Draft Night Busts Tired Myths
Mike DeCourcy - SportingNews.com
Jun 26, 2009
The 2009 NBA draft might be most memorable for Hasheem Thabeet's shimmering suit and the Minnesota Timberwolves' scrambling to corner the market on point guards, but it also served to destroy many of the draft myths repeated each spring.
We'll probably still hear the same stories next year, because draft misinformation is like a religion, but if you were paying attention Thursday you saw each of these assumptions disproved:
Young American players should train in Europe
Brandon Jennings' tour advocate Sonny Vaccaro was spinning like Rumpelstiltskin after Jennings was selected in the first round by the Milwaukee Bucks. Vaccaro told FoxSports.com he was "ecstatic" with how things developed.
Jennings said, "It all worked out."
Well, sure, if you're lousy at math.
Jennings left high school No. 1 in the recruiting class of 2008. The Bucks chose him with the 10th overall pick.
When Derrick Rose left high school a year before Jennings, he was rated No. 3 in his class. One season with the Memphis Tigers led Rose to be selected first overall in last June's draft. He climbed with a year in college; Jennings fell, and in a weak draft.
In the three years since the NBA introduced its age limit, these have been the draft results for the top-rated high school players:
2006: Greg Oden, No. 1 overall in 2007 draft.
2007: O.J. Mayo, No. 3 overall in 2008 draft.
2008: Brandon Jennings, No. 10 overall in 2009 draft.
Jennings apparently dropped as a result of playing (little) in Europe. There's no way anyone can claim with a straight face -- or an unbiased agenda -- that spending a year in Europe helped him in the draft.
Go before the scouts can pick at your game
Apparently, three months since the end of the season was enough time for scouts to find holes in the resumes of UCLA's Jrue Holiday, Wake Forest's Jeff Teague and Pitt's DeJuan Blair.
The mock draft artists and the go-pro crowd among my contemporaries all endorsed their departures from NCAA basketball despite the players' combined five years of college experience and obvious current limitations as pro prospects. Each player wound up being drafted far below his potential ceiling.
Some mocks had Holiday in the top 5 as recently as a week ago, before buzz spread that he wouldn't go nearly that high. UCLA had expected Holiday would spend a second year on campus and run the Bruins' attack as their point guard -- the position he'll need to play as a pro but has never played competitively.
Teague started planning for his draft exit in mid-February. If he'd waited until Wake's season was over, he might have gotten the lottery spot he desired and his talent merited. But the sour taste he left with his last few weeks led many to wonder if he could run a team. Nothing he did in pre-draft workouts was convincing enough.
Blair busted all the way down to the second round after telling reporters at his draft declaration press conference he was guaranteed to go in the first round -- because all the mock drafts said so.
Everybody who gets into Duke is smart
Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry seems to have one goal in mind when he's drafting players: proving his father wasn't the worst GM ever at running a draft.
When Bob Ferry directed the Washington Bullets, he passed on Karl Malone to select Kenny Green and brushed past Mark Jackson to choose Muggsy Bogues. Malone scored 36,663 more points than Green. Jackson passed for 3,608 more assists than Bogues.
That's quite a record to challenge, but Danny Ferry is doing what he can. He blew last year's No. 19 pick on J.J. Hickson, who hasn't the guile or grit to be a great rebounder or the skill to be a face-up power forward. He could have had Ryan Anderson, who would have looked lovely on the end of LeBron James' penetrate-and-pitches.
But Ferry was just warming up. After the Cavs were forced to frequently play three small guards against the long and lean Orlando Magic in the 2009 conference finals, Ferry ignored the opportunity to grab defensive stopper Derrick Brown of Xavier in order to choose a player who could not get on the floor in Spain's top league. Wing Christian Eyenga played in the Spanish equivalent of the D-League, and he wasn't ready to dominate there.
Being a senior hurts you in the draft
Six seniors were chosen in the first round, including two in the first 13 picks. There is no doubt if Terrence Williams left Louisville last year he'd have been selected lower than 11th, and there can't be anybody who believes Tyler Hansbrough would have gone 13th without showing he could continue to build his perimeter game this past season.
VCU's Eric Maynor got into the top 20 with another strong NCAA Tournament showing.
There were a lot of second-rounders in Thursday night's draft who might have played their way into the 2010 first round by spending another year improving. Instead, they believed the myths.
Mike DeCourcy is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at decourcy@sportingnews.com.
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