Agreed...but I doubt the Knicks even knew he was going to live up to his upside when he fell in their laps. C'mon, we're talking about the KNICKS, WTF have they done on their the past 7 or 8 years that's amounted to ANYTHING good?? Might be giving them a little too much credit...there were ALOT of other teams that passed on Lee before the Kings, so it's their bad too, right??
Petrie is an above average GM when it comes to the draft. Douby was a bad choice. But he was a bad choice in a fairly weak draft. Thomas and the Knicks selected all-star Renaldo Balkman right after the Kings picked Douby and right before the Sun's picked Rondo. After you removed Bargnani, Aldridge, Roy, and Gay from the draft, it became a crap shoot for a lot of GM's.
Two players that went before Douby have already come to the Kings and gone. Simmons and Williams. Williams being the fifth pick in that draft. It was a draft in which a lot of GM's took gambles. Adam Morrison went 3rd in that draft. Tyrus Thomas 4th and Patrick O' Bryant 9th. JJ. Redick went in the lottery. There were a lot of mistakes made by a lot of people in that draft. Petrie was just one of them. Not excusing him. Thats usually were he excells. But on this occasion his gamble didn't pay off. Only three truely very good players came out of the Lottery portion of that draft. Aldrige, Roy and Gay. One could argue for Bargnani, but based on his production up until now thats a hard arguement to make.
I know a Rondo had his fan club on this fourm and kudo's to them for seeing what I couldn't see. I wasn't that high on him at the time. He's either proved me wrong, or the addition of great players around him has made him look like a better player. It doesn't matter, since he's doing the job he's being paid to do.
To my mind thats the only truely bad selection he's made. You can go to some of his other choices and find players that ended being good to great players that were selected after he picked. But you can't really find fault with his choice. Thats the sad part. Most of the time, you only get one choice.