Not so fast. There is some talk that, under the new CBA, the rule regarding draft eligibility of U.S. players may change so that players must be TWO years removed from their high school graduating class before being draft eligible. Guys like Austin Rivers (who would be most affected by such a rule change) are even tweeting about the possibility. So, what might look like a stacked draft now may end up being even weaker than the 2011 draft. Man, that 2013 pick from Memphis may turn out to be pretty sweet!
I follow my college's basketball board closely, and this seems to be the prevailing sentiment among college basketball fans as well. Not only would it make the 2012 draft one of the weakest of all time, it would also serve to further dilute the 2011 draft by sending some good college players back to school when they know they would not have freshmen competition the following year. In college basketball terms, it would mean that whoever has the best incoming 2011 kids would have a tremendous shot at winning the NCAA title. I mean, could you imagine Calipari's Kentucky freshmen all coming back to play their sophomore years? Wall Cousins Orton and Bledsoe as sophomores? Knight Jones and Lamb? It would be absolute murder on the rest of the SEC. This next year they have probably the #1 class again with Gilchrist, Teague, and Davis. The only competition I could realistically foresee would be Duke who has the #1 player overall in Austin Rivers. Imagine how good that guy would be if he were forced to stay in college two years. And imagine an NCAA championship game between those two schools. You know, I've said enough to know where I stand on this issue now. BRING ON THE TWO YEAR RULE BABY! NCAA renaissance here we come. No more of this 3-4-8-11 seed in the Final Four bull. Let the overdogs reign. I wanna watch the real clash of the titans.
Thabeet would not have been traded if he showed any promise in Memphis. He is a bust for a No.2 pick. No there is no certainty in the draft. There is no certainty in saving up cap space to sign FAs. In fact there is no certainly that you'll win a championship even when you assemble championship talent. However, there is certainly in being satisfied with mediocirty -- your team will remain mediocre for a long time. You have to be very lucky to land a franchise player in the draft or via FA, but you have to do everything in your power to put your team in the position to get lucky. That means accumulating enough high draft picks and freeing up enough cap room. That will result in some very bad teams for a while, but I would prefer that over what we have now.
I'm getting so annoyed by the presumption that anyone who doesn't want to blow up this team and turn Rockets into a bottom feeder is somehow fine with mediocrity. No fan wants a mediocre team, and there is absolutely no basis to suggest the Rockets front office/ownership is fine with it either, so please just stop. Oh, and four shots!
I basically ignore every poster that goes on and on about "mediocrity's windmill", lol. Can't use their own brains and only parrot what other people say.
When the Rockets are going strong and have even a glimmer of hope, its impossible for me to root against that small chance in the name of a better draft position (especially in such a lack luster class like this year). However, after that glimmer has died out and we still did not make the playoffs, much less win a championship- yea, the ship might as well have gone down in flames.
If tanking makes a team into a contender, the Clippers should have already won multiple championships.
I was kidding. I have to admit, my previous post was sort of trolling. He went into detail about tanking that he answered his own question. All of you who say tanking should be done at the end of the season. Well, a #10 pick sure looks a lot better than #14 or #15, not recommending they SHOULD have tanked, but just sayin'.
Nice post as always, but I would say the Rockets got incredibly lucky to grab at the #14 spot a player they pegged as the sixth best player of the draft. I don't expect they would be that lucky every year. Also, just like Patterson dropped to #14, the players they valued higher than Patterson could still have been available at the No. 6 spot. Who knows, we might have ended up with someone Morey considered the third best player of the draft. You're probably right about this. The team with the #10 lottery pick is Milwaukee, and their current record is 33-47. So to have gotten that pick, they'd have to had to lose at least 10 more games then they did so far. Not so easy to do unless they traded away some of their more productive players.
March was one of the most exciting months of basketball I've seen this year. Wouldn't have given that up for unproven draft picks.
So on top of no certainty, which we agree on,... you want to cultivate a losing atmoshpere just to try to get lucky? Yeah, love the sound of that.
