All Activity

Sorry, big NO for me.

I've been thinking... I wonder if we could take on Smart and Poole and the #6 pick for a package around Anthony, Isaac, TDS and the #16 pick. It would clean up Washington's books a lot, and I even think they could flip Isaac for another pick, and we could get a blend of vet offense and defense plus a great pick.

I don’t think it should be a dominant factor, but in my opinion it can and should be taken into consideration if you have a bunch of candidates who are close. I disagree that there’s something intrinsically wrong with getting the fan base excited. Again, not like we’ve been hitting home runs with picks in the 16-25 range. Might as well pick someone who engages fan interest if we think they’re a viable candidate.

Especially because i was going to tout Mathurin as a possible sneaky pick-up for the Magic in the offseason. But now that he pulled a Nick, no dice!

I’m actually an FSU fan and I’m pitching the young man, so that’s got to mean something about Clayton as a leader and player ❤️

Nice Anderson reference!

Personally don't care where he went to college or what excites the fans on draft day and I don't think that should be factored into decisions. I just want to pick the best basketball player. Winning excites the fans. Fans booed the draft pick of Franz Wagner.

There’s also the UF angle. I think drafting Clayton would excite Magic Fans a great deal, many of whom also root for UF. It’s an intangible, but should not be ignored. What’s wrong with adding a little excitement once in awhile? Especially in a case like this where it costs very little. Can anyone name for me any recent Magic draft picks who were drafted higher than 8 who made a significant impact on the team? What do we have to lose?

I'm by no means Walter Clayton Jrs biggest fan, I like him, i'd be happy with drafting him, but I'm not sold he's some star or anything. That being said, inspired by your comment I went to barttorvik to look for similar statistical profiles to him, and now granted I used arbitrary cut off points.. (if you're interested it was: Games Played ≥ 15; Assist % ≥ 20; Ast/TO Ratio ≥ 1.5; 2P FG % ≥ 0.5; 3P FG % ≥ 0.37; 3PA/100 Poss ≥ 12; Free Throw % ≥ 0.8) ..but the only drafted player that met those thresholds (that, again, I derived from Walter Clayton Jrs profile) was 2012 Damian Lillard. But, there were also a bunch of undrafted, non prospect, scoring PGs guys like Max Abmas in 2021, Steven Ashworth in 2023 etc. If you lower some of the thresholds slightly to account for an element of randomness, and filter only for draft picks (because otherwise you get a long long list of random names and filtering for draft picks is kind of short hand for filtering out guys who played in weird low conferences or never had NBA athleticism to be considered a prospect) you get names like: Coby White Jimmer Fredette Trae Young Klay Thompson Cameron Payne Isaiah Cannan Shelvin Mack Jared Butler (Just FYI I feel like we should asterix Trae Young, and to a certain extent Lillard and Thompson because they all scored on more volume than Clayton did and I think were all more clearly NBA caliber offensive creators hence why all were high draft picks) It's a weird list that I think helps to identify the difficulty in evaluating a guy like Clayton, because there have been a lot of star NCAA guards that weren't great NBA players... But he was also statistically very impressive and he lead a team to a national championship which adds sort of 'intangible' points.

Indiana sold game 4 in that 4th quarter. That's a bad loss. Didn't help that Mathurin gave them the Nick Anderson treatment on three straight FTs late either.

Just to have some fun, I wanted to compare Brunson and Clayton Jr's college stats. Physically both are very similar. Brunson: https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/jalen-brunson-1.html Clayton Jr: https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/walter-claytonjr-1.html In terms of shooting efficiency and passing efficiency, Brunson's numbers were better, but both led their teams to national championships and play a similar game. Given our real need for offensive leadership and buckets, I'd be glad to select Clayton Jr with our second 1st rounder. Will he be as good as Brunson? I have no idea.

BREAKING: As reported by other analysts, the Spurs have fielded several calls from opposing teams in regards to their #2 pick in the upcoming draft. The Pelicans have offered the Spurs pick #7, Herb Jones and some draft assets, to which the Spurs then asked to have Trey Murphy and Devin Vassell included— while not untouchable, the Pelicans are hesitant to move Trey Murphy has they think he is set for an all-star calibre season. While the Spurs did not provide an official counteroffer to the Pelicans, New Orleans are considering an adjustment to their offer which does include Trey Murphy. The Spurs are likely to stick to their guns and draft Dylan Harper, however this deal is the furthest they have gone with talks in the lead up to the draft. More to come.

I have my concerns about Fleming but he's legitimately huge enough where you could maybe play him at the 5 and the jumper looks good (albeit with some orange flags). I think in the 20s it's a fine swing on upside. I still don't expect we'll actually make this pick though.

Agree and I appreciate you mentioning the playoff rotation bit. Seems like he could move into the KCP/Harris spots fairly well.

I like Nique Clifford a lot. It's easy to imagine him in a playoff rotation given his skill set. Not sure he'd be my first choice at 16 depending on who's on the board but I wouldn't be upset by it at all. It feels low upside given he's 23 but a 6'5 guy who plays defense, rebounds like a big and can shoot the ball and pass and dribble some. Most teams are looking for guys like that. I guess the sort of reasonable best case is like Josh Hart with a better jumper and worse handle/playmaking.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/nba-mock-draft-40-the-latest-first-round-projections-plus-a-trade-that-could-shake-up-the-lottery-140311550.html I get it but I'm not sure we need more guys like this. Maybe he replaces JI, assuming we trade JI?

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/nba-mock-draft-40-the-latest-first-round-projections-plus-a-trade-that-could-shake-up-the-lottery-140311550.html Another obvious Weltman guy.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/nba-mock-draft-40-the-latest-first-round-projections-plus-a-trade-that-could-shake-up-the-lottery-140311550.html An obvious Weltman guy.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/nba-mock-draft-40-the-latest-first-round-projections-plus-a-trade-that-could-shake-up-the-lottery-140311550.html If we did keep Jalen running point, Kon would be great next to him.

I agree with CT, there're sports that leaves a lot less recover time than NBA basketball, even a contact sport like rugby that has a schedule condensed as hell. End of april, you've a full month to disconnect if you please, and then another full month to work on basics.

The tournament starts on 27th August and runs for at most 3 weeks ish provided Germany get to the final. Even if Franz reports a month before for warm up games and practices that's the end of July. Our season finished at the end of April. That's three months to rest/work on his game/whatever before the tournament and another 3 weeks the other side of the tournament before training camp. If anything it's better for us he gets to practice the work he's put in on his game in a live game setting before the NBA season rather than trying things out for the first time in an NBA game. These guys are all playing pick up all summer anyway, Paolo always gets clipped putting up buckets on a bunch of nobody's in Seattle with Jamal Crawford or whatever.

But he’s not going to have time to rest from the season, and work on his game. You don’t get the needed practice and repetition when you’re playing with a national team. I’m a little surprised Orlando is letting him play again this summer.

I think he's got a similar upside to Franz... just shorter with a better shot. Vecenie has Kon ranked #3 overall. If we loved him (or someone like him between picks 3-5), I wonder what it'd take to move up? I'm also really curious about Harper's upside. While I know this is an NBA board, a couple of years ago in the NFL, the Texans made a bold move by moving up to select a DE they loved, in addition to picking a stud QB near the very top. I wish Weltman had this kind of vision and courage to really swing for the fences.

He's playing in a high level tournament so I'm ok with it. 1 thing with Franz he's absolute basketball nut!! He works on his craft. He just needs to become a 35% 3 point shooter and he's guaranteed all NBA every season. Franz is SPECIAL

Yes. Our main problem is that we just didn't lose enough games. If we'd only lost more games the past 12 years or so, we'd be phenomenal today. If we really tried hard, maybe we could have gone 3-4 years without winning a single game! Perhaps that's something we can still aspire to in the future.