Official 2011 NBA Draft thread

Was Durant considered the best player in that draft? I don't recall. I do know he was more productive than Oden, but Oden was on a better, more balanced college team.

I think now the conventional wisdom post-Yao and Oden is that true centers are like running backs -- durability WILL be limited. Don't plan on getting 75 games a year over a 15-year career because their feet won't hold up.

 

Durant/Oden was a coin flip.

And even though I really did not like Simmons' latest column, I will reference it in saying everyone knew Jordan pretty much was going to be a crisp dollar bill and Bowie was not. But back then, everyone thought you had to have a great or very good center to win it all because every team that had ever won it all had at least a very good center.

What's odd about drafts today is you never are sure if a guy is going to be a crisp dollar bill. In the past, Hakeem, Ewing, Jordan, Duncan and a few others were pretty much locks to be great players. Maybe next year will give us a lock or two?

 

That's one of the reasons for Jordan's greatness. At the highest level, I like to separate greats by how they singularly influenced the game. Did they ban dunks because of you? Did they widen the lane because of you? That kind of thing.

Well, Jordan made it a guard's game. Like you said, all other great teams had a dominant big man. Now, nobody has one and everybody wants to give it to a guy on the perimeter and let him create (even though the Bulls did that far less than people think).

 

I thought Beasley would be better than Rose, but I also thought Durant would be better than Oden.

There haven't been too many draft busts taken super high in the draft, but I'd bet the majority of those busts came when a team reached for a big man.

 

Ola Ko Kandi?

 

On that note, honestly, how many of us said, "Tractor Traylor for some Euroweenie named Dirk? There goes Nellie again."

 

Sam Bowie
Michael Olowokandi
Pervis Ellison
Greg Oden
Kwame Brown
Hasheem Thabeet
Eddy Curry
Stromile Swift
Adonal Foyle
Shawn Bradley
Felton Spencer

 

You can't take a guy high just because he has size. Teams are so worried about missing out on the next Olajuwon, Ewing or Robinson that they wind up missing out on guys like Jordan or Durant. Hell, look at Darko over Anthony and Wade...

 

Can't fault all of those big-man picks. Take Pervis, for example. Behold the shitshow that was the 1989 NBA Draft:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_1989.html

Ditto Kwame Brown and Eddy Curry in 2001:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_2001.html

Only five of the 13 ever amounted to anything. Six if you count the decade it's taken for Tyson Chandler to be worth a damn.

 

I think you just have to ask yourself "but can he play?"

 

The 1989 draft was horrific. People even knew that at the time. I think Glen Rice and Tim Hardaway were the best picks.

I remember people saying that Gasol was going to be the best player in the 2001 draft, but that there's no way he was going No. 1.

 

I was at Arco Arena for the draft party when they picked Ellison.

The pick was loudly booed because the fans wanted Stacey King.