but unlike, Embiid soon, or Wiggins later, who are capable of transforming a team, I see Parker as a good piece to fit into an existing puzzle, rather than a team transformer.

Don't recall Vonieh or Exum and Young enough to comment.

Randle did not win me over. But wherever you take him, he'll stick and be worth having around.

@JayHawkFanToo

Me, too. He'll find his role on how to best contribute. Yeah... I'd put him between Hinrich and Collison.

@jaybate 1.0

The way I rate players is dependent on two things. First, minimizing existing weaknesses and second, having at least one (preferably more) exceptional strengths.

Let's take a look at players that have been discussed by you, @drgnslayr and @JayHawkFanToo - McDermott, Early, Stauskas and Harris.

McDermott answered some questions about his athleticism, which I would have put as a weakness, but now is neutral. His defense is still questionable, but I agree that his basketball IQ will probably allow him to play above his physical ability. He's an exceptional scorer. The reason I think he falls is because his game reminds me a lot of Adam Morrison. Morrison never was able to become a good enough wing defender to play consistently in the NBA. I think that will scare a lot of the teams in the top 10 away because this draft is so deep you don't want to take a guy in the top 10 that can't make your rotation.

Early has many of the same concerns as McDermott. He's not as good a scorer, but I can see him contributing more as a rebounder. His defense needs to be decent, but I think that makes him a late lottery guy. I like him in either Denver or Phoenix because I think in an uptempo system he could really shine.

Stauskas is an exceptional shooter that handles the ball better than I initially gave him credit for. Because of this, I think he could play either guard spot and with his size (a legit 6-6) he can guard basically any perimeter spot, meaning even if he's not a good defender, he guards the least dangerous wing player on the opposing team.

I actually like Gary Harris better than most, but I don't like his size. He's 6-4 and he's not a Dwyane Wade type athlete. That's going to make it tough for him at the 2. I'm not comfortable with him playing the 1 and tweener guys struggle in the NBA (another thing that makes me less than bullish about McDermott). Still, he can play and other than size, doesn't have any real glaring weaknesses. He's at least adequate in every area, which I think makes him a lottery pick right on that edge between late lottery or late teens. He actually may be a guy that would benefit from being drafted later so he ends up on a team like Chicago or Dallas that isn't desperate for a young player to be a star, but can fit in as a contributor off the bench.

Also, Exum is an Australian teenager. A lot of people in the states aren't as familiar with him, but he's a pretty impressive player.

As to the title, the balls didn't drop. Did any of you see them?
This is simply a huge farce. I can't believe that the sporting world continues to buy this. Oops. Then I remember my own mantra: Never overestimate the intelligence of the American public.

@741hawk

You mightlike this article, see item #3...

NBA Lottery is rigged... ↗

@JayHawkFanToo

I like #7 as well. I know this is a college board, but I think that one pretty well sums up the difference between the NBA and college.

@741hawk

I didn't see the lottery occur, but if you ascribe to conspiracy theories for anything that you did not (or cannot) view live then the world is just one huge spinning conspiracy.