2011 NBA DRAFT REVIEW: Part I

Felipe M.

I had a perfect plan for the Cleveland Cavaliers to get better in a relative hurry. The Cleveland Cavaliers, if they want to have their fans forget about LeBron James, need to select Derrick Williams with the #1 pick overall and then select a point guard at #4. T’Wolves and Jazz don’t need a PG so the Cavs might end up with the best athlete in Williams and STILL get Kyrie Irving at #4. Besides, who was the last player Duke developed into an NBA franchise player? If I were a Cavs' fan, I would much rather have Brandon Knight anyway.

Instead, the Cleveland Cavaliers blew a perfect opportunity to get better by doing the following--and now, a recap of the 2011 NBA DRAFT:

Picks 1-5: A lot of nonsense happened in this year's NBA Draft and nothing was more ridiculous than seeing the Cavs pass on this year's best overall player in Derrick Williams by selecting a good point guard, but not a franchise-type player, in Kyrie Irving. Once again, the Duke Propaganda Machine suckers another NBA team's future fortunes down the drain.

Even worse was seeing Williams go to the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NBA's version of hell. The T'Wolves already have plenty of players like Williams and by them picking him with the #2 pick overall, have all but guarantee the obstruction of this kid's development. The T'Wolves almost ruined Kevin Love and have done a horrible job in developing young talent and do a worse job in evaluating talent. Before the 2010-2011 season, it was reported that the T'Wolves' top brass decided that after looking at their roster, they came to the conclusion that Darko Milicic was the best player to build their franchise around. Yikes!

The other picks: Enes Kaster seems to fit perfectly well with the Jazz, especially if the trade rumors about Paul Millsap are true. Tristan Thompson out of Texas was the other pick for the Cavaliers who looks to be a poor man's version of Derrick Favors and according to Jay Bilas, Thompson needs to improve on his SCORING! You can forget about another Cleveland uprise happening any time soon.

The 5th pick saw the Toronto Raptors draft yet another European player in Jonas Valanciunas from Lithuania--a 19 year-old player who will never set foot with his NBA team until he's 24 and by then, Bryan Colangelo might be long gone. Or Jonas would have been traded to another team, thus making him a wasted pick at #5.

Picks 6-10: Jan Vesely from the Czech Republic was described as a "high-flying, energy guy" who can one day be a slam dunk champion. Unfortunately, the Wizards already have a player like that in JaVale McGee. And again, Vesely is reported to not make the Wizards' squad for another 5 years.

The Bobcats selected Bismack Biyombo from Congo who literally came out of nowhere. The 18 year-old is very athletic, but "cannot score." So Michael Jordan, who has been notoriously bad as a GM, decides that he needs the second coming of Hasheem Thabeet on his team. Just like the other Foreign players picked, Biyombo has a buyout issue, which is great because MJ has been known to have very little patience with young players (that he hand-selected in the first place). Best part about being Michael Jordan? He can screw up the Charlotte Bobcats all he wants because he will never get fired.

Brandon Knight--my guy!--gets selected by the Pistons, a great pick for Detroit as they are getting older and Rodney Stuckey is proving to not be the point guard that they were hoping for. Knight might just be the best point guard in this draft.

Speaking of point guards, the undersized Kemba Walker goes to the Bobcats as MJ might be losing patience with one of his hand-picked players, point guard D.J. Augustin--or maybe he wants both players to share the backcourt, making them one of the shortest in the NBA.

Finally, the Kings had to make a couple of deals to get Jimmer Fredette, which makes no sense to me whatsover. Yeah, they made room by trading away Beno Udrih, but they still have Marcus Thornton and no way is the Jimmer overtaking Tyreke Evans. Bilas thinks that Fredette can develop into a "scoring" guard, not just be limited as a Steve Kerr-like spot up shooter, but if his defensive liabilities become an issue, he might be just another white, bench player in the mold of J.J. Reddick and Adam Morrison.

This draft set a record for most Foreign players selected in the first 10 picks. However, this is a by-product of a draft full of "weak" collegiate players that were perceived to lack the offensive skills to make them standout in the NBA. This caused many NBA teams to roll the dice on a lot of foreign players. However, many of these players have many years to go before they arrive with their NBA teams.

History shows however that many foreign players who were drafted in the top 20 from 2000-2010 did not fully develop into the players that many NBA scouts thought their upside would take them. Of the 25 foreign players selected in the top 20 between 2000-2010, only half of them are still in the NBA, and often times, most of those players never make it to the NBA despite being drafted so high. However, the biggest letdown about these foreign players drafted very high in the NBA draft is that they never develop into that franchise type player that one would hope to get when selecting such a player. Many NBA teams select such players hoping they get the next Dirk Nowitzki, but more often than not, if one of these players end up a notch below Pau Gasol or Yao Ming, it should be considered a small victory.

To be continued....