it does matter, how can it not? If fans talk about rubio as a sure thing to a great nba player, then he should be a lock to go first or second, right? Was there ever any question about where Lebron would go? No, because everyone in the league thought he'd be a great one. with rose, no question. with rubio? Some questions, that's why he's not a lock to go first or second, so he can't possibly be a no brainer future superstar. I'm not saying he can't be or wont, but if it's not as clear cut to teams who actually scout them from head to toe for months, how can it be clear to us who only watch highlight clips or an occasional game?
If memphis consider houston's offer, i think they will ask rockets to accept Jaric or Buckner... I dont want to see this 2 players in rockets...
Was there ever a question where Tracy and Kobe were going to drafted? Again RV6, this kid is only 18yrs old for christ sakes. Kwame Brown was a lock to go 1or2 and what did that mean, don't you know this is the time of the year when you believe nothing in whats being said before the draft. If Morey feels that this kid is the real deal and he's worth giving up some serious assets to aquire, then in Morey I trust.
you can't just throw out other superstars man, you're not quite getting what i'm saying. Tmac and kobe did NOT have this much hype around them. It's not close to the same situation. My point is that RIGHT NOW rubio is not a clear cut future superstar. I'm not even disputing whether he'll be one later or not, but right now he's not seen as a lock. I know you're thinking "duh he's not ready", but my post was directed at those who say he is a lock, those who say he's going to come in here tearing things up from the beginning. When i speak of lebron and rose, i'm talking about guys who would go #1 regardless of what team had the pick, those guys are the ones who are seen as sure superstars. Those guys you pick regardless of the talent you have, anyone would pick them first. Guys like Kwame are not in the same boat. Kwame wasn't even a lock to be a soid player, MJ just gambled on him and not many other teams would have picked him at #1. when lebron was being drafted, you heard it from everywhere, he's going #1, the team picking even pretty much admits to it, same with rose, those are the guys who are sure superstars and everyone knows it. Rubio, as of now, isn't on that level, if he was then La would have a tougher time picking griffin and memphis wouldn't be taking offers for the 2nd pick.
I liked Reddick as a 3pt specialist....over Luther Head.....come on now.... I do think Rubio is going to be special. DD
For the people who are interested in Rubio! http://www.nbadraft.net/rubiointerview.htm Ricky Rubio Interview Ricky Rubio: "If you believe all the compliments they say about you, you'll never reach anything" By Eduardo Schell Source: Newspaper Marca, Spain www.marca.com Ricky Rubio born in El Masnou (Spain) in1990 is barely 18 years old but has the maturity of a 30 year old. As a professional journalist he is one of those special players that you really enjoy talking to. Praised to the heavens since the age of 15, this Spanish phenomenon could provide headlines to the journalists for being aloof or a new "divo", but instead he provides them for quite the opposite. He is humble, mature and down to earth. He is a true MVP on and off the court. QUESTION. Barely 18 you've been already Olympic silver medalist in Beijing 2008, the starting PG for the Spanish National team, in the NBA scouts agenda for many years and now everyone is asking: "When are you going to the NBA"? Are you frightened by how quick everything is happening? RICKY. It's fast and good, that's my way of making things happen. While everything is going good I can't complain. Q. Do you have time to digest what's happening? R. Truth is sometimes I would prefer that things would happen a little bit more slowly so I could enjoy it more, taste it more and have more time to digest it. But things are like this and I can't do anything about it. Things happen quick and fast? True, but I'm not afraid, I have things under control and I've always said that age doesn't count. When you're playing on court it doesn't mind if you're 16, 18 or 25, no one is going to stop and look to your I.D., they're only going to judge you on how you perform. Q. Here are some things NBA-USABasketball players told me about you during the past Olympics in Beijing. Jason Kidd: "The sky is the limit for him"; Carmelo Anthony: "Ricky is the most fascinating story of the Olympics"; Kobe Bryant: "He's played awesome, he single hand changed the course of some games" or Chris Paul: "Ricky is unbelievable". Not to mention what your partners in the Spanish national team and NBA players like Gasol, Calderón, Rudy Fernández, Marc Gasol or former like Navarro, Garbajosa and Raúl López told me. How does it feel? R. Good, great (smiles). It's a great honour that these worldwide star calibre players say things like this of me. I feel very proud and satisfied, but I always say this to myself: "If you believe what everyone says good about you, all the compliments, you'll never reach anything". These types of compliments they say about me only help me to keep on working harder everyday. Q. Ever since I've known you ( at 15 years old), I've been shocked by you're maturity (not common of your age) and that's been highlighted by your Spanish NT team mates. What's the best advice someone ever gave you in order to be like this? R. My dad always repeats the same to me: "When you feel you know how to do one thing, that day you'll stop learning". Every time I'll give all I have on court... Maximum effort, every time, everywhere. Q. Will you declare yourself for the upcoming draft or will you wait at least one more year? R. That's one decision I haven't taken yet and that I'll talk with my parents. I want to focus now in my team (DKV Joventut) with whom I still have a contract, and when time comes up we'll take a decision. It's not something now that stops me from sleeping. It will depend on how I finish up the season, because if I don't perform well, maybe the interest of NBA teams in me decreases and I'll leave it for another year. You never know what's going to happen. Q. How does it feel to be studied and observed by NBA scouts practically in every single game for many years? R. I don't think about it, seriously. I'm not going to play better because they come to see me. I can only hope they have a good time and enjoy like everybody else. Q. Since you're an underclassmen, NBA scouts don't talk publicly about you, but during the past Copa del Rey, some told me, under the condition of not being named, that they know your strengths so well and they're plenty that now they're concentrating in highlighting your weak points. Overscouting, they say. R. (Smiles). Then, they're going to run out of ink because all of my weak points. I've got plenty (smiles). They're going to write a lot. Q. Does the NBA appeal you? R. The NBA is by far the best league in the world. But it's not something that stops me from sleeping right now. Q. Do you follow the NBA? R. Yes, and I went to see Pau (Gasol) play the past finals with the Lakers against Boston. It's a huge show. Q. In the past Olympics you were on the same team with Pau Gasol and other big time spanish players like Calderón, Garbajosa, Navarro... How did you feel the first day of camp? R. It was a dream come true for me. Just imagine it, two years before I was watching them on TV winning the World Championship in Japan 2006, and just two years later I was there myself sharing the locker room, precamp, training sessions, games... It was magical for me. Q. It's been a long, intense journey but successful at the same time since the day you first bounced a basketball. Do you remember your first basketball? R. Yes! I started my relation with basketball when I went to see my father play. After that, I started to play with my brother. Q. I think you've been blessed and touched to play basketball. You have a special gift that makes you a unique player. Was it back then in those days when you realized that you could play? R. No, no. Truth is that it was recently that I realized that I could play basketball, but I'm still not sure that I will make it and reach the goal. Q. Well, Tim Shea (basketball coach and NBA scout) has already told me that you'll be a Hall of Fame player. Is it easy to be a good student at the same time you play at pro level? R. I try my best and my parents always tell me to keep on studying, you never know what can happen in life. Q. Do you already know what are you going to be when you're a grown up person? R. (Big Smile). Not sure yet if I want to study to be a doctor or something related with sports, but I lean more to this last option. Q. Dirk Nowitzki's manager and mentor, Holger Geschwinder, once told me in an interview how important is for a player to be smart and have studies in order to perform better on the court and that he insisted Dirk to learn to play the guitar, piano and saxophone in order to be a brighter person and then use those things he learned on the court. He and Dirk talked to me about the musicality of basketball. R. Yes, Aito (Ricky's former coach in DKV Joventut and in the Spanish NT) always said to me that while we we're in Joventut that I should read, read a lot, as many books as I could, he told me to study and be smart in life because that was reflected on the court. Q. Seeing you so focused and mature when you're only 18, it's clear the influence of your parents. R. Yes, they have always been there for me and my brothers. I'm a family guy, I like to spend my spare time with them and my friends, with the same friends of all my life. Q. You've always said your brother is your idol. R. True. When you ask people who's their idol in basketball, everyone tends to say Michael Jordan, who is also one of my idols, but my true idol is my brother. I've been blessed to have someone near whom I could learn so much. Q. What are your worries in life? R. The proper ones of an 18 year old kid. I like to spend my time with my friends talking about our stuff. They also come to see me play at games when they can, and they were at the recent King's Cup in Madrid. They were very happy and that made me happy too. Q. Friends, school mates and teachers ask you for tickets? R. (Smiles) Yes, and when I can, I give it to them. Q. I imagine they also ask you for autographs, but who did you ask to sign you anything? R. After the Olympics I asked my team mates to sign my Spanish national team T-Shirt. We all did.
I think he is not so arrogant as somebody here said. "When you feel you know how to do one thing, that day you'll stop learning" --------I love this sentence, great saying.
He is Larry Bird arrogant. Just a gym rat that loves the game and is getting better. We can only hope he acquires the same arrogance of Magic and Bird and uses it on the court to intimidate the crap out of his opponent.....provided he is wearing Red.
Was there already a post or thread about houston inquiring about the 5th pick? I think i saw one...just making sure..
here's some stuff on thabeet, just an fyi: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2009/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&page=PreDraftTour-090514 The court of dreams Watching Thabeet run up sand dunes or listening to him talk about his journey from Africa to the NBA draft are nice. But at the end of the day, the question is: Can he play? Thabeet's on-the-court work is being run by former NBA assistant coach and current D-League coach Scott Roth, who has worked with Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas and Pau Gasol in Memphis. His specialty is helping big men make the transition to the pros. Thabeet's workout is fast-paced. He begins with perimeter work -- mostly midrange jumpers coming off screens, pick-and-roll jump shots and some set shots. Thabeet showed a soft touch on his shot and excellent follow-through. Although he palmed the ball a little too much, he shot with great accuracy from 15 feet in. I was stunned. Swish after swish was not what I was expecting. He's not Brad Miller or Mehmet Okur, but when you look at his mechanics and confidence in shooting the ball, I don't think there's any question that Thabeet could become a pick-and-pop big man over time. He also looks as though he's continuing to improve his balance and mobility. Although he's only a few weeks into the process, Thabeet looks less mechanical running the floor and making moves than he did at UConn. He also showed good form in the post. His footwork still needs improvement, but he scored with both his left and right hand over former NBA big man Sean Rooks. "He's going to be a very good shooter," Roth says. "He's going to be a pick-and-pop guy who can knock down the 16- or 17-footer. He's going to shock people. I'm not sure how you can walk out of the gym and not be wowed by him with only six years of basketball. He's a fluid player with a huge, huge upside. You don't think he's going to do some of the things he can." The summit We've said for several months that Thabeet likely will be a top-five pick. The NBA mantra -- that you can't teach size -- has helped him greatly. But watching him in the gym, it's a little easier to see why he could be a high pick for more reasons than just his height. His combination of size, athleticism and emerging skills is rare -- especially in this draft. To be the next Dikembe Mutombo, Thabeet still has work to do. He has to get stronger. He needs to keep up his conditioning. He needs more experience. He has to let the game come to him. And he has to improve his decision-making on the court. But most importantly, he needs to go to a team that gives him confidence. Put him in a bad situation with a coach who's an obsessive faultfinder, and he could fail. Put him in a good situation with a coach and teammates who give him reason to believe, and maybe those Mutombo comparisons aren't as far off as I once believed.
I think it would be best to package the pick with Mcgrady's contract and try to trade for a star swingman...
Do you really want to revisit the superlatives you tossed his way during the "Summer of Redick"? Because it was way, way more than just Luther Head you were discussing there when making your hourly post on how awesome he was.
I remember reading something about how the Knicks would be interested in McGrady. Maybe we could get a package deal alot with the 8th pick. But getting the 8th pick in this draft class isnt special. I like James Harden alot but there's no way he'd last till the 8th pick.
IF we can get the 2nd pick I think it might be used to lure in another team for a trade. One team I can see in this scenario is the Suns. Nash is getting old and they would really want a new replacement for Nash. Now this is where we come in. We could trade Rubio and Tmac for for Nash and Richardson giving them another star to bring to Phx while we stay in contention of winning now and get a healthy 2 guard. They might be able to throw in Amundson or something that can play the 5. Or we might have just gotten Darko from the number 2 pick trade. Roster would look like this Nash , Brooks or Lowry (depending on who we might give up to Memphis) Jason richardson/wafer (if we can keep him to stay) Battier / Artest (if we can keep him) Scola/Landry Yao/Darko / Amundson (if we can get him from Phx) why would we do this? Well you get nash who is a proven point guard, hes slowing down but this is his contract year, if things workout , great if not bye bye for 2010. We also get J-Rich, he can attack the basket and can shoot and can be more effective with Nash. We hopefully can still attain the rights to Artest making us tough and hopefully have a back up center. Suns roster Rubio/ and their other pg who i cant remember his name/ and maybe one of ours Tmac/ Barbosa Grant hill/ Tucker Amare/ Shaq/lopez why the suns do this They get a bigger expiring contract and they receive the potential fun flashy point guard of tomm. Tmac will prolly help with sales can can be effective giving the 2 bigs amare and shaq less fronting and double teaming making them more effective. The suns have a great sports medicine faciilty and wouldnt be suprised if they can make tmac the tmac of old. anyone thinking this is plausible? Nash is getting older and they suns are screwed on salary but this makes them bigger players in 2010
If I remember, DD was kinda high on JJ partly because Luther was terrible. I remember there were 2 camps, camp jj and camp brewer. People got excited about the news on roy, but when that fell through, it was all about what we thought was the highest rated player left on the board. Before then, it was finding a big,since we were picking 8th and wesley was showing his age, it was JJ or Brewer. When Gay started slide, I like most thought the rox had their future, atheltic swing. Then the news came from chad ford and there was stun and shock in the room I was in. The moment when the rockets were trying to get younger and atheletic, they passed. Now we're trying to still get more athletic on the wing. I guess we will see, I just think getting really young guys shouldve been 3 yrs ago.
