To all the people saying they would have traded down and gotten this or that I have a for you. Saying that I would have traded and.... is trying to avoid the subject of the thread. The question in this thread is can you evaluate tallent better than the Rockets staff. So quit trying to find a way to back out off of your position and tell us who you think is better than Luther that was available at the #24 pick. I stand behind Luther as the best available player at the #24 pick.
I wouldn't call Luther the best player available at the 24th pick, but I would call him the best player available that fills one of our needs. If the oppurtunity came about I would have traded the pick to move down, but if I couldn't do that I'd have to say I'd have taken Head. There will probably be better players we passed on, but they just wouldn't have fit on our team as well as Head should. With the 24th pick in the 2006 NBA Draft pugsly8422 of the Houston Rockets selects.......LUTHER HEAD! Pugs
Well being able to pick multiple options in a topic like this is a bit unfair because you get to cover your bases. If one of these guys becomes a great player, and two others end up as busts, then how do we know that you would have made the right call. Are you banking on all three of those guys becoming productive NBA players? Because otherwise nobody gets credit for having the right player "in the mix" of who they wanted, they only get credit for actually picking the right player.
That is crap. Maybe we are good enough to recognize that Head is not woth a #24 pick and that it would be a better use of our pick to trade down and get two players, each of whom may be better than Head individually, and combined would almost certainly be better. Even if Head was the best player available, which will be hard to determine for a few years, that doesn't mean taking him was the best move that could be made with the pick. I'm not "backing off" of any position, my position is that we should have turned the #24 pick into Ukic and Blatche.
I think youd need to be pretty lucky to trade down a late 1st round pick for 2 second round picks. You could claim that you are luckier than CD...
Golden State had the 40th and 42nd picks. We could have had our picks from among: Ukic, Blatche, Gomes, Taft, and Michael Gelabe, Lawrence Roberts... among others of course. I think head will be okay but I also agree that we could have filled two slots that need filling with players who will probably be as good and might even be better.
The Lakers also had two 2nd round picks (#37 & 39). They drafted Turiaf with the 37th pick, so they might've been open to selecting Simien at the 24th pick & willing to give up both 2nd round picks. At the very least, we could've traded the #24 pick & a future 2nd rounder for their two 2nd ronuders this year. Not that I would've done that. I still stand by my selections of Blatche & Dijon Thompson. Although, Lawrence Roberts intrigues me.
This time next week no one but you and I will have remembered either of our posts. I didn't pick three to get more chances for prognosticative fame. (Even in this thread there are guys who are reminding us they picked correctly because no one remembers.) I picked those three young guns as examples of players who might have filled long-term needs. As to whether they will fire bullets or blanks, only time will tell.
