All the talk of the 2014 draft has reached a level of lunacy in my opinion. It's not even that good of a draft. The top 5 look to be very good, but we don't know yet as most of them haven't even played a college game. Plenty of guys disappoint in their rookie season -- Harrison Barnes and Shabazz Muhammad were the last two SF prospects projected as number 1 picks. Both looked "can't miss" out of high school and look where they ended up. There's a chance all of these guys hit at once and then the draft looks pretty stacked at the top, but even then, after the top 5 it's really not any better than a normal draft. How likely are we really to get a top 5 pick? You have to be seriously horrible to finish with one of the worst 3 records in the league and even that doesn't guarantee you a top 5 pick. We'd be lucky to draft somebody as good as Tyreke Evans in this upcoming draft. Like probably 1 in 20 lucky -- the lottery has to help us and then we have to correctly identify somebody who's going to develop into an All-Star talent and then we have to help them live up to that potential. I love college basketball and young players with potential are exciting to watch and root for but the thing is, we got damn lucky to land Tyreke Evans and to say that we would choose a chance at a lottery pick over keeping him at a market-rate deal (John Wall is supposedly negotiating a 5 year, 80 million dollar contract) is so wrong-headed I almost don't even want to bother discussing it.
Andrew Wiggins is probably going to be really good, probably. But what if he isn't? What if Jabari Parker wants to stay at Duke another year and Randle gets injured or has a poor season? Where are we at then? Do we tank the next season too? It's a never ending whirlpool and we've been stuck in it for years and what do we have to show for it? Spencer Hawes, Tyreke Evans, and Thomas Robinson are gone. Jimmer we can't give away. Thompson hasn't developed into anything but a borderline starter. We got 1 year of Patrick Patterson out of the Robinson deal and 1 year of Greivis Vasquez out of the Tyreke Evans deal. We could have bought these guys as free agents without having to suffer through horrible seasons first. Anybody who thinks that building through the draft is a rational business model at this point is either crazy or not paying attention if you ask me. Yes you can get lucky, but what successful business puts their future on the line for a lottery ticket? Not to mention, we've been so bad for so long that the fans completely gave up on the team and we still haven't had even one top 3 pick for that entire span. Not one. This is not going to change people. Sure, it might change, but I wouldn't bet on it. Let Cleveland have the 13th pick in the draft. Who cares? We just drafted a guy who most people thought was one of the three best players in the draft and we don't even know if he's a starter. Next year is really that much better that the 13th pick is going to be a difference between us becoming competitive or not? Really? Kendall Marshall, Markieff Morris, Ed Davis, Tyler Hansbrough, Brandon Rush, Julian Wright, Thabo Sefalosha, Sean May, Sebastian Telfair, Marcus Banks, Marcus Haislip? This is the deepest draft in over a decade? Okay.
while i happen to wholeheartedly agree with the general sentiment of this post, the ship sailed on ignoring next year's lottery the minute PDA agreed to sign-and-trade tyreke evans to new orleans for grievis vasquez. that was an undeniable talent bleed; the kings simply did not get equal value in return for evans, and unfortunately, outside of demarcus cousins, there's not enough talent anywhere else on this roster to rebuild it via trade. the most recent free agency cycle has also knocked some reality across the face of the new regime. there was talk of being aggressive. there was talk of being a major player. yet overpaying for carl landry was the best that they could do...
so that leaves the draft as the most likely place for the kings to land another impact player, either by selecting one outright, or by packaging the pick with spare parts in order to bring one back via trade, because even though the kings are short on the talent necessary to facilitate the kind of trade that brings back an impact player, a lottery pick is absolute gold under the new CBA. i maintain that, generally speaking, a high draft pick has more value as the
hypothesis of all-star talent rather than as the
actuality of the player selected with a given pick...
the draft is where desperate teams invest their hopes and prayers, after all, and the kings are as good an example as any when you consider how disproportionately enthusiastic the new regime was when they selected ben mclemore with the seventh pick. but from where i'm sitting, mclemore has a third option's ceiling, a klay thompson-lite who needs to figure out how to dribble at the nba level. i sure as **** hope he proves me wrong, but again, that's sort of my point: as a fan, i'm forced to
hope that mclemore evolves into something special, because his limited skill set certainly doesn't qualify him as a "sure thing"...
regardless of what an individual thinks of tyreke evans, he was an impact player for the kings, a power guard with all-star potential and the kind of dynamic rim attack that can change the complexion of an entire game as defenses are forced to contend with one of the league's strongest and most efficient penetrators. while ben mclemore is an entirely different type of talent, he'll be lucky if he displays even half of evans' potential in his first few seasons. yes, tyreke evans is gone, and i'm not going to belabor the fact that i think it was a mistake to sign-and-trade him for vasquez, but because the kings didn't get value in return, they're still searching for a legitimate #2, with precious few avenues by which to bring one to sacramento...
heading into this offseason, i didn't think it would be the case, but as it turns out, next year's draft is an incredibly important one for the immediate future of this franchise. the kings may be able to sew up demarcus cousins on a contract extension, but i don't expect they'll be able to turn this team in the direction of the playoffs if they are unable to secure another impact player, and the 2014 draft is just about the only realistic opportunity with which to do so...
