NBA Draft: Second half of the lottery

First half is here.

8. Milwaukee - Joe Alexander, F, West Virginia. Along with Russell Westbrook, Alexander's the other guy who I just can't figure out why he shot up draft boards. He's really athletic, although it's probably overstated some because of his skin color.

To his credit, I will say that his shot looked a lot better towards the end of the year; off the top of my head, I can't remember seeing someone whose shot improved like that. And it wasn't just variance or him getting hot; he clearly started putting a lot more arc on his jumper.

Still, I don't think he has a great jumper, and his mid-range stuff lacks a shooter's touch. And for all his athletic dunks, he doesn't finish all that well at the rim (similar to Westbrook) if he's not jamming. He likes to operate on his own, which is something I hate, and he seems overly willing to settle for that inconsistent turnaround. It is kind of a weird fit, too, given that the Bucks had just traded for Richard Jefferson.

9. Charlotte - D.J. Augustin, PG, Texas. I like Augustin more than most do and I won't criticize the Bobcats for taking another undersized point guard, since they seem intent on moving incumbent Raymond Felton. I do think that Augustin can be T.J. Ford -- one of his predecessors at the helm of the Longhorns -- with a jumper. But he's really small and not as quick as Ford, and he's going to have a lot of problems on the defensive end.

Still, he has the ability to score in the lane, although I do think he'll be affected more than most by the increased physicality in the pros. He's going to have to do a lot of finishing while getting bumped, and I'm not sure he's strong enough to do that. He's a very good passer, and I think as long as he understands his role as a setup man and doesn't try to prove himself as a scorer, he'll be a good floor leader at the next level.

10. New Jersey - Brook Lopez, C, Stanford. Young big men who aren't sure things fall into two groups: Bangers and soft skill players. The former group -- guys like the Hawks' Al Horford, the Bulls' Joakim Noah, and Lopez' brother, Robin, who went five picks later to Phoenix -- tend to put up better numbers right away, but they also flatten out more quickly.

Brook falls into the latter group. I'd like to think the rebounding and shotblocking his brother trades on is in him somewhere, but he has to show a willingness to do it. If he does, his ceiling is high, because he's very skilled for 7'1". He's got a good shooting touch, although a limited post arsenal, which he'll need to expand if he's going to be a double figure scorer in the NBA, now that he'll be up against more guys closer to his size. I expect teams to be physical with him, and how he responds will go a long way toward defining his career, particularly early on. He's great value at 10, for sure.

11. Indiana -- Jerryd Bayless, PG, Arizona. Indiana later moved this pick to Portland. Bayless is great value here. He excelled in a pro style system at Arizona, and I think he's the peer of Derrick Rose and O.J. Mayo in terms of scoring. He doesn't have their size, though, which ranks him below these guys.

Still, he can take over games without taking bad shots, which will serve him well in the NBA -- the Blazers can trust him with the ball. He's not the playmaker Rose is, but unlike guys like Mayo and Westbrook, he'll be playing alongside a two -- Brandon Roy, to be specific -- who has proven he can run the team.

12. Sacramento - Jason Thompson, PF, Rider. I actually saw Rider a couple times earlier in the year, but I don't remember enough Thompson to make an evaluation here. The Kings obviously saw something they liked. Shrug.

13. Portland - Brandon Rush, G, Kansas. Rush went to Pacers in the Bayless deal. He actually reminds me a lot of Brandon Roy in that he can penetrate -- even coming off the knee problems that kept him out of last year's draft -- and shoot. For those comparisons to be apt, though, he'll have to prove he can distribute the way Roy does.

I'm confident that he can; he's the kind of guy who makes the right decision with the ball. The Pacers have T.J. Ford to run the point now, but they eventually should feel comfortable giving him the ball to run the offense. A very solid selection at this stage; he's the kind of player you can't really see being a bust.


14. Golden State - Anthony Randolph, F, Lousiana State. Odd pick given that the Warriors took Brandan Wright last year, a similarly athletic four who really produced nicely once he got some run towards the end of last year. He runs well but is pretty limited offensively; not DeAndre Jordan (the thin, lanky freshman center from Texas A&M who went 35th to the Clippers) limited, but I actually like a guy like JaVale McGee (the lanky sophomore center from Nevada who went 18th to the Wizards) more in the half court. Fortunately for Randolph, Golden State -- at least under head coach Don Nelson -- doesn't do a lot of playing in the half court.

Randolph's length -- 6'10" with a 7'3" wingspan -- and athleticism made him an effective shotblocker in his one season at LSU; he blocked 2.3 shots per game last year. However, at just 197 pounds, he's going to get pushed around a lot more defensively in the NBA, and that's going to stop him from being an effective on-ball defender. He'll still get his fair share of blocks coming from the weak side, but he won't be the defensive force he was in college.

NBA Draft, Part 1 - First Half of the Lottery

Over the next few days, I'm going to go pick-by-pick through the NBA Draft. I'll do one post on the first half of the lottery, one on the second half of the lottery, one on the rest of the first round, and one on the second round.

1. Chicago - Derrick Rose, PG, Memphis In my mind, the clear top pick in the draft. Rose should be an elite point guard in the NBA for a long time. He's not the passer Chris Paul is, but he's close, and his size and strength make him a better finisher. I love the way he squares his body in the air when he gets into the lane, and anyone who followed his brief college career heard television announcers rave about his ability to absorb contact and finish.

ESPN's draft coverage team brought up another good point; his unselfishness. Rose spent much of the year deferring to his older teammates, and it was only at the behest of coach John Calipari that he began dominating games regularly at the end of the season. He's unselfish and a willing, capable defender.

I think his ending up on a Chicago team that is a lot better than the 33-49 record it posted last year is reminiscent of when David Robinson was hurt for most of the 1996-97 season. The Spurs won the lottery, drafted Tim Duncan, and, well, you know how this story ends.

2. Miami - Michael Beasley, SF, Kansas State I am not nearly as high on Beasley as many others are. He's a tweener, but in kind of an odd sense. He's big and strong enough, and a skilled enough rebounder, that he could be a 16/8 kind of player pretty quickly if he committed himself to playing the post. He didn't do that at KSU, though, and I found myself thinking, even as he poured in points from the perimeter night after night for the Wildcats, that he wasn't quick enough to play the wing in the NBA.

It's unclear to me how Miami plans to use him.

I don't want to say he'll be a bust, because he likely won't be by any reasonable definition. But I don't think he's going to be the prolific scorer so many seem to think he'll be, and I ultimately think he'll be better off as an undersized post who faces up on occasion, rather than strictly a wing player.

3. Minnesota - O.J. Mayo, G, USC First off, ESPN reported in the wee hours Friday morning that the T-Wolves were sending Mayo's rights to Memphis as part of a package that will net No. 5 pick Kevin Love and sharpshooting wing Mike Miller, among others. No, I don't know what Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace is thinking. Another comically lopsided trade on the heels of the Pau Gasol deal.

I didn't much like Mayo when I first saw him at Southern Cal. He looked completely disinterested and uncreative offensively, content to stand around shooting three-pointers -- which he admittedly hit, at times, with outstanding range. He grew on me throughout the season, and I came to appreciate his business-like demeanor on the court -- unusual for collegians but so common for professionals -- as a symptom of his being tabbed as a future stars since his pre-high school years.

The character stuff is an issue, but the more I read and hear about his work ethic, the more I like him. He has all the offensive tools he needs -- great range, a mid-range pull-up game, the ability to get to the basket, a serviceable handle, good court vision.

A buddy of mine compared him to Ricky Davis the other night, and I quickly objected on two grounds: Mayo passes the ball and is a willing and very capable defender. I worry a lot less about potential attitude problems if the player contributes those kinds of skills to his team. I think he has a shot to be a superstar, but the situation for him is awful in Memphis, without a legit low-post threat or a deadly three-point shooter. He'll score plenty of points next year, but he won't be very efficient.

4. Seattle - Russell Westbrook, PG, UCLA For me, Westbrook's meteoric rise up the rankings was the most mystifying storyline in the weeks leading up to the draft. Westbrook is a bigger, more athletic version of Kyle Lowry, and while I like Lowry, I don't like him enough to spend the No. 4 on him, particularly when the alternatives are a dynamic scoring lead guard like Jerryd Bayless or a cornerstone big man like Kevin Love or Brook Lopez.

Westbrook will play hard-nosed D and should be good for a handful of highlight reel dunks throughout the season. But he hasn't got much of a shot, doesn't seem very creative finishing if he's not ramming it home, and doesn't have enough experience at the point to effectively run an NBA team, particularly a young one like the Sonics.

5. Memphis - Kevin Love, PF, UCLA A good pick for the Grizzlies until they traded him in the lopsided Mayo deal. However, the situation in Minny is a lot better for Love than the one in Memphis. His shooting touch and a passing ability that is practically non-pareil among men his size make him a perfect match to Al Jefferson in a high-low offense. Big Al J's imposing presence will help Love's rebounding totals and should leave him open for a garbage bucket or two cleaning up the glass every game. It will also be interesting to see how the Wolves use his astounding outlet passing ability.

Defensively, he should be okay with most fours; but he's not nearly big enough to guard any fives, so that task will fall on Jefferson, who is more comfortable guarding power forwards.

Love's athleticism has been called into question, but he has slimmed down in the offseason. And to borrow a phrase I generally hate -- he's just a basketball player. He'll find a way to get it done. Al Horford-like numbers -- ~10 points and 10 rebounds per game -- are a real possibility in his rookie season.

6. New York - Danilo Gallinari, SF, Italy Don't know much about this guy, save the highlights I've seen. I've heard that's he a 6'9" Manu Ginobili. That's obviously a good thing.

I will say that of the few clips I did see during draft coverage, Gallinari showed a much more "playground" game than you see out of most Euros. He can shoot it from deep, but he seems very comfortable and capable of breaking his guy down one-on-one and going to the bucket. He seems to seek out contact, too, which will help him get to the line in the offense-friendly NBA.

Finally, I'm often skeptical of the Europeans because they put up modest numbers with relatively little experience -- the philosphy across the pond regarding playing time for developing players seems a bit different there than it is stateside. Gallinari, however, averaged 17.5 points and 5.7 rebounds in 34 minutes in the Italian Serie A, and 15 points and 4.5 boards in a couple fewer minutes in the EuroLeague. He's a much more proven player than we're used to seeing from Europeans of his age, even if we haven't seen much of him over here.

7. Los Angeles Clippers - Eric Gordon, SG, Indiana Gordon's been a really tough guy for me to scout because of injury and the whole mess at Indiana this year. I keep hearing things about his size, but I never saw much evidence of him using it, and he did wear a t-shirt under his Hoosier jersey -- usually the surefire sign that someone isn't strong enough to play in the NBA.

Still, he did average 20 points per game last year even with all the negative stuff that happened with his season. I'm not sure about his mental toughness -- he shrunk from an admittedly overly hostile crowd at Illinois -- and I definitely questioned his shot selection at times. Ultimately, this could be one of the those situations that happens occasionally, where a perfectly fine player gets a lower ranking in my mind because he never seemed to have a good game while I was watching.

In a draft that is long on potential but short on can't miss prospects, the Clippers could have done a lot worse.

NBA Draft early entries

First and foremost, Beat LA!

Monday at 5 p.m. was the deadline for underclassmen who hadn't yet signed with an agent to drop out of the NBA draft and return to school.

North Carolina was the obvious big winner. Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, and Danny Green all opted to come back to Chapel Hill, where they'll join consensus national player of the year Tyler Hansbrough, who didn't even submit his name for consideration in the draft. Roy Williams' boys are the team to beat next year.

Note that my position is that leaving for the NBA Draft when you're a projected lottery pick is a no-brainer. It's just too much money to pass up. As a college basketball fanatic who is lukewarm on the professional league, I naturally want everyone to stay in school. But it doesn't make sense to pass up guaranteed millions. That doesn't mean that I think all lottery picks couldn't use extra seasoning in college or are can't-miss pros -- I don't, and I'd be ignoring history to say otherwise.

Therefore, I'm not going to talk about the no-brainers. Go to nbadraft.net or draftexpress.com and any underclassmen in the top 13 or so made the right decision. I'll talk about their pro prospects as we get closer to the draft, after the draft, and after the Vegas Summer League (19'9" will be making it's first-ever appearance in Sin City this July!).

For now, though, let's take a look at some of the less clear-cut cases. As always, I'm ignoring the foreign guys because I've never seen them play and I'd just be parroting what people who have seen them play say.

-Every year, there are guys who enter the draft simply because their stock will never be higher -- not because of a stellar performance in the previous season, but because their potential gets closer and closer to being unrealized every year they get older. The recent epitome of this category of player is, in my mind, Duke's Josh McRoberts, a projected lottery pick after his freshman year who fell all the way to the middle of the second round in last year's draft, where he was taken 37th overall by the Portland Trailblazers (he was a projected late first-rounder when he first declared, then fell significantly as pre-draft workouts went on).

This year, I think the group is headlined by Florida center Marreese Speights, who was supposed to break out during his sophomore season and performed inconsistently, at best, on a young team. Kansas' Mario Chalmers is another guy whose stock is at an all-time high (thanks to his MOP performance at this year's Final Four), although he doesn't fit in with guys like McRoberts and Speights because his reputation is based on performance, not potential. I haven't followed his career too much (hard to follow the Pac-10 out here in the East), but Cal's Ryan Anderson might fit here, too.

-An interesting corollary to this is the player who I feel enters the draft due to injury concerns. A recent example: Cal's Leon Powe. Powe was a double-double guy as a sophomore after leading the Pac-10 in rebounding as a freshman, but as a 6'7", 245-pound power forward, he's not the kind of player NBA teams are chomping at the bit to spend a first-rounder on. With two terrible knees, though, the logical explanation is that Powe's decision to enter the 2006 draft -- where he was selected 49th overall by the Denver Nuggets and subsequently traded to the Boston Celtics-- was based largely on not knowing how long his body would allow him to play. Particularly with his much-publicized family troubles, Powe needed to cash in while he still could.

(As an aside, I loved the trade for my Celtics when it was made, and I'm thrilled to see him produce the way he has this season, regardless of the fact that Doc Rivers seems intent on ruining his career by inexplicably refusing to give him a steady spot in the rotation in the playoffs).

Bill Walker could be this year's Leon Powe. The Kansas State freshman has already torn his ACL twice in his young life, and he suffered a partial tear of the meniscus in his knee during a workout this past weekend. The disgustingly-athletic Walker has not yet been slowed by these injuries, but repeated setbacks are enough to scare a young man into looking for a guaranteed paycheck, although ESPN's Chad Ford insists that Walker doesn't have a first-round promise (you may need to be an ESPN Insider to read that story. If you aren't, don't bother signing up).

Kansas' Brandon Rush might also fit into that category. He declared last summer, after his sophomore year, and was a projected first-rounder before he suffered an ACL tear in a pre-draft workout. After returning to school and helping the Jayhawks win a national championship, Rush isn't going to take a chance again (draftexpress has him going 17th to the Raptors; nbadraft.net has him at 22 to the Magic; and the fourth -- and latest -- version of Ford's mock has him at 15 to the Suns)

-There are a lot of guys who had an easy choice to come back to school and made the right decision. I won't list them here, but that first ESPN link has a lot about it, and you should be able to pick out their names pretty easily.

-A few guys made the correct, but difficult, decision to come back to school:

Chase Budinger, Arizona -- In another year, this smooth all-around forward is a lottery pick

Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington, North Carolina -- These guys are going to benefit from playing together for another year. Lawson needs to prove he can stay in control, cut down on his turnovers, and be a consistent outside threat; NBA teams will be looking for Ellington -- whose offensive repertoire has been compared to Kobe Bryant's -- to stop disappearing for long stretches of games.

-And then there are just a lot of guys who I think made bad decisions, particularly in a year where the draft is so deep. Some of these guys are projected first-rounders who will get guaranteed money, and you might wonder how I reconcile this with my opinion that anyone who is a lock to go in the lottery should do so. Generally speaking, it's hard to know who has a first-round promise and there always seems to be someone who falls out. I think if you can be a lottery pick the following year, you're better off waiting and getting another year of experience -- particularly big men who have a lot of room to develop. It's good for your wallet, and good for your game.

Donte' Green, Syracuse -- Green finally started to show a post game toward the end of the year; a full season of that and weaker peers and he's a sure-fire lottery pick (one of the mock sites had him as high as No. 3 during the season before he displayed a fairly one-dimensional perimeter-oriented game);

Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, UCLA -- Cashing in too late on what looked to be, two years ago, a promising career;

DeAndre Jordan, Texas A&M, and JaVale McGee, Nevada -- I like both of these seven-footers (well, Jordan's 6'11"), but height will always be in demand, fellas. I posted about McGee early last season (second item in that post) and Jordan's got a shot at being late-lottery, but they've got plenty of improving to do and would be better off in a weaker draft;

Darrell Arthur, Kansas, Richard Hendrix, Alabama, and JJ Hickson, North Carolina State -- Does anyone really see these post players contributing significantly to an NBA team any time soon?

Davon Jefferson, USC -- Sick athlete, but unpolished. Might slip into the first-round due to his potential, but if he stays in school another year, he doesn't have to worry.