On the morning of the 2009 NBA Draft Lottery, the Timberwolves find themselves shunned by a third front office candidate and with only a 7.6% chance of ending up with the top pick in June's draft. Things seem a tad bleak in the land of 10,000 lakes at the moment, so I came up with a way to help you feel better about the Wolves chances this evening.
The Wolves having a 7.6% chance of winning the Draft Lottery is equal to somebody buying over 14.5 million Powerball tickets. I'd give you the exact number, but my calculator will only go up to eight digits. If you want to take it one step further, the Wolves have a 25.49% chance of landing a top-3 pick, which is comparable to purchasing almost 50 million Powerball tickets. (Further explanation of Powerball odds can be found
here.)
I don't know about you, but if I were presented with 50 million powerball tickets I'd make sure I was plastered in front of my television during Wednesday's drawing (even though I'd then have to pay countless people millions of dollars to find out if I actually had any winning tickets). But for you Wolves fans out there, there's more than a shimmer of hope that our team could get lucky for the second straight season and be a lottery winner.
With that said, I have decided to put together my own Draft Board for the Wolves. I held the assumption that if a player were drafted, he would have to be kept, which explains why power forwards tended to drop from traditional rankings. Below are the top-18 players (since that's where the Wolves 2nd pick is) as I see them.
1. Blake GriffinThe consensus #1 pick is, unfortunately, too good to pass up here even though the two best players on the Wolves already play the power forward position. Griffin would most likely be a better fit next to cornerstone Al Jefferson since he's more athletic than last year's top pick Kevin Love.
2. Ricky RubioThe Wolves have an immense need for a starting caliber PG and the agreement is that Rubio is the top candidate at the position. It's hard to get a guage for exactly how good he is since he plays in Europe, but he's young, talented, and has been playing at Europe's highest professional level. His ability to push the pace and be a distributor would help the Wolves both next year and for years to come.
3. Hasheem ThabeetI'm a little scared of Thabeet. While he does have great potential, can help immediately on the defensive end, and fills perhaps the Wolves greatest hole (a defensive presence in the interior) he has shown the ability to disappear in games, get pushed around by stronger players and have trouble when pulled out on the perimeter.
4. Stephen CurryThis is where I start to disagree with most draft experts and fans. James Harden is a terrific player, but the Wolves cannot take a chance that they won't get a starting point guard out of a draft that is full of them. Waiting until the 18th pick to fill the need at the point could end disastrously if all of the top players at the position are gone and you have to reach for somebody.
Curry is an offensive-minded point guard that has a flair for the spectacular and can score from anywhere on the court. According to
DraftExpress.com Curry was much better in spot up situations and screen-and-rolls than when he had to create for himself at Davidson, but with the Wolves half-court style of basketball and his ability to feed Al Jefferson that's just the type of player we need. And as Stop-n-Pop of
CanisHoopus.com points out, the pick and roll potential with Curry and Love would be fantastic.
He also has tremendous size for a PG at 6'3" and can play SG if called upon to do so.
5. Ty LawsonTy Lawson is the closest thing to Chris Paul that you're going to find in this draft. He's slightly undersized in terms of height, but he's fast, strong, and his ability to change speeds allows him to be a tremendous finisher in the lane. His 3.5/1 assist-to-turnover ratio was off the charts last season as he led the National Champion Tar Heels. He was the best point guard in college basketball during the NCAA Tournament, and perhaps only Blake Griffin was more impressive overall. The experts can say that he'll go in the mid-1st round, and he even might, but I know what I saw in Ty Lawson over the past season ... and the numbers back me up. From
DraftExpress.com's PG rankings ...
"He ranks first (among point guards) in a number of key categories, including overall FG% (52%), Points Per Possession [PPP](1.13), pull up jump shot FG% (47%), and %shots he was fouled on (16.1%). Though his teammates did a lot of scoring as well, Lawson functioned seamlessly as a complementary scorer. Looking past his efficiency as a shooter off the dribble, he was second in catch and shoot field goal percentage at 48%. From a purely statistical sense, no player on this list scored more efficiently than Lawson."Lawson won't be asked to be the primary scorer for the Wolves, but can hit any shot at a high percentage (.532 FG, .798 FT and .472 3-Pt last season) and is capable of playing at any pace offensively.
6. Jrue HolidayLet's state the negatives first. Holiday isn't a pure point guard, he struggled in his only season at UCLA, and he's not a dead-eye shooter. He's not the athlete that Russell Westbrook was coming out of college and he'd be a project.
Now let's state the obvious. The TWolves are a bad defensive team. They're undersized at almost every position and can only pray that their best perimeter defender (Corey Brewer) can return from ACL surgery with the same athleticism as he had prior to his injury.
Jrue Holiday is 6'4" with a 6'8" wingspan ... both terrific measurements for a PG. He has quick feet and is known as a ball-hawk on the defensive end. He has a great basketball IQ for a college freshman and is a good passer. He's also a good rebounder and was known as possibly the most complete player entering the college ranks last season. He'd immediately help the Wolves get bigger and improve the perimeter defense, which would in turn place our bigs (Jefferson and Love) in less difficult situations and help make up for their struggles on that end of the floor as well.
7. Brandon JenningsJonathan Givony of
DraftExpress.com writes of his experience watching Jennings play in Europe recently ...
"Pitted against one of the best defenders in Europe in American guard Ibi Jaaber, Jennings gets to wherever he wants on the court, showing blazing speed, outstanding ball-handling skills, incredible creativity and a real flair for making flashy plays. He makes spot-up and pull-up jumpers from inside and outside the arc, runs the pick and roll to perfection while flicking gorgeous underhanded bounce-passes right on the money to a flashing Andre Hutson, and even tries to go up and challenge former NBA center Primoz Brezec in transition with an emphatic dunk."Jennings has been compared to Gilbert Arenas in his style of play, but has struggled mightily in his one season playing professional basketball in Europe. He has handled himself well while there, which is refreshing, but it's hard to get excited about a player that hasn't put up meaningful numbers in over a year and has a tendancy to dominate the basketball.
Although his Steve Harvey style flat top is more than welcome.
8. Tyreke EvansEvans is more of a shooting guard, and the first one on my list, but can crossover to the point as he showed in his one season at Memphis. He has great size (6'6") for both guard positions and is tremendously gifted at getting to the rim. The Wolves have been lacking a player that can consistently get to the rim and finish for years now and a player like Evans who can put pressure on the defense and draw fouls would be a refreshing change.
9. James HardenThere is a zero percent chance that James Harden is available at the Wolves second pick, so with eight players I'd prefer over him he wouldn't end up on the team if I were running things. Don't get me wrong, he can be a great player, but he's just not what the Wolves need. He's a 6'4" SG that wouldn't help our team get any bigger, and drafting him would force Randy Foye back to the point where he's less comfortable (unless we also acquired a starting PG, in which case Foye would be a scoring 6th man, which is really where he should be). Harden may be a great NBA player, but I just feel like we have much greater needs at the moment.
10. Earl ClarkFor me, this is the official drop-off from top-tier prospects to everybody else. Clark is more suited to play PF when he hits the NBA due to continually shrinking front courts, but could be the long, athletic SF that the Wolves need to play with a Jefferson/Love front court. Compared to Lamar Odom on his good days (and Tim Thomas on his bad ones) Clark has the ability to take over a game in any fashion and can be the best player on the floor. Chad Ford of ESPN.com described it best after seeing Clark in a pre-draft workout recently.
"There really isn't anything on the court that Clark can't do well," wrote Ford. "He has guard-like abilities in the frame of a 6-foot-10 player."
Unfortunately, Clark also has a nasty habbit of disappearing and not showing the heart to be a great player. If he can show that he has the drive, though, he could be a great player and complement the other Wolves fantastically.
11. DeMar DeRozanI just don't understand this one. Granted, I've never seen DeRozan play, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around why everybody wants the Wolves to pick this guy.
He's a 2/3 combo, but at 6'6" would be primarily forced to play SG for the Wolves. That gives him good size for his position, but he is a weak outside shooter (only 16.7% from 3-Pt range last season) and not a strong ball handler. He may be the best athlete in the draft, but he has a long way to go before making a real contribution in the NBA and I don't see how he would mesh well with a team that likes to feed Jefferson in the post and spot up for jump shots.
12. Jonny FlynnFlynn showed some major heart in the Big East tournament last season for Syracuse and has the potential to be a very good point guard. He is lightning quick and has a nice selection of shots that he can go to including pull-ups and floaters. He's a bit undersized and needs to add some strength, but he's a physical player who's not afraid to get into the paint.
I'm not sure if he would start over Telfair as a rookie, but if he could work on his outside shot and expand on what Aaron Brooks has been able to do for the Rockets he could eventually take the reigns.
13. Eric MaynorI'm going to come out and admit that I've dropped Maynor this far because he went to a small school (VCU) and I've only seen him play once. He has good size (6'3") and his stats were impressive (especially his 1.7 ste
als per game) during his senior year, but I'll leave this one up to Matt Kamalsky of
DraftExpress.com ...
"Maynor’s best quality appears to be his short range game, he got to the rim 8 times per game and posted a PPP of 1.12 as a finisher. That’s slightly above average, but few players on this list utilize the same mix of floaters and scoops that Maynor does, and those types of shots have a much greater degree of difficulty than the average layup. Maynor didn’t fall below the average in nearly any category, usually hovering around the middle of the pack, and his isolation PPP of 1.01 stood out amongst this group. The team that drafts Maynor will be getting a player that obviously knows his limitations and can play a number of roles well, but might not stand out in any one area immediately."14. Jordan HillThere should be no real reason for the Wolves to draft Hill unless he's fallen so far that he's just too good to pass up. He's a traditional PF, which is the last thing that the Wolves need right now, and doesn't have the size to play backup center. He doesn't have a terrific basketball IQ, and if this draft weren't so weak on big men he'd be a mid-1st round pick instead of a top-5 pick like he's projected to be.
15. Nick CalathesI was tempted to move Calathes even further up this list, but need to get a better understanding of his athleticism at the combine first to know if he has the quickness to stay in front of speedier guards. He has great size for a PG at 6'5" and is a great passer, even being compared to Steve Nash. When
ESPN's David Thorpe was asked to compare Calathes and Stephen Curry, he said that "Calathes might have a bigger upside and a lower downside."
16. Jeff TeagueTeague is a combo guard in a point guard's body. At only 6'2" he really has to be a PG in the NBA, but is much more comfortable creating for himself than others. He started the season out strong for Wake Forest, but as his team faltered during the second half of the season, so did he. Out of all the players on this list, I feel like he would have benefitted the most from another season in college.
17. Darren Collison
Collison could have been considered a lottery pick if he had entered the NBA two seasons ago, but has failed to really improve at UCLA. That said, he's learned how to be a terrific on-the-ball defender under Ben Howland, is a good outside shooter, and is amazingly fast. If he had played in a more up-tempo system he would probably be considered a much better player.
After watching Collison workout recently, Chad Ford had this to say.
"Collison is currently in the mix with a number of other top prospects, but ultimately he'll be competing against the other uber-quick point guards like Ty Lawson, Patrick Mills and Jonny Flynn for a spot in the late lottery to mid-first round. Of the three, Collison is the best shooter, the fastest end to end and the best defender. Whether that's enough to put him ahead of the pack remains to be seen -- but having those four in the gym should be a really interesting workout."
18. Chase Budinger
At this point in the draft, Budinger's athleticism starts to outweigh his lack of a "motor." He can jump out of the gym and is a good outside shooter at the same time, but has been questioned because he doesn't take over games and hasn't shown the drive to be a great player. He would do a lot of the same things for the Wolves that Rodney Carney currently provides, but at one time he was considered a high lottery pick and still has great potential.
