If Kasparas and Maluach are already gone, I'd go either Carter Bryant or Rasheer Fleming. I'm not really buying Kon at the NBA level. A trade up is good too.
I like Fleming, but not if Kon is there. If Kon is there, Stone may actually keep the pick, assuming the Rockets don't win a Top 4 pick.
https://sports.yahoo.com/article/york-islanders-won-nhl-draft-232613386.html New York Islanders win the NHL draft lottery And they earned a remarkable lottery win by entering the day with a 3.5% shot — the 10th-best odds — of seeing their numbers come up.
Winning the lottery would solve just about everything. FVV/Reed Green/Cam Amen/Brooks Flagg/Bari/Tari Sengun/Adams You could just run it back with this ridiculously talented and deep roster. Or add a Durant, Booker or Ja Morant via trade. If you do Green, Brooks, Bari and picks for Booker. FVV/Reed Booker/Cam Amen Flagg/Tari Sengun/Adams
Wanted to bump this thread up with tomorrow being DDAY. I'm still grateful to be setting at #9, especially when you look at where Brooklyn finished. Flagg makes us a juggernaut in a few years and a perennial contender. If tomorrow ends and we have #1, the Basketball Gods obviously love us. There's some solid players/shooters that we should target also ( Tre/Kon in particular). Love to have something to look forward to with the Astros demise.
I rolled the dice 100 times and here are my results 17 times lottery pick 6 times first pick 2 times 2 lottery picks in a row 3rd try 4th pick 6th try 4th pick 8th try 2nd pick 18th try 3rd pick 33rd try 4th pick 34th try 1st pick 38th try 1st pick 53rd try 1st pick 55th try 1st pick 71st try 2nd pick 72nd try 3rd pick 77th pick 1st pick 82nd try 4th pick 84th try 1st pick 90th try 4th pick 95th try 3rd pick 99th try 3rd pick
Im not greedy. I’ll settle for the great white hope back court with Reed and Kon . but seriously, getting a legit shooter out of this draft would make me so happy. But if the shooters and premier prospects are gone, trade out!
Spoiler Hollinger’s top prospects Tier I: The Dude 1. Cooper Flagg Tier II: Electric guards 2. Dylan Harper I don’t think Harper’s case at No. 2 is quite as ironclad as some others think it is, but at the end of the day, I still give him the nod over Baylor’s V.J. Edgecombe for this spot. Harper doesn’t pop athletically and struggled to shoot consistently in his lone college season (33.3 percent from 3, 75.0 percent from the line), but he is a true ball-in-hand, pick-and-roll creator with plus size and instincts. His nose for the ball makes up for some meh measurables: Despite not being a speed demon, he pilfered 3.1 steals per 100 possessions in Big Ten play and the defensive tape shows him sliding to cut off driving angles. Offensively, he constantly touches the paint and shot 57.4 percent on 2s with a high free-throw rate. Harper did this despite a limited Rutgers roster around him; the surrounding talent likely jobbed him out of several assists. High-usage, big guards like Harper are among the most difficult and expensive to obtain by other means; in a related story, they are among the most important when it comes to building a successful roster. That’s why he has to be the choice here. 3. V.J. Edgecombe Edgecombe was old for a freshman (he turns 20 in July), he faces questions about his long-range shooting and he might only be a one-position player. That said, he has the talent to be special, and I thought hard about putting him at No. 2. Athletically, he has a different gear, blasting off into drives into the paint and elevating with ease at the cup for his finishes. Edgecombe also shows flashes of being an absolute monster on defense with his lateral quickness and hands, poaching 3.3 steals per 100 possessions in Big 12 games. Edgecombe’s first slide can be a bit sluggish, but he shocks shooters springing off the floor to contest shots with his length. Offensively, Edgecombe’s shot looked like a project early in the season, but he seemed to fix a couple of flaws as the year went on. In Big 12 games, he shot 39.1 percent from 3 and 81.7 percent from the line. The vexing part is that he only shot 50.0 percent on 2s for the season, despite his incredible physical tools. Edgecombe has a pretty limited handle at this point, one that likely constrains him to playing off the ball or as a secondary creator, and he needs to refine his finishing package off the dribble and at the rim. However, the Victor Oladipo comparisons here are obvious and the background on Edgecombe is off-the-charts positive. If I had the second pick, my war room would spend a lot of time arguing about Edgecombe vs. Harper. Tier III: Time to get weird 4. Kon Knueppel Time for my board to radically deviate from consensus! Let’s start with Knueppel; people don’t seem to trust his production as a freshman at Duke. There’s this notion that he was a spot-up guy drafting off the awesomeness of his team, but nothing could be further from the truth: Knueppel was second on the team behind Flagg in usage rate and mostly lived on self-created shots. That shot diet included a ton of chances at the rim on straight-line drives; he rarely got to pull-ups or floaters because he was so good at playing through contact and finishing at the cup. Knueppel very nearly went 50-40-90 as a freshman (settling for 47.9 percent from the field, 41.4 percent from 3 and 90.4 percent from the line), but his secondary stats were good too. For a shooting specialist, his rates of steals, blocks and free throws stood out. Duke was comfortable leaving him on the perimeter against smaller guards and his feet seem adequate for an NBA wing. He’ll be hunted at times depending on who else is on the floor, especially because he struggles to challenge shots at the end of a move. But this isn’t the work of a pigeon. However, let’s circle back to the best part: Knueppel’s shot is butter. Watching him warm up on movement shots from side to side before Duke games, it’s clear there is more to unpack here in terms of using him off screens at the NBA level. I don't really understand why evaluations like Tre Johnson better; Knueppel offers the same movement showing but appears much better in virtually every other facet of the game. For me, there is a clear drop-off after Knueppel; he’s a lot closer to the Edgecombe/Harper level than to anything after this. 5. Jeremiah Fears 6. Collin Murray-Boyles 7. Noa Essengue 8. Carter Bryant 9. Egor Demin 10. Kam Jones
Spoiler Tier IV: Huge upside bets 11. Tre Johnson Johnson’s profile loosely matches that of many lottery prospects who ended up being crushing disappointments. At the offensive end, the first thing a scout’s eye should look for is “ease,” but Johnson is just the opposite. His highlight reel is a series of tough shots that he’s going to have great difficulty getting off at the next level. He shot 43.1 percent on 2s in the SEC with a low-ish free-throw rate. His athleticism markers were also poor, with low rates of steals and blocks and a shockingly poor rebound rate for a player of this size (just 5.5 percent in SEC play, the lowest of any legit prospect in this cycle except Auburn’s 6-1 Tahaad Pettiford and Gonzaga’s 6-0 Ryan Nembhard). The defensive tape showed good enough effort but perhaps limited feet, with Johnson giving a ton of cushion to dribblers. So, how is he still in my top 20? Because he profiles as a movement shooter, and you can’t turn your nose up at these guys. Johnson shot 88.9 percent from the line and made 39.7 percent from 3; he also launched 11.4 3s per 100 possessions, getting into his stroke comfortably off either the catch or the dribble. Additionally, Johnson displayed some secondary passing skill for when defenses inevitably trap his catch coming off screens. Scouts weren’t overly fond of Texas’ offense, and more of that skill might pop in a different system. Overall, I have a hard time getting too high on Johnson and think his mid-case scenario is as a bench sniper, but there's a scenario where the shooting is so lights-out that the other stuff just ends up not mattering. 12. Ace Bailey Bailey came into the year as the third-highest rated prospect according to most evaluators, and man, have they been stubborn in adjusting their priors. About the best that can be said for Bailey’s freshman year at Rutgers is that he managed halfway decent efficiency (53.6 percent true shooting) despite arguably the worst shot selection in college basketball. I mean … what is this? I'm not cherry-picking either; there are at least 20 clips like this you can choose from. Bailey is in my top 20 because the good plays were mouth-watering. He has an advanced handle for his size, some rim-protection instincts and can look smooth pulling up for his jumper (34.6 percent from 3 on decent volume from a teenage big man is nothing to sneeze at). But the fact that Bailey can sometimes make difficult shots doesn’t mean he should routinely attempt them as Plan A. On the flip side, he struggled to get all the way to the cup due to a lack of first-step explosiveness and lower-body strength. Between that and his total lack of feel, he profiles more as a long-term project than an immediate contributor. Somewhere in here there’s a mobile stretch four who can guard one through four on the perimeter and post up smalls in switches, but right now, he’s a half-baked version of Jabari Smith Jr. Bailey’s basketball education will need to continue at the pro level, and you might want to be his second team rather than his first one. 13. Derik Queen Queen’s best clips ooze talent, and sometimes with bigs, the tape tells you more than the numbers. He can handle the ball, drop cross-court passes in transition and shoot from a variety of angles. In the half court, he plays almost as a left-handed player, constantly looking to either drive or spin in that direction and finishing comfortably with his left as well. Witness his game-winner in the NCAA Tournament against Colorado State. That said, Queen has work to do. He got himself in much better shape in his freshman season at Maryland but still has a ways to go. He showed flashes of being able to guard on the perimeter situationally, but he probably has to be a full-time center at the NBA level. That brings other issues into play, such as his limited rim protection. Additionally, some of his defensive tape is tragic. While he used his hands to get deflections in some situations against smaller ballhandlers, other times, he was barely there. Watch here as he plays 15 feet off the man he’s guarding (Michigan’s Danny Wolf, a possible first-rounder) and mostly watches as Wolf drives in for a layup. Offensively, it’s easier to believe in Queen if he develops stretch capability, but he’s not there yet. He’s an OK shooter from 15 feet who shot 76.6 percent from the line; more range would make his ballhandling threat more compelling, as teams could run through him at the elbows profitably. The other issue with Queen is his age. He was born in December 2004. History says that matters; the future growth you might graft onto this one-and-done is a bit less than for some of the others. Overall, I'm really interested to see how this movie ends. Queen has tremendous ball skills for his size, but his positional fit questions and lack of defensive chops make it a challenge to slot him into a winning team's rotation. Tier V: Some floor, less ceiling 14. Jase Richardson The numbers say Richardson is a lottery pick. The eye test? I’m not quite as sure. The guy can only dribble with one hand, had low rates of steals and assists for a player of this size and shot a low volume of 3s for a shooting guard. In particular, his extreme left-handedness seems to loom as an issue at the next level; I’m not sure I can remember a prospect of his size who was so limited with his weak hand. That’s a problem because it makes it extremely difficult to get him point guard reps; he has to slot in as a sniper next to a big wing who can handle. With all that said, Richardson’s ability to get 2-point buckets at his size stood out. He converted 58.1 percent of his 2s in Big Ten play, drew fouls at a fairly high rate and hardly ever turned the ball over. There’s a scenario where he’s so efficient that he turns into a really good player despite not having prototype size or a point guard’s handle, similar to Jared McCain a year ago. 15. Ben Saraf 16. Asa Newell 17. Labaron Philon 18. Kasparas Jakucionis Jakučionis had top-five buzz at points during the season but struggled during Big Ten play. Looking at the totality of his season, it’s harder to get super excited. He had very low rates of defensive event creation for a guard, committed a ton of turnovers (6.5 per 100 possessions) with the help of some curious shot-pass decisions and struggled to knock down 3s. The defensive tape in one-on-one defense is … not great. That said, I can make an upside case that he can eventually be a starting guard. Let’s start with the shooting piece; players tell on themselves by how often they launch from 3, and Jakučionis took 9.0 per 100 possessions. Several were difficult off-the-dribble tries, as he loves to shake a defender (especially a big on a switch) and then pull up. Additionally, Jakučionis was very effective inside the arc, shooting 55.4 percent while drawing heaps of fouls. Overall, his combination of handle, wiggle, positional size and ability to read the game, combined with a plus left hand, could make him a potent enough offensive player to offset the defensive concerns. I just wouldn’t make that bet in the lottery. 19. Khaman Maluach I'm not a huge fan of drafting true centers because you can only play one at a time and the position has become somewhat devalued, but for a team in need of quality size, Maluach has a good chance of being a rotation player. While he’s limited offensively because he doesn’t display much feel or low-post game, and his stretch game is still in the developmental stages, Maluach does present a huge lob target who plays hard and is a monster offensive rebounder (21.3 percent offensive rebound rate in ACC games). Defensively, Maluach isn’t quite the level of rim protector of other centers from recent drafts, sporting a 6.0 percent block rate as opposed to the double digits of guys like Walker Kessler, Robert Williams and Donovan Clingan. However, for a player of his size, he is relatively comfortable guarding on the perimeter, and he hustles changing ends. There's a point in the draft where Maluach makes sense, but size like this has been a siren song that has lured many a GM onto the rocks. For me, his most likely scenarios are as either a fifth option or a plus backup, and I’m only willing to go so far on draft capital to get that at the center spot. Tier VI: Sleepers 20. Johni Broome 21. Noah Penda 22. Yaxel Lendeborg
