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Age is as of draft night (6/26/2014). I still need to catch up on a few internationals, but it’s looking like we are going to have 4 important ones in this year’s crop, and I have included all of them in this iteration:
Notable Exclusions:
Wayne Selden (26th DX, 27th ESPN)
CJ Wilcox (35th DX, 28th ESPN)
Jahii Carson (38th DX, 31st ESPN)
This draft is shaping up to have 3 clear prizes: Embiid, Exum, and Parker. Marcus Smart would have been able to challenge Parker for #3 if not for his shooting woes. Tyler Ennis’s stock is inhibited by his lack of tools and current NBA PG depth. Noah Vonleh’s warts keep me from getting too high on him, but he still has quite a bit of upside intrigue.
People may think I’m being too harsh with my ranking on Andrew Wiggins, Aaron Gordon, and Julius Randle, but I think I am giving them all quite a bit of leeway to prove me wrong. I have them all as 1st rounders and Wiggins as early lotto, after all.
Willie Cauley-Stein is dropping too far. There are reasons to be skeptical of his odds of success, but there’s a limit to how far you can drop a player with his tools and possible defensive impact. DX’s rank of 12th is reasonable, ESPN’s rank of 19th is not.
DX is starting to catch up on McDaniels, Hairston, and Portis all being underrated. ESPN is much slower to pick up on sleepers.
For my money, KJ McDaniels is the best NCAA player in the country. He has been posting some ridiculously insane February box scores. Casuals can have their Ougie, I’ll take 2 way superstar KJ. Shame that he goes to waste on that woeful Clemson team.
I have been doing some digging on Jusuf Nurkic and Clint Capela, and they both carry a good deal of intrigue as upside picks. If I am gambling on a mystery box, I feel much better than them than college freshman such as Aaron Gordon or James Young.
I am warming up to UCLA’s Kyle Anderson. His lack of quicks and athleticism are problematic, but he is so big, smart, and skilled that he can’t be sold too short.
Spencer Dinwiddie and Jerian Grant are underrated due to their seasons being over prematurely, and there’s a strong chance that neither of them is in this draft class. But that does not diminish their appeal to me. I have a suspicion that the wrong Grant brother may be getting the hype, as Jerian is a much easier fit into an NBA lineup.
Things become incredibly fluid from 19 down. I am softening my anti-Saric stance until I am able to attain a thicker slice, but I still do not see what he offers that Kyle Anderson does not.
Briante Weber is an interesting new addition to my board. His steal rate is off the charts, and anybody who is an outlier on defense is going to catch my eye. He will likely become a prospect of note at some point as he breaks prediction models that heavily price in steals.
It’s time to put the Zach LaVine hype train on hold. He can jump, he can shoot, and as far as I can tell that’s pretty much it. I have a hard time getting excited for him until he shows some discernible basketball skill beyond shooting. I like that DX is right there with me. They are clearly sharper than ESPN on average.
Jordan Clarkson has an impact on others that completely and utterly mystifies me. He is good but not great upperclassmen with OKish tools playing on a fringe tourney team, yet everybody wants to discuss him as a 1st rounder. DX and ESPN are the least guilty, as I often see random mocks that have him in the 1st round and nbadraft.net has him as the #14 overall pick. Can somebody fill me in on what joke I’m missing here?
Dean On Draft 
Not sure how you can be so critical of players for failing to be productive and then give Willie Cauley-Stein a pass. I like your list, though and many of the differences I agree on. KJ McDaniels could end up as good as anyone in the draft.
Willie Cauley-Stein is incredibly tricky to evaluate.
On one hand he has good tools and good stats (at least blocks, steals, FG%) which is a sign that somebody is a good prospect. If I wanted to take his stats at face value I’d likely have him as a top 5 value because he has the tools to be an all-time great defensive player.
But he’s pretty inconsistent and sometimes has lapses defensively, so it’s fair to question how much of his potential will actually be realized. It’s possible that he never develops the intelligence and focus to become good, or maybe he finds the right coach and makes a big impact.
I get why he is in Calipari’s doghouse, but I also think Cal is being overreactive and there’s a floor to how low I can get on WCS. I don’t think he has been unproductive so much as he has been inconsistent.
I see Kyle Anderson as Andre Miller in a PF body. I’m going to go out on a limb and say he gets drafted at least 10 spots lower than where he will eventually be viewed with respect to his draft class.
That’s a good comparison, and Kyle actually has a bit more hope as a perimeter shooter than Miller. I’m definitely a fan of his game and I’m more likely to move him up than down. He’s just so big, long, smart, and skilled that I think he has enough good qualities to become a good NBA player in spite of his slow motion.
I think Julius Randle hardly making the 1st round is a bit of a stretch. Sure he’s mostly effective against weaker competition, but considering his raw rebounding ability and level of skill he should easily go in the lottery imo. Most other big boards have randle in the top 8 or even top 5.
Would like to see an updated version – perhaps even a mock draft…
I am an avid Randle watcher, and I just don’t see him ever amounting to much. Even if he becomes a David Lee type, the Warriors would arguably be better off if they just dumped Lee since he doesn’t space the floor and is a major drag on their defense. Other big boards are wrong to have him as a top 8 pick, I don’t know why they are so reticent to slide him down a few slots. He is at best a late lotto value. I don’t see how he will not be a huge liability defensively, and he is not a lock to be good offensively. If you want to know my in depth thoughts, I posted about it here:
https://deanondraft.com/2014/01/29/a-randle-walk-down-fraud-street/
I will update after the tourney. I may throw out my own version of a mock draft after the draft order is set.
Well, i still think you are way too much glass-half-empty with Randle. You have him 29th, but he’d fit fantastic with a team like the Bulls, playing between Noah and Gibson. Bulls could easily pick him with their mid first rounder.
IMO Randle is still very young and could learn to play good defense. The problem with the David Lee comparison is that Lee can’t play man-to-man defense, like Randle can.
I also think, unlike many other prospects, that Randle has the strength to play against the bigger 4s and the skills and speed against the smaller ones.
Am i wrong?
I don’t think you’re completely wrong. I think Randle does have the strength + quicks to be a solid man to man defender. He is just exceptionally prone to lapses defensively and that’s not something that is readily fixable. He’s alarmingly slow to identify what the opposing offense is doing and react, and it’s not going to get any easier when he faces NBA offenses like the Suns and the Spurs. He likely will be a sieve within the scope of team defense.
So you are right that the Lee comparison isn’t perfect, because Randle is weak in a different regard. Perhaps a better comparison is modern day Amar’e. Amar’e is solid but no longer a stud offensively without his burst, and remains clueless on defense. He still has good touch and midrange shooting, and Randle will be a better rebounder. But better rebounding isn’t enough to nearly justify Amare’s big contract.
I’m going to review his end of year performances to see if anything changed, and I might just bump him up a few slots anyway because I’m not too enthralled with all of the guys ahead of him. But I doubt I’ll ever believe too much in Randle, his warts stand out as exceptionally warty to me.
Randle will probably never be an awesome defender, but if he can hold is own one-on-one and play next to a rim protector or in a solid defensive system (preferrably both), i think he’ll be fine. Also, you wouldn’t wait until the 29th pick to get a guy like Davis Lee or Stoudemire, would you? Finally, one of the knocks against Randle was that he didn’t play well against good competition, but with exception to his final game, didn’t he finish off the season pretty solid in that regard?
Randle also might be much worse than those guys but he’s unlikely to be better. Like I said I may move him up quite a bit but I definitely wouldn’t spend a lottery pick if those guys were the best case scenario for a prospect.
He had a good game vs Florida to end the regular season but then he had a pretty bad SEC tourney. At least he started cutting down on his turnovers though.
Cauley-Stein makes Javale McGee look like a genius. His lack of court awareness is jarring; which is the antithesis of what makes great rim protectors. Sure he has great tools, but you blast Wiggins for having mindblowing athleticism and not matching it with his play. The double standard is comical.
I am with you on dropping Gordon and Randle (though that drop seems a little precipitous) but I hope you get on board the Wiggins train soon. Almost all the metrics you cherry picked have completely reversed in the last 6 weeks and his game is finally starting to match the incredible athleticism. The growth alone indicates substantial upside.
Its going to do your analysis great harm to have a slow unathletic PG (Ennis) with highly limited upside in front of Wiggins too much longer.
Out of curiosity, are you forecasting Smart as a PG who can’t distribute or a SG that can’t shoot? A poor man’s Bledsoe doesn’t rate as the #4 pick in this class.
WCS is the best player on the #11 kenpom team. Wiggins is the distant 2nd best player on the #9 kenpom team. I have Wiggins ahead of WCS on my board. So no, I do not believe there is a double standard at play here. I don’t need to bash WCS for his deficiencies bc everybody recognizes them and realizes that he’s not a top 3 pick.
Pretty much everything I hate about Wiggins was completely exposed yesterday so no I am not going to get on board his train. I might move him ahead of Ennis, am never moving him ahead of Smart. His ceiling is capped at #5 on my big board aorn.
Would you care to quantify how you have elected “the best player” on the aforementioned teams? Once you do that perhaps you could demonstrate that it has ANY impact on NBA success.
You also appear to believe that success in college translates to success on the next level. Deandre Kane might be the best NCAA player today. But he is still a late second round pick because he is 24 and doesn’t have all the years of growth ahead of him. Sunday notwithstanding, Wiggins has shown me a ton of growth in the last month+. And its all about development and how much a player can improve in those first 3-4 years.
So you have a guy with LITERALLY a broken back at a position where back problems have decimated careers at 1 and at 2 prospect who has played against elite talent a minimal number of times. Because you don’t like to extrapolate.
It was much easier to project when everyone was in school for 4 years.
I discerned the best players on each team by watching them play a bunch and looking at their stats.
What am I supposed to extrapolate? That Wiggins is going to grow faster than everybody else going forward? I don’t know what growth you’re looking at because I saw a player who was up and down all season long and never legitimately improved his weaknesses. He has questionable work ethic, he’s not particularly bright or competitive, and I don’t see why everybody thinks his future looks so perfectly peachy.
Sorry that you don’t like my conclusions, but I do not believe in Wiggins the way you and everybody else does. If I agreed with everybody’s consensus opinions I wouldn’t have started a blog that takes on against the grain opinions. I shared all of my reasons and I will address any specific questions you have, but I’m not going to change my mind just because you want me to.
I wondered why you excluded Jahii Carson from your list. I know he’s about the size of Tyrion Lannister, and that his steal-rate is bad, but is that really enough to exlude him entirely? I mean, his standing reach is the same as CP3 and he’s a vastly better athlete than CP3. He can also score and shoot very well so why is he so low on the list?
FWIW height + wingspan in tandem are more predictive than reach and Jahii is 2 inches worse than CP3 in both. Sure he’s fast + athletic but at his size + age he should be really great at basketball to get drafted and he’s not. He’s almost certainly going to get abused on defense so there has to be some compelling offensive upside to draft him. I suppose he can get to the rim fairly well, but he’s not much of a finisher given his size and he’s not a great passer either. He also has a reputation for being selfish and a bad teammate, so for a guy with such little appeal why bother? I could stash him in the 71-80 range I suppose but I just don’t see him becoming a useful NBA’er.