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He's projected in the late first/early second round because of his age and his list of minor injuries that plague him. Seen multiple draft guys/analysts say that if he was guaranteed health he'd be a top 20 guy without any debate. Obviously at his age, upside is slightly more limited, but he's a top 10 or 15 dude in the class when it comes to pure right-now-skillOriginally Posted by Speakthetruth
Basketball.
No way he will still be available when we pick at number 30
I'm greedy. I want both Tillie and Few.
Tillie's age will push him down the draft with a chance he falls to the 2nd.
Yea, he coul be there in rd 2.but then I see a guy who can contribute right now and teams in the 20s are usually contenders and are looking for somebody who can play and help right now.
Would be nice to get him
For sure, that bolded part is kind of my perspective. I feel like with Zion still being 19, Jax still a project, Lonzo still having a bunch of stuff to fix/work on, NAW still has barely played, Didi possibly coming over, we don't really need another super young prospect type. Obviously if there's someone the scouting department sees untapped potential in, that's cool, but I don't think we need to go into this draft looking for a super young, raw, undeveloped ''possible star''. We have star potential guys, we have a ton of youth.
Just draft someone who is good at basketball and who can immediately start getting minutes and being good and helping us win. Our Brandon Clarke
Agreed, he also fits well with our best player zion on offense. Defense will have to be figured out but dont think it will be impossible to fix
I personally would like the last 5 on the bench to be all young players. Let them play together and practice as a team against the starters. NAW, DiDi, and Jax would be 3 of them now go grab a SF and PF to complete it. I'd love Okungwu but doubt he is there by our pick and my next pick is Okoro who I've seen all over the board.
Okongwu is the best prospect in the draft imo. Be shocked if he goes outside of the top 5 to be honest (which you said, of course).
Okoro seems a bit more polarising. I've seen him as high as top 3 on some mocks, but others have him in the teens (I think Tankathon has him outside of the top 10? can't remember). He'd be a great pick up for sure.
You've seen him all over the board, possibly in my sighaha
Cade flipping a perfect 1 handed pass like this is so casual(and GB3 is a freak) pic.twitter.com/Oum2efzIFy
— Ross Homan (@Ross_homan1) February 26, 2020
This is for 2021 but man, just saw it and needed to share it.
In case anyone was wondering why I have Cade #1 for 2021 right now lol
Wow
Love me some Cade. 2021 gonna have a lot of hype. I think for realistic sake. My top pick for where we likely to draft or trade up would be Terrance Clarke.
2020... All my picks are too high to be within reach and non of them are worth trading up. Just atarted looking at Patrick Williams. Could definitely be the much needed depth at Wing.
I'm really glad we aren't slot having to gamble on Wiseman. He is someone that would sound great pair for Zion on paper to keep him from getting double team and fresh. Sometimes you have to gamble on him reaching his ceiling when you see a great fit. I'm glad Warriors are probably that bet.
Last edited by Taker597; 03-05-2020 at 05:46 PM.
I agree with regards to my top guys being too high up for us to get, but not promising enough to warrant spending assets to move up. Patrick Williams is a good shout and I'm also very positive on him, from what I've seen, which is admittedly not a huge amount.
I also agree on Wiseman. He has a lot of physical tools which obviously you can't teach, and if he can work out all of his numerous issues, then he's got the blueprint (at least physically) to be a very good NBA player. The problem is that all of his poor skills are psychological, which are often the hardest to teach. I'm sure it's possible, but it's very difficult to 'teach' feel, or recognition, or anticipation. Wiseman is an extremely reactionary player, without great touch, without great feel or recognition, without a good integration of his passing/scoring viewpoints, etc. Maybe all of that gets ironed out under a good coach with the right system, but I don't think that coach or that system is in New Orleans.
Tyler Bey - SF/PF Colorado
Haven't seen him play but from what I've read on him he sounds like a fit to me. He is up there in age but with a team so young that may be more of a plus to me.
NBA Comparison: Jonas Jerebko/Luc Richard Mbah Moute
Strengths: Active, athletic forward who has the versatility to play multiple positions and plays with consistent energy … Multi-faceted player with the ability to excel on both ends, both inside and out … Appears to have a lot of potential left to develop … A long, explosive “next level” athlete … Shows the ability to guard larger players and play much bigger than his 6’7 size … Appears to have a wingspan in the 7’1 foot range … Possesses good toughness and seeks out contact around the basket … Has the look of a guy that can become a valuable defender a la Luc Richard Mbah a Moute with his “small ball four” capabilities for the next level … Understands how to operate in the paint, scoring from both back to the basket, as well as facing up … Fills up a stat sheet and seems to impact games without always being the team’s high scorer … Plays with a lot of determination and appears to have a presence and natural leadership about him … Gives solid effort on the defensive end, blocking a lot of shots for his size (had 5 against New Mexico) … Excellent rebounder, really crashes the glass, seeks out the ball and antipates well … Has touch. His ability to hit free throws at a solid clip leads to optimism about his ability to improve his form and become more of a mid-range and even outside threat … Has developed a reputation for being a hard worker and a solid individual …
Weaknesses: Needs to improve as an outside shooter … Lacks a fluid stroke, release is a bit flat, arm doesn’t get full extension or enough follow through … Should be able to improve his shot with focus on improving his form, but current form will limit his ability to extend his jump shot and connect at an efficient rate … Could be labeled a tweener by those that see him as a small four with limited ball skills … Facilitating for others is not a part of his repertoire … Not a great passer, has not shown a great ability to find teammates … Needs to become more proficient as a ball handler and passer to become a full time wing … Still somewhat unproven and will need to sustain a high level of play for an entire season before considering leaving for the NBA …
Outlook: Should be able to fill a role for an NBA team even if his shooting never becomes a real strength … Has been compared by scouts to former fellow Buffalo Andre Roberson, and shades of a less athletic Shawn Marion …
Curry back for GS. Guess GS does not want #1 pick?
Warriors have 14 wins with 20 games left.
Even if they went 15-5 (.750 win rate) over their final stretch with Curry back, they'd still finish with fewer than 30 wins and likely be a bottom 5 record in the league. Their shot at the #1 pick would still be fairly solid; the bottom 3 teams have a 14% chance at the #1, and the 5th worse record still has a 10.5% chance. The reduction in probability is very minor.
And that's assuming they went nuclear with Curry back; the reality is that this roster sucks and there's likely not much Curry can do to change that. They'll be a little better, sure, but I would still be somewhat surprised if they hit 10-10 over that final stretch. 25 wins would be an impressive turnaround for them.
Besides, even if you accept the idea that they're losing their shot at the #1 pick, which they aren't, who cares? It's generally agreed upon by most people that this draft has a fairly low level of high end talent in it. Picking at #1 isn't massively valuable this year, for that reason; anyone in the top 5 has about as much likelihood to pop as anyone else.
Warriors want a big man , wiseman or trading the pick
I agree. Would be a great landing spot for UFA, Christian Wood, though I would love him to come back to New Orleans.
Well, now that everything has been cancelled, I guess we have all the information we're going to get on everyone. So where does that leave us?
It's hard to make a full on big-board, since we didn't get to see tournament stuff that usually clarifies a few issues, although obviously everyone has their current preferences.
Something that I think doesn't get talked about enough with regards to players is team-draft fit.
Take LaMelo Ball for example. There's a wide range of opinion on where he should go in this draft: some have him #1, some have him top 3, some have him top 10. A handful even have him outside of that, for reasons that I find justifiable, but which I do not agree with.
Is he a #1 overall pick? For me, it depends on who gets that pick. If it's New York, no, he isn't a #1 pick. Because he's the kind of player who has guaranteed, high level skills, but also huge gaping holes that desperately need fixing and various abilities which are stages of development. He needs to go to a team that has some good development staff, some good coaches, some structure and mentorship. If he goes to a team like that, maybe he fixes some of those flaws and polishes up those developing skills and becomes a truly #1 pick worthy guy, but if he goes to NYC, he will not develop at anywhere near the same rate or to the same standard.
A great example of this is actually Lonzo Ball; we all saw him in LA. Some of his skills were evident; his passing was high level. His defensive ceiling, when he locked in, was high. He rebounded well for a guard. But he had clear gaping holes in his skillset (shooting, scoring in general, half-court playmaking, etc) that needed a coaching staff, a shooting coach, a developmental system that would fix them in order to make him actually worth a top 5 pick. In LA, he didn't get any of that, and the consequence is that he looked really bad a lot of the time. His natural skills like the passing still showed up, but his problems never really got fixed and in some ways, parts of his game even degraded. He was looking bad; was not a top 75 player.
Then he comes here. Coaching staff, while we can all question Gentry, at least plays a style that fits him. Fred Vinson is a really good shooting coach. We re-invest on development stuff, training staff. The consequence? Lonzo improves not only as a shooter, but also (as the year progresses) starts showing some signs of halfcourt ability. It's intermittent, inconsistent, but way more than he showed in LA nonetheless. That ability that some projected him to have coming out of college has begun to show through again.
This is the case with a lot of players who aren't guaranteed stars. Some guys get drafted and no matter where they go, they'll be good; Zion is an example of this, but so was Lebron, to give another. Very few names in this draft are guys like that, and those that are tend to be more ''high-tier roleplayers'' than projected stars; guys like Killian Tillie, Devin Vassell, Aaron Nesmith, for example. They'll likely succeed anywhere.
But LaMelo? Cole Anthony? Obi Toppin? Nico Mannion? Tyrese Haliburton? These are all players who could easily go in the top 15, and whose upside depends greatly on where they go.
Will be interesting to see what happens.
Obviously this low in the draft, who actually ends up on the board is a bit of a shot in the dark but I just remembered that we also have the #39, #42, and #60 picks in this draft
The best move would probably be to try and combine them and move up, or shift them along to next year or something, but if we were actually going to use them then I'd probably try and aim for something like
#39 Grant Riller
I'm using Tankathon's current mock draft to choose those two guys by the way. Maybe ESPN has Grant Riller going #34 or something so he wouldn't be available, but I'm going off what Tankathon has.
I pick Riller because he is, despite his many problems, the best finisher in the class
He also projects to be an okay enough shooter (36% on 4 per game this year, 39% on 4 per game two seasons ago) with a career 79.6% FT stroke. Career 61.6% TS%. Not a fantastic playmaker but his AST% has gone up every year in college, while his TOV% has stayed relatively stable around 13% ish, which isn't too bad.
My take on this draft is pretty simple -- Assuming our pick is 12, 13 range.... I take one of the 4's (or 4/5's)
I see a lot of people trying to artificially inflate the guards and wings of this draft, in hopes they can be a 3 and D guy or at the very least, elite at one of those skills. But I dont see it. Okoro, Vessell, McDaniels, etc -- they would be late 1sts or early 2nds in any other draft. But we are so hungry for wings, we push them up. Meanwhile, a lot of the 4's or 4/5s are legit prospects and are being pushed down because they dont play the desired positions
I am not a Toppin guy, but Okongwu, Paul Reed, Isaiah Stewert, and Jalen Smith -- I would be looking at those guys to be my junk yard dog backup big that I develop over the next few years. Think Faried or young Ibaka, young Siakam. No plays drawn up for them, very few touches. Just constant energy on both ends for the first few years while a guy like Favors holds down the fort for a year or two. Long term, Zion, Hayes, and whoever we draft at 12 become our 3-man big trio.
You get the wing and/or 3-and-D guy when you have a real one in front of you. You dont force it by reaching on a Josh Green and hoping. Instead, grab the best big on the board because I would bet there is only one or two gone before we pick at 12 or 13. And I would say 5 of the top 12 guys in this draft are bigs.
@mcnamara247
Finally catching up with the Prep2Pro podcast hosted by Max Carlin and Ben Pfeifer, both of whom are great follows for Draft Twitter and I'm excited that they've started a draft pod, and their discussion on LaMelo Ball basically sums up all of the issues there are with LaMelo to me, as well as his plus sides. Great, even and balanced discussion on him. I'll transcribe it below:
Max: Yeah, I think the very first thing that pervades throughout his game is balance, which stems from core weakness. If you watch, he fades on every 3 pointer, and it's not as bad as it was at Spire but it's still bad, and what really concerns me is balance around the rim. We know he's, like, outlier terrified of contact and I think it's because he can't take hits. He gets thrown wildly off balance, it's legitimately dangerous, and it totally wrecks the threat of him as a finisher. Beyond that, I think the balance is probably why his shot is like, that all-arms push shot, stems from that too.
Beyond that, he has zero burst, and I think discussion of his handle is interesting because he does have the most advanced handle in the class however, he is an egregious over-dribbler and gets into these situations where he'll keep trying to cross a guy up and he's just not all that deceptive so he'll string together these advanced moves and you're like 'oh my God, LaMelo is unreal' but on a possession to possession basis, he's not breaking guys down as much as you'd want to see. I just worry that he needs to be a really high level pull up shooter and I'm not necessarily out on him being a solid pull up shooter but the level he'll need to be I question.
Then my other main concern is defense. I think that with Illawarra was the first time that he ever played defense, and I don't mean that in the first time he ever tried, I mean the first time he ever played defense. Like, what he was doing at Spire was not defense and what he was doing at Chino Hills was not basketball. I think he tried to some degree with Illawarra, and in an encouraging manner, but at what point are you too far behind the curve? He tried to defend on the ball and defend off-ball screens but he had no clue how to navigate them and his game is just full of these horrible miscommunications where he doesn't know the assignment, so he'll be trying to figure out if he should go under or over in the middle of a play and slam directly into the screen and there's a wide open three or layup or something.
And the effort is still hit or miss, I think it was against the Sydney Kings, one of his last games against the best team in the NBL, Illawarra had a chance to win on the road in the waning seconds and he just lets a guy drive right by him to the rim. I have never seen a player go from being on the court to being on the bench faster. It was stunning. Granted the next game he came out against Cairns and the effort was a lot better and hopefully he took that to heart but it was still too frequent to see these episodes of embarrassing effort from him. With someone like Trae, we've seen that for 2 years he's been, by most impact stats, literally the worst most destructive defender in the league, I think on the spectrum of guys who don't care as prospects, from Trae to Ben Simmons where Simmons was capable but just thought the NCAA was a sham and didn't wanna try, I think he's probably closer to the Simmons end than the Trae end but I don't know that. I think his physical tools for defense are pretty bad, and he has the intelligence to make plays as a team defender but for him it's more gambles, that characterised his Spire tape than really brilliant team defensive plays.
So yeah, I have a lot of concerns, I definitely get the appeal. I think he might have the highest or second highest outcome in the class, and I mean I'm not that low on him I have him 5, but I have very significant concerns and I think the chances of him hitting these high end outcomes are not that high.
Ben: I'll open up by saying that I agree with everything Max said, all those concerns are super legitimate that he addressed and there is a legitimate case to have him not at the #1 spot like I do, but I think in terms of correctability of his issues, look at a guy like Edwards vs LaMelo. How correctable are his decision making woes, whereas the like you said, the balance issues are real but core training is possible and he's got a long way to go, don't get me wrong, he is rail thin and so physically underdeveloped. He never lifted weights until he was 17, but it's not an impossible thing for him to develop that core strength. Looking at like, Lonzo, obviously he's more physical to start with but he's improved that in the NBA, but look at LaVar, the genes are there. He has the capacity to put on that core strength. It may not be for two or three, or even four years but the fact that it's there? And like you said, I do believe that he has the highest ceiling in this class with that ridiculous handle, the pull-up potential, and the touch he's displayed that once he can improve that balance and that lower body strength he can utilise that touch as a finisher.
Defensively, I agree that he is very lackadaisical, very far behind the curve but those flashes of intelligence are there, you mention that you think it's mostly gambles and there are a lot of gambles but I do think there are legitimate instances of team defensive instincts and I think that is something to be brought out with improved physical development. Once his lower body strength is better, just by virtue of his legs being stronger, he'll be able to navigate those screens at a more confident level, he'll be better defending the ball. All of this is contingent on that strength development and there's a fair chance that never happens and LaMelo is a middling or negative NBA player who's the worst defender in the NBA, that's a real outcome. But what's also a real outcome is a legitimate, high level pull up shooter, special pass, I don't even think you mentioned his passing -
Max: Oh yeah as the resident LaMelo sceptic he is just a brilliant passer, he invents passes that have never been thrown before
Ben: Just the audacity to throw these, and those high risk passes are the money makers. I don't know if you've seen, there's a guy called Coach Daniel, he has these videos where he's like 'can you read the game like X player' and when LaMelo gets to the NBA and he has some of these plays he's going to be the most difficult one.
Max: I truly don't think there's anyone who has ever seen basketball the way LaMelo does, he invents passes that have never been thrown before. He is a savant.
Ben: He is the best passer in the class, that's clear to me. People talk about the floor being bedrock with LaMelo and defensively, sure, but offensively I struggle to see him with that passing and that handle, he's going to be able to get to spots at at least some level, it's going to have some sort of value.
Max: I'm less confident at him getting to spots. Because he's so bad with contact, and I know it will get better when he adds strength, but he's so bad with it, and it's not that he doesn't handle it well when he experiences it, it's that he's truly outlier contact averse and that's something that I don't think we've seen go away that often in the NBA. That really plagues players. I mean, watch Harrison Barnes right now in year 10 and he's still terrified of making contact. I feel like it's really probably just a riding a bike situation where you build up his core strength and he starts to take contact and sees that he can do this, but I don't know how many examples of people we've seen who go from being averse to embracing it and he will have to embrace it.
And I still, I mean, he has like no burst. Like he can't beat switches onto NBL bigs.
So yeah, that's a pretty good analysis of LaMelo's strengths and weaknesses.
I've gotta disagree here. I think Okoro and Vassell are legitimate mid first round prospects. Maybe in other drafts they'd fall on the second half of that, between 15-25 rather than the upper end of 8-14, but they'd still be in that first round with some comfort. There's something to be said for being a legitimately high IQ player who can play real defense across multiple positions. If you're right and someone like Vassell would usually go in the 2nd round, I have a feeling that he'd be one of those guys who people end up saying ''oh my God, how did he go after XYZ player?!'' in a few years. That said, I do agree on McDaniels; I have him in the early 2nd round.
I do agree on bigs, but which bigs is a strange disagreement here. I recognise Toppins flaws (and boy, are his flaws enormous) but I do think that his offensive skillset is clear enough that it will end up being of value in the NBA. Maybe it's only as a bench big who provides scoring, kind of like an Enes Kanter who can shoot, but in a draft like this one there's still some value in securing that if that's what you mean.
But I am big on Okongwu and Reed; not big at all on Stewart or really Smith either. I'd much rather take Killian Tillie or Xavier Tillman or someone like that as a big over Isaiah, for example.
If we picked at something like #13, then I'd wager Okoro is probably already gone. At that spot, my preferred guys (who are likely to be left on the board) are either Vassell or Tillie; beyond that it gets a bit foggier.
This is going to be an awfully weak draft. I've watched a number of Arizona game replays since the shutdown and Mannion is 'iffy' at best in my mind (certainly not a high lottery material as many suggest). What that says about the rest of the draft makes me wonder.
A good mid-first round pick might be sharpshooter, Aaron Nesmith from Vandy, and I like Trendon Watford in the second round (if he makes it that far considering the Mannion-meter....SHEESH).
Most people have dropped off considerably on Mannion throughout the year. This is certainly true of me, as well. He was very good in pre-college play, and in the early days of the college season he looked to be continuing it, but the more he played against good teams the more obvious his flaws became and the more clear it became that he has a long way to go to fix some of them.
Most people started the year off with him ranked somewhere between 4 and 8; most people now have him somewhere between 14 and 20. I think that's fair.
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