CTMagicUK

Except Brian Shmitz is a local beat writer who knows nothing about basketball. Draftexpress is a professional company that literally makes money off of it's scouting. But ya know, those are the same thing. ("Thank you for running your website... we refer to it as the Wall Street Journal for the NBA Draft."- Sam Presti about Draftexpress. ) Also isn't it more telling that you only apparently judge a player with your own eyes and don't let things like stats, measurements and the findings of others affect your own opinion. What you're essentially saying here is that even when someone slaps you around the face with game footage of Young being an average athlete and of measurements showing he's an average athlete you're still willing to believe he's an elite athlete because you've been a fan of him all along. But we must be wrong. The people who go by more than just their gut feeling. The people who look with their eyes and see but also allow stats and other facts to affect their judgement because that's the rational way to judge everything. Let's say you see a picture of a restaurant online. Maybe you even check out the menu and think it sounds awesome. Maybe you even saw the chef cook a nice meal once. Would you decide that's the restaurant you're going to eat at even if everybody, including professional food critics, said it was awful? Even if they showed you pictures of the food looking awful? That's essentially how you're acting here.

No he couldn't. He'd probably want as much money as Afflalo and he's not half the shooter that Afflalo is. If we had Turner at the 2/3 along with Dipo and our rookie our spacing would be the worst in the league.

Young is nothing like Lance Stephenson. He's not half the ball handler, passer or finisher that Stephenson is, he can't shoot off the dribble like him and I hate to break it to everybody but he's not as athletic as that one dunk against UCONN suggested. He's an average athlete. (boy am I going to have to swallow my pride if we draft this guy, I just honestly don't see what people see in him, I'd take Stauskas over him every time.)

Interesting point I never thought about, they probably know each other and they'll play together this summer in the Fiba world cup.

Why is this a thing? Kobe Bryant didn't have college experience. Kevin Garnett didn't. Dwight Howard didn't. Lebron didn't. Tracy McGrady didn't. Talent is talent no matter where it plays.

Saw that earlier. Guy's already eligible to play in college at 16 and apparently will play at Kansas for 2 years. Think he already has a team in Europe though who are on board with him playing at Kansas for 2 years before he goes back and plays for them.

This to me is the biggest misconception about Smart that Smart supporters use to support him. That he didn't play with good players. In my opinion that OK State team should have been a final 4 team. They had at least 3 NBA draft picks in their starting lineup as well as a capable big up front (before he got injured). They weren't coached terribly well and they had some spacing issues but they had a team good enough. Smart was obviously the best player but he had enough pieces around him where, at the college level, he should have averaged more assists than he did. Russ Smith is a notorious chucker who converted from SG to PG in his last year in college and (per 40 mins) he averaged more assists than Smart last year.

I'd take him for the right price (and assuming Jameer is gone), he's a capable back up.

"According to our sources" If you look on the DX website Givony manages to get an interview with Henny and they seem to know each other pretty well (presumably because they both spent a lot of time scouting the same players when Rob was Director of International Scouting for the Thunder) and when I saw that I thought about how last year Givony had us drafting Romero Osby in the 2nd round despite not even having a scouting page for Osby (at the time he also sited a "tip" that the Magic really liked Osby).

Almost OT but there's a vid on Draftexpress of Jonathan Givony getting an interview with Rob at the draft and they clearly know each other (probably since Givony does a lot of International scouting and Rob was head of international scouting for the Thunder) and then I remembered that last year, out of the blue Givony had us drafting Osby in the 2nd round (even though he'd never even added a scouting report on him or given him a draft page) and cited a "tip off" that that's who we'd draft. Probably nothing since I'm sure Givony knows a lot of our scouts as well but still something that intrigued me.

Their height and the fact that one of them plays for a playoff team. Plus Lillard has made a few game winners.

"The Celtics and Lakers will both get top 3 because the NBA is rigged" where are these people at now?

There should be a rule against a team getting 3 1st overall picks in 4 years. Although I do enjoy the thought of the collective groan of Parker, Wiggins and Embiid as they see Cleveland get the #1 pick. I'm worried about the Magic's shot at Exum though at 4. Cleveland will go Wiggins or Embiid I think since they make the most sense. Bucks will probably take the remaining player out of Wiggins and Embiid. 76ers could very well take Exum if they don't like Parker. (I think with a shot blocker like Noel, Parker makes sense but they're apparently very high on Exum too) Magic have one of Parker/Exum. That's how I see it going down. Kind of wish the Cavs hadn't fired their GM so they could have drafted Julius Randle at #1.

But the math behind it is still 100% correct. So calling the numbers "completely wrong" just because you don't understand the process undergone to obtain those numbers would be ridiculous.

That would be because of the The Law of Total Probability. Basically the probability of an event A happening (say the Magic getting the 2nd pick, not 3rd pick for simplicity) is equal to the sum of the probability that A happens conditional on all of the events Bn ( so long as the Bn are pairwise disjoint and form the entire sample space which they do since in this case they are "insert lottery team here" gets the number 1 pick) multiplied by the probability of said Bn happening. In essence the probability of the Magic picking second is the probability of the magic picking second given that the sixers pick first, multiplied by the probability of the sixers picking first added to the probability of the magic picking second given that the Timberwolves pick 1st multiplied by the probability that they pick first etc etc. Obviously picking 3rd adds an extra layer as you have to use picking second as well. In essence it's not the "worst case" that the Suns/Wolves pick 1st/2nd since the probability of that happening is so ridiculously small that it adds very little to our outcome when we add up the numbers in the law of total probability. Now I haven't checked the above numbers but since every source I can find lists them I assume they're correct because someone out there would have worked it out differently otherwise. TL;DR you're wrong.

Of course the odds increase for us getting the 2nd pick conditional on Milwaukee getting the 1st pick but right now, as it stands, before any ping pong balls move, the Magic have a 15.7% chance at the 2nd pick. That's not "completely wrong", that's true.

So we have a 70% chance of top 4? That's not too bad..

Just because a guy on the radio said it doesn't mean it holds any weight what so ever.

It's easy to say this (i think I may have even said something similar at some point) because Dwight looks awful in the post but this is flat out not true. He may have better post footwork and more fluid post moves than Howard but he doesn't have the strength to post up NBA guys consistently or finish over them. Against Patric Young (a probable 2nd round pick) he couldn't even establish position for most of the game. Of course with 4 or 5 years of work on his strength and BBIQ and just game in general I'd fully expect Embiid to be a much more talented post scorer than Dwight.

I love this time of year because it's when you realize that at least half the guys in the NBA media know precisely nothing about the NBA prospects. There's a caption in a photo of David Aldridge's article on Centers in the draft that says "Embiid's defense is already at an NBA level". There's also a video over on Draftexpress called "Joel Embiid Vs NBA Caliber Centers" which contains footage of Embiid getting deep sealed on the block by Patric Young and Cameron Ridley and giving up wide open 3's and getting beaten off the bounce by Isaiah Austin. Embiid has ridiculous defensive (and offensive) potential but to say he's currently at an NBA level at anything other than being big and athletic is wrong. (video is here btw for those interested:http://www.draftexpress.com/article/Joel-Embiid-vs-NBA-Caliber-Centers-Video-Analysis-4546)

The best match for both team and player is Utah with Jabari Parker in my opinion. They already have a solid pg and a couple of bigs to play defense and block shots. He'd literally have to just step in and score.

Pacers taking it to the Heat at the minute. Really playing great basketball. Nice to see a game where the Heat don't shoot 30 FT's+.

I'd say there's precisely a zero % chance of the Magic drafting Aaron Gordon at 3 or even 5.