Comment from Tom Mandel
Time June 6, 2008 at 2:28 PM

Ok, well I don’t get this group *at all.*

Comment from Reuben
Time June 6, 2008 at 7:41 PM

Apparently Ty Lawson was just caught drunk driving. Is he still going to be at pre draft workouts?

Comment from wiz-skins07
Time June 6, 2008 at 9:29 PM

Man, only 2 comments (well 3 with this one). Apparently no one was interested in these guys. Frankly niether was I.

Comment from Wizards4Life
Time June 6, 2008 at 11:22 PM

some of these guys are just stupid like AB that guy got cought speeding with not DL come on if your going to Drive with no DL try not to speed or brake a law might just help or better yet your rich take a freakin cab… i like the guy but thats got to stop or he needs to go

Comment from Wizards4Life
Time June 6, 2008 at 11:24 PM

o btw sorry i have not been around alot but i dont know anything about drafting players and my input means nothing at this point of the year (not that it dose the rest of the year but i try)

Comment from doclinkin
Time June 7, 2008 at 8:56 AM

>>>Tom Mandel Says: Ok, well I don’t get this group *at all.*>>>

Ernie and team are probably in Treviso watching the Eurocamp. They’ve seen all the American players they’re interested in, and will see a few interesting ones in upcoming workouts, but the Euro guys are tougher to scout and see all at once.

Comment from FLOYDBT
Time June 7, 2008 at 10:38 AM

I really like JaVale McGee(C),donte green(SF)and roy hibbert(C) maybe even nicolas batum(SF) at #18.

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time June 7, 2008 at 3:21 PM

Hibbert, yes — but I’d stay away from McGee, who is raw, has questionable attitude, and sucked at the Orlando combine workouts last week (looked lost). He also looks like he’d get to be *good friends* with our current juvenile delinquent, Andray Blatche.

Maybe we should draft a nurse for Andray — or better a staff sergeant!

Nicolas Batum will be no help. For one thing, is he really even available to play here next year?

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time June 7, 2008 at 3:23 PM

doclinkin — good point about Treviso. Do you think they didn’t bother to see Speights and Thompson? Those guys look like genuine candidates to me.

Comment from Wizfan4life
Time June 7, 2008 at 3:25 PM

hey anybody heard anything about how good the international prospects are looking 2 be? oh yeah and every1 that blogs on here: after the draft we should try and get the Wizards 2 host a “bloggers party” for any1 who blogs during games, about the team, etc………kinda like what they do for season ticket holders, but this would be different because some people on here arent season tickket holders………any1 with me? i talked 2 dave johnson about it towards the end of the season, and he said he’ll see what he could do…..all in favor??

Comment from doclinkin
Time June 7, 2008 at 5:53 PM

>>>> Tom Mandel Says: good point about Treviso. Do you think they didn’t bother to see Speights and Thompson? Those guys look like genuine candidates to me.>>>>

Eurocamp started this morning at 8 am local time. Friday was probably a travel day for them, so yeah Ernie may have seen Speights et al. on Thursday.

Still I never read anything into who the team works out or not. Conventional wisdom suggests: they’ve seen most of the first round candidates in big time games, live or on tape. They work out the round 2 guys and the Undrafted possibilities to get a better sense of their game against tougher competition, but aren’t pressed to see all the guys they like. Remember they picked up DMac who had to bow out of the workout with an injury.

More importantly, a good portion of the workout process is smokescreening anyway. We’re always complaining that GMEG didn’t work out a ton of players at this or that time, then we find out he did work out a guy who didn’t show up on the official workout roster. Even here the webmaster is allowed to give you only a few scant minutes of video, and that’s far better than almost every other O-fish-al NBA team board, with the exception of a team like, say, Portland who still has links to footage of Vladimeer Veremeenko if you know where to dig it up.

http://www.nba.com/blazers/news/draftcentral.html

(right side video rosters, scroll down near the bottom).

Yes Nicolas Batum is free to play in the NBA next year, per his agent. He’s a smooth true SF, 6’8″-6’9″ legit (you can generally trust the Euro numbers) with nice all around game and athleticsim. The two knocks on him are that he’s low-key and unwilling/unable to carry a team by himself despite top-notch atheticism. And his outside shot has awkward form, hence streakiness.

But on this team –backing up Caron– his willingness to share the spotlight wouldn’t be a problem, and his passing/deferring to teammates proves a benefit. As for his shot, hopefully we re-ink Dave Hopla whether or not we select Batum, so we’ve got that working for us as well.

Back up SF has been a position of need, and until McGuire develops a jumper or confidence attacking the rim/finishing we’ll still need some offense at the spot. I wouldn’t hate that pick there. Ernie tends to take best player available whatever the team need, I trust him to make a smarter assessment than, say, me. And I like me.

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time June 7, 2008 at 9:10 PM

I like me too — and you too. But, I don’t think ernie took “best available” in ’06; I think he took someone he could stash abroad w/o paying. In other words, there can be lots of variables enter into the draft process.

Batum may turn out to be a star, or at least a good nba player, but if it’s a backup 3 we must have, I think I’d probably rather go for CDR. He’s probably more of a 2, but in truth I don’t see another good candidate in round 1.

Comment from doclinkin
Time June 7, 2008 at 11:14 PM

Disagree.

After two years of trying and failing to recruit Bigs with range (Donyell Marshall and Songaila most notably) he was looking at upgrading the 4 position to find someone with skill and size to play behind Antawn. EG likes to build a team to suit a coaches’ style (part of the equation of ‘best available’ no point drafting the ‘best’ guy who will never see the floor) but that meant we were trying to find a guy who could not only hit a face-up shot, but also rebound a bit, maybe play a little defense, help us get bigger so we could run th esame sets but not be forced into smallball just to preserve the spacing.

Players that year in the category were Hilton Armstrong (jumper better than his post game), Cedric Simmons (who showed range in workouts if never before on court), Paul Davis, Nick Fazekas (stayed in school) and a handful of foreign kids: Veremeenko (6’8″ only and lean), Damir Markota (same, but even more frail), and this 7 foot kid from the Ukraine who bounced with energy and hustle who’d been playing at a high level in a good club team in France (Paris Racingbasket, dunno why I remember these things).

Ernie brought them all in for workouts on one day he had in Hilton Armstrong, Paul Davis, Shotblocking/rebounding scarecrow Solomon Jones, and the kid from the Ukraine. Next day NBADraft.net dropped a report saying the Ukraine kid kicked the everlovin’ snot outta Hilton Armstrong in the tryout. (Tough to gauge the difference between two players in totally different leagues. That’s when a workout is most useful).

What’s funny was that the website didn’t mention the kid even worked out for the team:

http://www.nba.com/wizards/news/predraft_workouts060601.html
http://www.nba.com/wizards/news/draft_central06.html

And a representative from the Wizards called NBADraft.net and told them to print a retraction because ‘both players played well’.

Moot point anyway because the Princeton-hybrid team running the same offense as us basically (New Orleans Hornets) selected BOTH Ced Simmons AND Hilton Armstrong before the Wiz got a chance to select. In part I bet to thumb their nose at Eddie, subconsciously maybe, seems like there’s some kind of rivalry thing going on between Byron Scott and Eddie, leftover animosity from the Nets days.

That meant with pick 18 we could take PG’s Rajon Rondo or Marcus Willams or… who? So we took the 7′ kid from the Ukraine with the long range stroke and constant hustle who beat out the probable #1 player on our draft board in workouts. Remains to be seen if we got the best talent considering he was injured most of the year.

Anyway, point being we tried to sign him, but he was on loan to paris anyway, and the UKR Superdupereague that had his rights was trying to become a valuable business in their own right, nit just make money by farming players out, and the NBA salary structure wouldn’t let us pay to rent him any way. We would have had him here in 06 if we could. If not we hoped he’d get more experience in Paris against higher level competition, but oh well…

(This concludes your Moment in WizDraft History. Pardon the twelve paragraph epic).

Oh, but to conclude. No if we select Buh-TOOOOM! It’s because he’s a long smooth-passing ath-elite who can finish in traffic and has low-ego to go with a high-IQ superior skillset. He’d be a great fit pretty quickly, even if he needs to eat an extra sandwich or two.

Comment from doclinkin
Time June 7, 2008 at 11:35 PM

BTW:

The concept of Best Pick Available isn’t simply to find the greatest talent. Draft wisdom suggests you group players into ‘tiers’ of talent, then pick the best player for your needs in a given tier. That avoids missteps like Sam Bowie over mike Jordan, although let’s be fair, Sam Bowie got injured, had a decent pro career but might have been better if not for the health issues… Okay nah who’m I kidding, MJ legitimately beat out the Dream as the best player in that draft. I would have taken Hakeem #1 as well. But Bowie? No.

This year tier one would include:
Beasley
Rose

Some argue OJ Mayo, but if there’s any question then he ain’t in the tier.

If you need frontcourt scoring you’re fine picking Beasley. If you recognize PG is the hardest position to draft, you take Rose. You’re in good shape either way.

And so on down the draft board. That way you don’t miss an alpha-quality talent and reach for a player at a need position. But if you have three of equivalent skill/athleticsim etc you take the one that best fits your team.

Portland by the way admitted later they were trying to trade up to select Pech. (I used google translations/babelfish to track down info on Lexi last year in Russian language websites. They had a n interview with a Portland scout who was still coming to see him even though he was Wizards property. A local Russian? paper interviewed him. Might have been Ukrainian). Anyway. 7′ players who hustle are rare, if we took Josh Boone or whoever, he’s in the same boat as Etan and Brendan (unskilled, then, for what the offense requires). Rondo and Marcus Williams looked like nice players, but we had two point/combos already. One a 40+-minute allstar.

This year, as far as pure athletic talent for his age, size, defensive upside, etc. Batum blows CDR waaay out the water at the SF slot. There are dozens of equivalent talents to CDR in Europe (he would have a great career over there though) with a junkball arsenal, heady play if sub-par athleticism defense and size, nice outside stroke though far less ugly Free Throw routine. But Batum is a lottery quality athlete with a multi-tool game. He’s something like a cross between Nick Young and Boris Diaw. If younger and not yet developed.

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time June 8, 2008 at 6:12 AM

Doc! You are the Wikipedia we need! The fact that you are tracking down Russian language sites about our draft choices puts *you* in the first tier of “blog-athletes.” I’m picking *you* for this draft talk team. You are the Beasley of our class.

I’m sure glad we didn’t wind up with Hilton Armstrong, who is a stiff, or Simmons, who *aspires* to be a stiff. But, as it turned out, it would have been great to have a higher-tier player at the guard spot. Admittedly, Gilbert looked indestructible until the first knee injury.

Boone is more a 4 than a 5, no? He has been very productive. Obviously, he is no outside shooter but he’s an excellent rebounder, defensive player, etc. and he is *efficient* as a scorer. You get positive results when he is on the floor.

You have me on Batum, however; if he is as good as you say, he’d be a great choice. My only problem is your comparison w/ Nick. Skill and athleticism aren’t always accompanied by the understanding of the game and disciplined attitude that lead to real success. Nick hasn’t shown either yet. One reason I favor 4-year, big NCAA program guys is just that. You can count on that from Hibbert, for example.

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time June 8, 2008 at 6:28 AM

DraftExpress coverage of day one in Treviso. Serge Ibaka — you can’t help think of Dwight Howard! He is a few years away from dominating, as Howard was when drafted. But, what an asset to have on your team!

Comment from doclinkin
Time June 8, 2008 at 12:29 PM

>>>>You have me on Batum, however; if he is as good as you say, he’d be a great choice. My only problem is your comparison w/ Nick. Skill and athleticism aren’t always accompanied by the understanding of the game and disciplined attitude that lead to real success. Nick hasn’t shown either yet. >>>>

True, I compare Nico athletically with Nick– similar build, good quick-twitch bounce, good body control mid-air, ability to finish at the rim. He’s less aggressive though, occasionally even passive, looking to pass instead of attack, that’s why the comparison with Boris Diaw. But as far as IQ, he’s got a solid 1.35 asst/TO ratio and decent measureables otherwise. His blocks+steals/personal foul are decent.

But the fact is, Nick’s a remarkably proficient scorer, whatever his other drawbacks it would help to surround him with players who make up for the deficiencies. Passing, defense, etc. Batum’s not my favorite player in the draft, not even the best SF (I like Gallinari, Joe Alexander, even Brandon Rush). But I do think he’s a nice fit for the team if EG decides he’s the best available talent/fit at #18.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Hibbert too. Even despite the logjam at center. I just don’t see how he lasts past the Nets at #10 for instance.

Comment from doclinkin
Time June 8, 2008 at 12:53 PM

Bill Walker also impresses me as a cat that’s better than he’s given credit for. There were times this year when he was the best player on his team– a team that included Michael Beasley.

Comment from Reuben
Time June 8, 2008 at 4:36 PM

Wizfan4life a party would be pretty cool maybe on draft night

Comment from Wizfan4life
Time June 9, 2008 at 11:48 AM

Reuben i dunno if that would work because dave johnson is gonna be at the draft blogging, he was thinking maybe after the draft or something…..possibly before training camp in the fall

Comment from John50
Time June 9, 2008 at 3:34 PM

TOM-not picking fights but leave blatche alone…I’m pretty sure he will learn from his mistakes…Stop calling him out, if you were in his shoes..would you want that treatment. He’s a cool kid; he probabaly need a good network of people around him to help him grow.

Thats all

Comment from BruceO
Time June 10, 2008 at 1:38 AM

bill walker is too fat and short for his position. If he put up alot of points I’d say he’s the ron jeremy of basketball, scores alot but is still fat and short. Ofcourse I could be saying this to rile everyne up. But that team K-state wasnt anything without Beasley, the only reason Kansas beat them the second time around is cause beasley sat for a long time and Kansas used that time to run the score board