2019 NBA Draft Thread

[The Neighborhood Bully 266]

Quote

UNC forward Nassir Little created a stir at the combine when he noted that he was unsure of his role in his year with the Tar Heels - as though his struggles were more about the coaches - but he did point out that he improved a lot in Chapel Hill.

Some NBA types agree. While he's been pegged for the late teens or early 20s, Little has been moving up draft boards as teams focus more on his versatility rather than his shortcomings.

He is a 6-6 forward - a classic tweener - but he has a 7-1 wingspan and has shown the ability to run an offense. That's led, naturally, to Draymond Green comparisons.

That is obviously a stretch. But talent evaluators high on him say that if Little can show that his shot has the potential to improve (he made only 26.9 percent of his 1.4 3-point attempts per game), he could land in the top 15.

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/nba-draft-2019-rumors-news-zion-williamson-agent-search-jarrett-culver-will-land/cj54bc7ppacr1o43wxer66kd7

I'm sure the wingspan caught Welham's attention.

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

We're working out Brandon Clarke

[andrew2018022 15]

3 hours ago, ?4thewin said:

We're working out Brandon Clarke

Oh boy, another forward to add to the logjam

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

59 minutes ago, andrew2018022 said:

Oh boy, another forward to add to the logjam

He's good. Talent is more important and he's a 4/5. 

[andrew2018022 15]

10 hours ago, ?4thewin said:

He's good. Talent is more important and he's a 4/5. 

I'm all for BPA and all that but what would be the point of drafting another tweener 4/5 combo? To draft a backup at 16? To trade AG? What would that accomplish? Is he really that much better than any of the wings that'll be there for us at 16?

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

41 minutes ago, andrew2018022 said:

I'm all for BPA and all that but what would be the point of drafting another tweener 4/5 combo? To draft a backup at 16? To trade AG? What would that accomplish? Is he really that much better than any of the wings that'll be there for us at 16?

1. To accumulate more talent. You don't build a team for October. You build a team for the next 5 years. Maybe he's good and we can trade Isaac or Gordon for a star. Maybe he's good and we can trade him for a star without giving up any of our current young core. Maybe he's just a really really good backup center who gives us something different to pair with Bamba in the rotation. 

2. Utah had 7 guys filling pg/sg minutes when they drafted Mitchell. You think they regret it?

3. There's overwhelming likelihood we get a backup wing at 16. 

4. While I don't necessarily agree with them, there's a very large subsection of NBA draft people that think Clarke is the second or third best player in this draft. He's going to slip because he's 22, undersized, not long and can't currently shoot threes. But he led the nation in both offensive rating and defensive rating, had a box score plus minus that was better than any player in college basketball (with the exception of Zion) since the 10/11 season which is the first year bballref has it, and for conventional stats shot 71% on two pointers with 3.2 blocks per game. 

 

[andrew2018022 15]

7 hours ago, ?4thewin said:

1. To accumulate more talent. You don't build a team for October. You build a team for the next 5 years. Maybe he's good and we can trade Isaac or Gordon for a star. Maybe he's good and we can trade him for a star without giving up any of our current young core. Maybe he's just a really really good backup center who gives us something different to pair with Bamba in the rotation. 

2. Utah had 7 guys filling pg/sg minutes when they drafted Mitchell. You think they regret it?

3. There's overwhelming likelihood we get a backup wing at 16. 

4. While I don't necessarily agree with them, there's a very large subsection of NBA draft people that think Clarke is the second or third best player in this draft. He's going to slip because he's 22, undersized, not long and can't currently shoot threes. But he led the nation in both offensive rating and defensive rating, had a box score plus minus that was better than any player in college basketball (with the exception of Zion) since the 10/11 season which is the first year bballref has it, and for conventional stats shot 71% on two pointers with 3.2 blocks per game. 

 

His age and the fact that he cant space the floor is what concerns me. Is his length really a concern? I cant find a reliable source for his wingspan, but some say its 7 feet, some say its 6'10". that's really good for a 6'8" guy. He scores the ball with really good efficiency, but if you cant shoot the 3 in the modern NBA, you're going to struggle for minutes. I guess Hetzel could work with him on his 3, but I'm just not 100% sold on Clarke as a prospect over someone like Porter or Alexander-Walker or Langford. His offensive and defensive ratings are really good, but are those a product of him being THAT good, or of him being on a really efficient Gonzaga team?

[JustBeCool 1]

On 5/26/2019 at 10:58 AM, ?4thewin said:

1. To accumulate more talent. You don't build a team for October. You build a team for the next 5 years. Maybe he's good and we can trade Isaac or Gordon for a star. Maybe he's good and we can trade him for a star without giving up any of our current young core. Maybe he's just a really really good backup center who gives us something different to pair with Bamba in the rotation. 

2. Utah had 7 guys filling pg/sg minutes when they drafted Mitchell. You think they regret it?

3. There's overwhelming likelihood we get a backup wing at 16. 

4. While I don't necessarily agree with them, there's a very large subsection of NBA draft people that think Clarke is the second or third best player in this draft. He's going to slip because he's 22, undersized, not long and can't currently shoot threes. But he led the nation in both offensive rating and defensive rating, had a box score plus minus that was better than any player in college basketball (with the exception of Zion) since the 10/11 season which is the first year bballref has it, and for conventional stats shot 71% on two pointers with 3.2 blocks per game. 

 

On offense he reminds me a lot of Ben Simmons... minus all of the playmaking ability ofcourse lol. Pretty good finisher at the rim, hard to stop once he gets rolling, and he has a solid floater/spin hook. I don't know if he has star potential but he could definitely be a solid player. 

[The Neighborhood Bully 266]

Quote

Although Clarke has been hyped by some as a possible late-lottery selection, it should be of extreme note that essentially every NBA scout I’ve spoken with about Clarke this season is moderately to highly concerned. For what it’s worth, I personally share that trepidation, dating back to watching him play in person against North Carolina in Chapel Hill in December. As I understand it, Clarke’s wildly impressive statistical profile has made a good case for him from an analytically-minded perspective, but those numbers aren’t necessarily going to dictate whether or not a team decides to pick him, particularly with an early selection. While it’s not out of the question Clarke gets picked somewhere between 10 and 15, and he’s been scheduling workouts for teams in that range, there’s some serious risk built in if that were to happen. I’m not making those picks, but personally, I wouldn’t consider him until the 20s.

At the combine, Clarke measured at 6’8.25” in shoes with an equal 6’8.25” wingspan and a 8’6” standing reach. Length-wise, Clarke had the shortest hands (8.25 inches) of any big at the combine. Width-wise (9.5 inches) he was about average. I don’t put too much stock into the athletic testing overall, but he did predictably post a 34” standing vertical and 40.5” max vert. The thing is that none of this is especially surprising: if you watched him closely all season, you knew that he was essentially a big in the body of a wing, who was dominating by dint of elite vertical explosiveness and innate ability to alter shots and cover ground. We’ve seen him do it so often that it’s nearly impossible to throw out the highlight-caliber plays from our minds. Yet when projecting Clarke at the NBA level, that might be the only way to rationally think about his body of work. I’m not concerned about Clarke defensively—he’s proven he can make impact plays and offer some versatility—but the big issue here is what role he plays on offense.

Clarke’s size limitations might inhibit him in one meaningful way: his ability to play in traffic. A huge part of why he was so efficient this season is that he thrives off of tip-ins and offensive rebounds—in nearly every game he played in, he was the oldest (he’ll turn 23 years old in September) and most athletic player. Gonzaga, of course, plays a majority of its games in the West Coast Conference, which isn’t exactly a strong conference. If you focus on the games they played in which he faced taller opposition—the North Carolina game I saw was a good example—teams that were able to throw fresh bodies at him had some success. Clarke had a damn good season, and there were games where he dominated good competition, as well. But there’s enough to wonder about how much of the easy stuff keeps coming easily to him, particularly as someone who’s almost exclusively a right-hand finisher.

The biggest concern for me is role functionality: he’ll run the floor and finish plays, but he’s probably not big or skilled enough to be a pick-and-roll threat, and you’re not going to throw him the ball on the block. Right now, he can pretty much only create shots for himself consistently off one or two dribbles while facing up, and he’s almost always trying to spin back to his right hand or shoot over someone. And I don’t think it’s safe to assume he’ll transform himself into an NBA-caliber shooter simply because he’s made some small improvements in that area: if you’ve watched Clarke shoot solo, there’s just not a lot of reason to think his jumper is going to translate. He’s reworked it, but there are a lot of moving parts, and his best hope is probably being able to hit enough corner threes to expand the threat he presents on offense to where he can essentially be a stretch four. Clarke shot 69% from the foul line, and only attempted 15 threes all season. Most NBA teams aren’t optimistic in that department, as best I can tell. It’s more likely that with his limitations, he’s mostly playing a “dunker” role on the baseline, one that suits his talents, but also inhibits some of the things you can run with him on the floor if he’s a non-shooter.

https://www.si.com/nba/2019/05/28/nba-draft-2019-lottery-prospects-deandre-hunter-romeo-langford

[Fultz4thewin 2,464]

19 minutes ago, The Neighborhood Bully said:

https://www.si.com/nba/2019/05/28/nba-draft-2019-lottery-prospects-deandre-hunter-romeo-langford

3) Let’s start with the what will likely seem the most preposterous part of the case for Brandon Clarke: that I believe he will shoot. The primary reason is laid out in a piece written by Cole a few weeks ago, namely Clarke’s innate touch 15 feet and in.

But let’s add some numbers to this argument. Brandon Clarke has now taken 261 2-point jumpers in his career. He has made 119 of them, and 70 of them are unassisted. Those are fairly incredible numbers for a college PF/C.

To put them in perspective, Jordan Bell, a player to whom Clarke will almost certainly be compared, made 51 2-point jumpers of any kind in his entire 3 year career. Clarke has only played two-and-a-half so far. It’s one of the many ways which Clarke makes the college version of Bell, a player I loved, look almost like a poor man’s version of himself.

Add these numbers, the noticeable touch, the obvious hard work and dedication it took to rebuild his jumper, not to mention the flexibility of his brain to create new synaptic connections and neural pathways which would allow such an alteration to take hold at all, and it’s not difficult to construct an argument that Clarke has a reasonable chance to learn how to shoot from 3.

4) Now let’s forget that part of the argument entirely. That’s the extreme upside case in which Clarke ends up possibly +2 or even +3 on offense in addition to his almost certain defensive contributions. Instead, let’s just consider what Clarke can already do on offense and why he’ll have the possibility to be a positive offensive piece regardless of an ability to extend his range, especially if he finds his way onto a team with a pull-up/step-back threat and a true big who can shoot.

5) So what can Clarke do on offense that separates him from players like Jordan Bell and perhaps, in some ways, even Draymond Green. First, let’s just start with the point we just went over: he can make shots from three to seventeen feet, even shots on the move, at easily better than 40 percent rates, which means he won’t get stuck as Jordan Bell and many such players do in that range. Those shots for Clarke are often buckets.

https://www.thestepien.com/2019/01/18/draft-notes-easy-case-brandon-clarke/

[Just a regular Magic fan 38]

I wouldn't mind Clarke. I know it goes against the common trend in regards to court spacing, but at least he can consistently shoot the mid-range jumper, which is something I thought we needed last year when we couldn't buy a 3 pointer or a layup.

[Nyce_1 311]

Cam Johnson wagon.