here is my opinion. There are many solid small forwards in this draft that we can possibly take as I've seen almost every small forward mocked going to the rockets. vesely, Leonard, singleton, hamilton, morris, harris, honeycutt, look to be solid but I think we should take Marshon Brooks at 14 like coachbadlee has been saying. My reason for this is because Terrence Williams has yet to get a legit chance. Let him play some solid minutes backing up chase this upcoming year and see if HE can be our small forward for the future. If he fails then we can shoot for a small forward in next years draft. With so many talented 3's in the next draft (H. Barnes,J. McAdoo, Q.Miller, M.Gilchrist, A.Thomas, T.Jones, J.Taylor,K. Middleton, cj Leslie.) were bound to get one of them.
Bingo!! With Williams passing skills and Marshons shooting, they would be a pretty good duo off the bench. Also, here is more news on Brooks:
Each OHMSS post comes with a personalized grain of salt. He can give good evaluations, you just have to ignore the jibberish and get him focused on something. The Rockets will trade the 14th pick for the 15th pick and a future second rounder, then draft Brooks with the 15th pick. /Win. Seriously, I'm a little leery of drafting another scoring senior guard. Perhaps I still have nightmares about JT, I don't know. Brooks can score and can score well.. but if he was really that good, you'd think he would've been able to come out a while ago. He's had a big leap in production from his Jr to Sr seasons, but he's still not a very good outside shooter which worries me. I'd rather play it safe and take Kenneth Faried. He's going to be a + defender and ++ rebounder. You can't go wrong with a guy like that.
I like Faried, but I couldn't see using another #14 on another PF. Maybe #23. This may be a crappy draft class, but we need to add some sort of significant pillar to our retooling/re-building/tanking efforts. Time to cash in on our mid-level assets. Williams/Kanter/Valancius/Vesely are all guys that would really be good additions. If we stay at #14, I would look at Montiejunas. Obviously risky, but a home run swing.
Not a very good outside shooter? The kid is almost money anywhere on the floor. As a matter of fact, his new nickname is going to be Marshon "Money" Brooks. I tell you, when i see this kid play, i see Kobe in a few years. Once he gets his bearings in the league, he will become an all-star. The leap he made in that one year will only be one of many. I would even consider passing up on the trading up idea and try and target Brooks at #14 then Vucevic with the 23rd pick. This kind of talent doesn't come around often. Remember, Kobe Bryant himself was picked at #13. As far as Faried goes, yeah i like him to. Only thing is he is an undersized 4. He has a great motor and all, but just undersized.
Dude, seriously, it's time to scale back on the Marshon Brooks love. You two should really get a room. :grin: I honestly don't think Brooks will be nearly as good as you do. I tend to agree with DraftExpress's evaluation that he will likely be another Jordan Crawford, a good young scorer on a losing team. Also, the only reason Kobe fell to #13 was that he and his agent told teams that he'd only play for the Lakers. The Nets were set to take Kobe at #8 but got scared off by his threats. Charlotte then took him at #13, traded him to L.A. for Vlade Divac, and the rest is history.
It's fun to speculate I suppose, but all of these opinions are extremely uninformed. We simply don't have anywhere near the resources available to make the kind of player evaluations the Rockets do. It's all very anecdotal. We never look at the track record of these professional prognosticator like DraftExpress to see how accurate their projections have been. It would be interesting to know. But if you're a proven successful evaluator of talent, you're probably getting paid by some team rather than running a website.
I think Marshon will max out as a Jamal Crawford-type 6th man, which would be great. Morey takes the BPA, and we're really one trade away from being very thin at the 2-guard position considering how tradeable KMart and CLee are.
Tennessee's Tobias Harris is one of the hardest-working players in the 2011 NBA Draft class. Tireless work ethic helping Harris climb Draft charts Tobias Harris is a little different than most of the players vying for a spot in the first round of next month's NBA Draft. Harris, who played one season at Tennessee before declaring for the draft, doesn't have that one standout skill that, by itself, would earn him a spot in the league. What Harris does have, though, is an entire package of skills -- he can do a little bit of everything. Before anyone dismisses him as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, there's one more thing about Harris that, I can only surmise, is the reason some draft prognosticators are beginning to believe he can barge into the lottery. I've covered college basketball all my adult life, and I've never come across an 18-year-old -- not one -- who has a better work ethic, or is more driven and focused than Tobias Harris. NBA teams will quickly figure that out in the interview process, and then it's a matter of projection: Given his work ethic, can Harris develop into a star? Those who know him well think he can. "Tobias had a plan when he came to Tennessee," said former Vol assistant Steve Forbes, now the head coach at Northwest Florida State College, "and he executed it." Harris' plan wasn't always easy to execute. Tennessee's season was a disaster of epic proportions, starting last September when it was revealed former coach Bruce Pearl had misled NCAA investigators who had been checking into a relatively minor rules violation. The subsequent media firestorm -- exacerbated by Pearl's suspension for the Vols' first eight Southeastern Conference games and culminating with the coach's dismissal days after Tennessee was sent packing from the NCAA Tournament via a 30-point thrashing by Michigan -- couldn't have made it easy for Harris to stay on course. But stay on course he did. That speaks volumes about his character and his beliefs. As a five-star prospect and McDonald's All-American, Harris could have gone to any school in the country. Though his only year at Tennessee turned out to be a nuclear meltdown, he derived every ounce of benefit from it he could. And he has no regrets. "It was an up and down year," Harris said. "But at the same time, I believe everything happens for a reason. The reason was for me to continue to grow and do the things I do on and off the court. No matter what's going on around you. That's what I learned and took from it." Talk about a Zen Master. Phil Jackson and this guy ought to go bowling together. How does an 18-year-old acquire such maturity? "I think it comes from my family, the way they raised me," Harris said. "I was taught to be a humble person. To respect people. And to take everything serious and try to better myself, each and every day." It didn't hurt Harris' future NBA aspirations one bit that his father Torrell used to be a player agent. A few months back, I wrote in this space about what I like to call the Bill Russell Test. If a college player has heard of the former Celtic champion, or another pertinent player from a bygone era, it's almost certain he's a student of the game and takes it seriously. Harris doesn't just know about NBA stars from back in the day. He's hung out with them. How many college players today even know who George Gervin is, let alone been able to learn the finer points of the pro game from the Iceman? "I learned a tremendous amount from him," Harris said. "A lot of little stuff that accumulates into big stuff. We did a lot of shooting. And I learned a lot about the history of the game, and how to have the right mindset for it." In short, Harris learned that if he wanted to be a pro, he had to prepare like one. So every day at Tennessee, save for Sunday, Harris did basically double or triple the amount of work that was required of him. Remember that the NCAA limits student-athletes to 20 hours per week of activity pertaining to their sport. Any additional work has to be done on a player's own time. Harris seemed to improve every game he played. He finished second on his team in scoring and rebounding and racked up eight double-doubles, the most of any player in Pearl's largely successful six seasons. Typical of his play was a mid-January game against Georgia in which he contributed 15 points, five rebounds, four assists, five blocked shots and three steals. "He's an all-around player," Forbes said. "I don't know if he has one certain skill that you say is NBA, like, 'wow.' But his all-around game, and his basketball IQ ... put it this way: He'll be able to pick things up pretty quickly in the NBA. And as he matures and gets older, his game will catch up." New Tennessee coach Cuonzo Martin had held out the briefest bit of hope Harris would hang around another year and play for him. That won't happen, but Martin, who as a Purdue assistant recruited the likes of Robbie Hummel, E'Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson, was able to coach Harris in individual workouts this spring. He saw enough to know that Harris is special. "Very intelligent, very mature," Martin said, echoing what everyone says about Harris. "His approach to workouts is unbelievable. I try to get into the office early in the morning and get in a workout. Tobias would always be in the gym before me -- and we're talking 6:30 -- and then be back in at 3 p.m. to work out with the team. He also finished strong in the classroom. "He's very impressive for a young guy as far as his mental approach." If just one NBA team agrees with that assessment, perhaps Harris will get to shake hands with league commissioner David Stern on draft night. "I've heard about [being a possible lottery pick]," Harris said. "But I'm not really thinking about that right now. My whole thing is to continue to grow and work hard. To me, the big thing is going to a team where I'm the right fit, where I'll have an opportunity to get better and to contribute." Harris, who was measured at the Chicago combine at just a shade under 6-foot-8 in shoes and weighs 228 pounds, knows his future in the NBA is at the three spot. He'll have to prove he can defend the position and that he can knock down NBA-range 3-point shots. Martin can attest to Harris' ability to understand what he has to do and develop a plan to get it done. "This guy's ready," said Martin, who played briefly in the NBA for the Bucks and Grizzlies. "In just the short amount of time I was around him, I know that. He's the type of kid that, if he'd have said, at 6-8 I'm going to come back to college and be a two guard, he could have been a two guard. I think NBA teams will realize right away what he's all about." http://www.nba.com/2011/news/features/chris_dortch/05/28/tobias-harris/?ls=iref:nbahpt1
^Thanks, Egghead -- From reading that article I can tell that the NBA comparison that Draftexpress has for Tobias Harris, which is "Shane Battier with better offense", seems to be right on the money!
i dont think i want another player like battier - intangibles, solid-in-all-areas kind of guy. we have that in chuckwagon. i would like someone more dynamic and with more upside.
Everywhere except from outside, maybe. 34% 3PT shooter this year. But I bet your highlight tapes showed all 34% of those.
Tennessee's Tobias Harris is one of the hardest-working players in the 2011 NBA Draft class. Tobias might be there at #23. from nbadraft.net ... NBA Comparison: Kris Humphries/Glen Rice Strengths: Tobias is a talented, combo forward with a skill-set suited for NBA play ... Has good versatility and a great feel for the game ... His ability to handle the ball makes him a tough match-up for opposing bigs, however he'll need to develop a consistent outside stroke to make him more of a threat off the dribble ... He uses a combination of strength and agility to either overpower or elude his defender ... He has broad shoulders solid upperbody with plenty of room to fill out ... Harris has the ability to put the ball on the floor, with a deceivingly quick first step that creates mismatch problems at the high post ... Shows timely slashing across the middle, where he can catch and score in the paint with either hand ... He has an excellent touch and feel around the basket, finding ways to convert on floaters and runners in the lane... Positions his body effectively for easy opportunities in the low post ... Solid leaper ... His long arms and upper-body strength should help him on the defensive side of the ball moving forward ... Has a lot of potential being one of the youngest players in the entire draft. Unlike many freshmen, he's an 18 year old ... A bright kid. A gymrat who works hard on his game and shows a mature "professional" mindset ... Weaknesses: At 6'8, he's slightly undersized at the power forward position, and lacks the athleticism, explosiveness and foot speed to guard most NBA small forwards ... He also lacks a refined post game, missing a go-to back to the basket move - relies too much on his pure feel for the basket ... Inconsistent spot up shooter without threatening range. Shows good form but did not shoot with very good numbers ... Pull-up or step-back jumper not currently in his repertoire ... Lack of great footspeed inhibits his ability to attack the rim off the dribble despite having quality ball handling ability ... Body appears a little pudgy. He needs to shed the babyfat and tone his body some ... Overall: Harris averaged 15 points and 7 rebounds in his freshman year on a disfunctional Tennessee team, proving to be one of the more versatile players in the country at just 18 years old ... His consistency and high basketball IQ at such a young age is an attractive quality to General Managers, and he managed to score in double figures in all but three games as a freshman ...
Not a soul I want to draft at 14. Counting on Daryl to move for one of those Wolves picks If the deal goes through. 4 & 8... Kanter, Vesely, whoever...
If you inquire about Harris you really understand all the compliments he collects. He has great ambition, while the feet on the ground. He's a gym rat, an extremely hard worker, a very competitive player. A smart kid... Sounds like the type of player that Morey likes. NBA teams want him as SF, he also talks about being a SF in the NBA. Will lack some quickness at that position, but like Shane, with size, knowledge, craftiness, competitiveness and other tools, he could become a nice all around small forward. I could easily see the Rockets VERY interested in this guy. He's a Patrick Patterson, a Courtney Lee, a Kyle Lowry, a Shane Battier.
Heres a little treat. Biyombo vs. Mirotic: <iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XhjnHRcsulA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
