The other thing this means is the 2010 draft has an outside shot to be one of the great center drafts ever. The reason is there are just so many talented big guys in this draft that a few of them emerging as stars isn’t a difficult thing to see. Of course to be considered a truly great center draft at least one player will need to emerge as an all-time great and the only player who would seem to have such potential going in is DeMarcus Cousins.

The best center drafts ever would be:

• 1992: Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning: No draft with an all-timer featured a 2^nd-best center as good as Mourning. Until another draft produces and all-timer with another HOFer, 1992 is the best center draft ever.
• 1984: Hakeem Olajuwon and Kevin Willis: Hakeem ranks as an all-timer and Willis was a one-time all-star who played a long, productive career.
• 1956: Bill Russell, 1959 Wilt Chamberlain and 1969: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: I’m not going to rank one over the other here. These 3 are next in line, because the dominance of the individual involved even though no other prominent centers came out of the drafts.
• 1970: Bob Lanier, Dave Cowens and Dan Issel: Three HOFers and Cowens has a MVP to his credit.
• 1996: Marcus Camby, Jermaine O’Neal, Erick Dampier and Zydranus Ilgauskas: Even though there’s no player here who would top Ewing or Robinson, as a group I feel they’re strong enough to rank ahead of ’85 and ’87.
• 1985: Patrick Ewing, with a deep but unimpressive group of Benoit Benjamin, Jon Koncak, Joe Kleine, Bill Wennington and Manute Bol behind him. This was also the first year Ardvydas Sabonis was drafted, but this was by the Hawks. The Hawks never signed him and lost his rights after a season. He was selected by Portland in 1986 and came to the NBA 10 years later, so it is hard to include him here.
• 1987: David Robinson: Worth a mention here, but at the bottom of the best.

That’s about it. I didn’t include the drafts of the aughts, because they’re still incomplete. I’ll say that ’02: Yao and Stoudemire, ’04: Howard, ’05: Bogut and Bynum and ’07: Oden, Horford and Noah, all still have a shot at greatness. For the ’10 class to join the greats at least a couple of players would need to get to HOF level. I feel this is a real possibility, simply because of the sheer number of prospects who at the very least have something to like about them. With players so tall and long, the high end is much higher than it would be with forwards and guards. The chances that at least a few of the wide wingspan gang of 2010 exceed expectations is pretty good. If that happens, this is going to be a legendary center class.

But that is something for pundits to analyze some 20 years down the road. Right now most fans care only about the big LeBron sweepstakes. That could remake the league, so the interest is understandable. As far as the 2010 draft goes, here are the grades. As always, I grade on a curve. 3 As, 6 Bs, 12 Cs, 6 Ds and 3 Fs. I take into account mainly how much the team improved by how they used their draft picks, but some points are added/deducted for whether the pick was a reach or a good value.

A: Sacramento Kings: DeMarcus Cousins and Hassan Whiteside: Might as well give the top grade to the team that drafted the two centers with the most upside in a potentially great center draft. The players join what is suddenly a tall and deep frontline in Sacramento. Both players were a great value for when they were drafted. Both players posted numbers in college that suggest they’re impact players in the NBA. These are the types of players teams should be drafting when they get a chance. Better to swing for the fences with players like this than draft a role player whose biggest asset is he’s a solid citizen. I’m not saying it isn’t important that teams weigh everything, including attitude and off court issues. But great players win in this leagues and any chance to acquire such a player should be jumped at. Solid role players are out there and fairly easy to find. The Kings have had 3 drafts in a row now that would rank between solid and excellent. Considering the competition in the Pacific division, they seem like the team most likely to step up and challenge the Lakers for divisional supremacy. The downside here is the Kings could be building the JailBlazers of the teens.

A: New Jersey Nets: Derrick Favors and Damion James:  I’m glad they didn’t fall for Wesley Johnson’s allure. Derrick Favors is a very solid prospect and a potential star. He looks like he could play either PF or center and is one of the few players in the draft with a chance to become a perennial all-star. Damion James was good value for where they drafted. The fact that James came in the Kidd trade really isn’t a negative any longer as the Kidd era had run its course.  The Nets added two good pieces and appear to be in the running for the at least one impact FA, so it looks like they’ll have a good summer after a terrible season.

A: Philadelphia 76ers: Evan Turner: They got the best player in the draft and that’s never a bad thing. He’s the likely ROY and will go a long way toward getting this franchise back on track. The talent and situation for a big turnaround is here. They have a new coach in Collins. They have changed their rotation fairly significantly. There are youngsters in Holiday and Speights who seem ready to become forces. And they bring in Evan Turner who looks to me like a SF on the level of Grant Hill or Scottie Pippen. These things don’t always work out, but if there’s one team not involved in the FA royal rumble that seems primed for breaking out, it is Philly.

B: Washington Wizards: John Wall, Kevin Seraphin, Trevor Booker and the right to pay Kirk Hinrich $17 million over 2 years. They gave up Antwawn Jamison’s really bad contract. The most important thing they got was a new start. What isn’t so good is that the guy who brought everything crashing down will be back and he plays the same position as Wall. We’ll see how that goes, but I doubt Arenas will be asked to stick around if he’s anything less than a strong, but humble veteran presence. Wall should be anywhere from solid to fantastic as a player. I’ve expressed some doubts that he’s on the level of Rose or Rondo, but he’s going to have a strong positive impact no matter what and that’s what this team needs right now. I’m also on board with the Hinrich deal. It netted them a center in what is a very deep crop. When a team is rebuilding the more young bodies brought in, the better. Hinrich will be expensive, but it is only for two years that will be spent mostly piecing together the team for the Wall era.  That lessens the impact of his oversized contract.

B: Oklahoma City Thunder: Added Cole Aldrich, Daequan Cook, Tibor Pleiss and a future Clippers #1. The Thunder are a smart bunch. They’re buying when everyone is selling. They added a couple of centers to a frontcourt in need of some depth. Aldrich particularly could thrive here if asked only to rebound and defend. They also got a future Clippers #1 draft pick. Think about that. The Clippers are a team that has made the playoffs something like 4 times in 32 years. I know there is lottery protection on the pick, but that eventually wears off. Considering the history here, I like the odds of this turning into a very good deal.

B: Indiana Pacers: Paul George and Lance Stephenson: I like the George pick a lot. They got a player with good potential and a high enough floor that he brings good value whether he reaches his max potential or not. What I like best about the pick is it represents a change for the Pacers from the last couple of drafts. They had been going in the direction of drafting college stars with limited pro potential, specifically Brandon Rush and Tyler Hansbrough. I don’t know if this was an organizational philosophy, or just the way the draft fell for them. But in both cases they reached for a player with a rep bigger than his potential. George is the opposite. He’s a terrific athlete with the potential to become a star.

B: LA Lakers: Derrick Caracter and Devin Ebanks in round two. First round pick was sent to Memphis as part of the Pau Gasol trade. The Gasol deal has paid such huge dividends that they get upped to a B for whatever small part their use of this pick had in that deal. As for Caracter and Ebanks, I just don’t get why the defending champs would add a couple of guys with past attitude issues. Seriously, neither player has shown enough that they’re upside is worth the risk. The Lakers’ hold on the title is tenuous at best going into 2011. Anything that could bring them down a notch would likely prevent a repeat. The chance might be small, but why risk it with players like these two?

B: Milwaukee Bucks: Larry Sanders, Darington Hobson, Jerome James and Tiny Gallon: What I like about the Bucks’ draft is they went with the strength of the draft. I’m not sure I care much for when the players were drafted and in each case I would have taken a different player. But they added 3 centers in a draft that was strong at that position. There’s a good chance that one or two of the three will exceed expectations and make a strong impact. That they filled their perimeter needs before the draft by taking Maggette and Douglas-Roberts off the hands of teams looking to dump contracts suggests that this was a team with a plan that came together nicely.

B: San Antonio Spurs: James Anderson: Drafting low in round one, the Spurs have had no problem adding players like George Hill, Dujuan Blair and now James Anderson. While their continued elite status is tied to the continued health of Tim Duncan, this bunch is clearly going to do everything they can to keep the supporting cast strong. Anderson should be able to step right in and help out as a shooter.

C: Toronto Raptors: Ed Davis. Davis is a good fit and a great value for where he was drafted. The Raps could use a worker/grinder like Davis whether or not Bosh stays. Not that a solid workmanlike draftee coming in and doing better than expected is going to make up for losing Bosh. But they did well here.

C: Miami Heat: Dexter Pittman and Jarvis Vanardo. Traded pick to OKC with Daequan Cook for the cap relief that comes with it. The Heat went all in here. Putting themselves in place to add a couple of FAs to Wade is a great plan and there was certainly nothing available at 18 that could top this planned coup. Like the rest of the cap space teams, the grade is really an incomplete and the draft was inconsequential. What I like is they went big with Pittman and Vanardo in round 2. Should they land one or more big FAs to play next to Wade, players like this who can rebound and block shots will be good support players to have around.

C: Chicago Bulls: Traded pick for cap relief: I doubt any of the FA-obsessed teams changed their position for the positive as much as the Bulls. With enough cap space for two big deals, LeBron is less of an all-or-nothing type of deal. There are several different combinations of FAs whose addition to the core would vault the team to elite status. Of course ten years ago the Bulls were primed to add Grant Hill, Tim Duncan or Tracy McGrady to the young core of Elton Brand and Ron Artest. That didn’t go so well. Neither has any other big deal the Bulls have made in the post-dynasty era. Like Miami, this grade is really an incomplete. We’ll see in a few weeks whether or not this becomes an A+ or a F-.

C: Utah Jazz: Gordon Hayward: Their original pick went to Memphis in the Kyle Korver deal. This pick came from New York in a trade where they sent Tom Gugliotta to Phoenix. I think. Hayward was an OK pick here. He has enough upside to justify grabbing him this high. They also get kudos for turning Gugliotta into something good 6 years down the line. I’d also say dealing a late #1 pick was worth having Korver around.

C: Detroit Pistons: Greg Monroe and Terrico White: I can’t say these are bad picks. Monroe looks like he’ll help inside and the Pistons could use such a player. White is a reach, but has shown some signs. The Pistons are a team in a bad place right now with some bad contracts that will likely strangle the team for at least a couple of years. Monroe and White are going to do little to change that.

C: Orlando Magic: Daniel Orton: Smart pick up. Orton’s value was down after a tough pre-draft run. He’s talented enough that bringing him in for a 2-year look at the cost of a late first round draft pick is a pretty smart move considering the potential payoff.

C: Minnesota Timberwolves: Wesley Johnson, Lazar Hayward, Hamady N’Diaye, Martell Webster, a couple of players they’ll stash overseas. The price for the #1’s was Ty Lawson and Rodney Carney. I guess my feeling is: This is all they got? In a draft where they held three #1s and six overall picks, they come away with 3 mediocre SFs, a couple of players stashed overseas and Hamady N’Diaye. The Timberwolves should have owned this draft and used it to rebuild their core. Instead they passed on a player with great potential for one with solid role player potential. Johnson was a crazy reach at #4. I know he has some nice skills, but passing on a franchise-changing talent like Cousins for him is the type of move that keeps franchises mired in mediocrity for years. The point of trading stars for future draft picks is that the future draft picks remake the team into a force again. I’m just not sure the Timberwolves get this.

C: Memphis Grizzlies: Xavier Henry, Greivis Vasquez and a couple million in exchange for sending Dominique Jones to division rival Dallas. Gave up Pau Gasol and Steven Hunter to acquire the extra picks. Henry and Vasquez are both good enough players for their draft positions. Henry gives them a gunner and potential all-star down the line, Vasquez can run an offense. Both should fit in the backcourt mix here. What bugs me is the same thing with the Timberwolves. This is a team that owned 3 #1 picks going in and this is the best they could do? The idea behind accumulating draft picks is to stock a team that is rebuilding for the future. The Grizzlies added a couple of OK pieces to a crowded backcourt, but really should have improved themselves a lot more.

C: Atlanta Hawks: Jordan Crawford: Good value and he could help in easing the possible loss of Johnson. He does duplicate what Jamal Crawford does some, but he’s a good player and a team never should try to limit how many of those are on the roster.

C: Dallas Mavericks: Original pick was part of deal for Jason Kidd. They paid a small amount to Memphis for Dominique Jones. This is a smart move by the Mavs, paying a pittance for the right to draft Dominique Jones. He’s a decent value at this point and bringing another good, young player is never a bad thing. The Kidd deal also still gets a thumbs up from me. It has helped the team stay competitive and relevant, even if the cost was a little high.

C: LA Clippers: Al-Farouq Aminu, Eric Bledsoe and Willie Warren. Traded a future #1. Nothing here that blows me away, but I could make a case for each move individually. Aminu wasn’t the best player on the board at #8, but his upside could make him the best pick. Bledsoe never really got a chance to shine at Kentucky and his numbers suggest he could be something of a surprise in the pros. I was never on board with the hype that surrounded Warren, but he did fall too much and was a bargain when they got him. I don’t know that a team that frequents the lottery as often as the Clipps does should be so reckless in dealing future #1s. We’ll know more about this draft in a few years. All the players are young and will likely be brought along slowly.

C: Houston Rockets: Patrick Patterson: Patterson is a reach here. That isn’t to say that the clever bunch that operates this team won’t find a productive way to utilize him. They seem to go for players like Patterson whose best stat is a high FG pct. This is probably due to a preference for low-mistake role players. It works well for them, so I won’t be too critical. I can’t give them much more than a C though.

D: Portland Trailblazers: Added Luke Babbitt, Elliott Williams and Ryan Gomes, traded Martell Webster: Babbitt and Williams are both solid picks who should give the team the flexibility to go bigger or smaller. Williams might even solve the PG problem that has held the team back some during their rise. In talent they did better than most teams. The reason for the low grade is they fired the GM who built this team into a contender. Kevin Pritchard has owned the draft since his first one in 2006 and he has used the draft better than few GMs before or since to build his team into a contender. Despite his success the Blazers have decided to move forward without him and this seems like a mistake. GMs who are smarter than their peers are a rare thing. The Blazers had one and probably have no idea what they’re losing here. While Pritchard might eventually be remembered as the guy who passed on Kevin Durant for a center who never was healthy enough to make an impact, he was the one who built this Blazers team into what it is. If Oden can come back they’ll be right there with the Thunder and the winner of the LeBron sweepstakes battling for league supremacy in the teens. I hope Kevin Pritchard finds a new GM gig, because the draft is much more entertaining when he’s involved.

D: Cleveland Cavaliers: Traded pick for Antwawn Jamison. This was a trade that needed to be made and at the time it seemed like a great idea. But results matter. The championship eluded the Cavs again and now the franchise could be looking at losing their superstar and their status as an elite team along with it. This deal was an all-or-nothing proposition and so far it has come up with nothing. This isn’t Jamison’s fault, but life isn’t always fair.

D: Boston Celtics: Avery Bradley and Luke Harangody: The Celtics had a choice between potential and immediate help and went with the potential in Bradley. This is a “we’ll see” type of pick, but seems like a big reach to me. I wouldn’t have taken Bradley in round one, but his athleticism is obvious and someday he might turn into something special. The excuse seems to be that Texas was a bad place for him. I find that hard to swallow. I’m not sure it was the best place for him, but prospects haven’t exactly gone to Texas and died the past few years. There seems to be a good group of vets in Boston, so he’ll have no excuses here.

D: Denver Nuggets: Traded pick to Memphis along with Steven Hunter’s contract in a salary dump. I can’t say this was terribly harmful, but when the competition out west is using similar picks to grab potentially useful pieces like James Anderson and Dominique Jones, this doesn’t help. Had this been done to open up cap space I could understand, but this was done to lessen the luxury tax and isn’t likely to improve the team.

D: Golden State Warriors: Ekpe Udoh. This is a crazy reach. I’ll try to spin positive first. I understand how a team can fall in love with this guy. The sum of his parts is pretty impressive. He’s a shot blocker, a decent rebounder and he can hit an outside shot. I’ll add that in a fast-paced Warriors offense he could thrive. He does fit, because he can play center and he’s arguably a better prospect than Brandan Wright or Anthony Randolph were at this point. The problem with Udoh at 6^th is just it is too high to take him. I understand that the talent seriously leveled out at this point and this wasn’t the best place to be drafting. But Udoh’s upside is that of a very good role player. There were players here like George, Hayward, Monroe and Davis with much higher upside. A team just can’t reach this high for a player, no matter how much they like him.

D: Charlotte Bobcats: Pick went to Minnesota for Alex Anjica. Right now I can’t see where this is a positive. Anjica contributed little his first season and is now 22. He’s over 7’, so potential still exists, but if his first year is any indication, this deal looks like a mistake.

F: New Orleans Hornets: Craig Brackins and Quincy Pondexter: Craig Brackins in round one? Really, Hornets? Just look at the guys’ numbers and justify him as a first round draft pick. You can’t do it. In a draft that was thick with good forwards no less. There were better shooting combo forwards available and better rebounding power forwards available. This is the single most baffling selection of this draft. Pondexter is also a slight reach, but nowhere near the level of Brackins.

F: Phoenix Suns: First round pick went to Seattle (at the time) in exchange for taking Kurt Thomas and any realistic chance of winning a championship during the Nash-Stoudemire era off their hands. Even though the Suns were one of the great stories of this past year with their success, the team continues on the downward path they started on with deals like this. Even though it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Steve Nash checked in with another MVP-caliber season while leading a plucky bunch of overachievers to 50 wins in 2010-11, this bunch is headed down fast and that fall was accelerated by money-saving deals like this one.

F-: New York Knicks: Landry Fields and Andy Rautins: This might seem a tad harsh, because I rarely give out pluses or minuses. But the pick the Knicks gave up here was part of the fee that finally came due on the Stephon Marbury deal. That was the trade that basically turned the aughts into a lost decade for this franchise and there really is no way to spin this one. It didn’t matter if they had made 2 strong second round choices, nothing could have made the use of this draft pick right. For the record Fields is a solid pick, Rautins, not so much. Now the Knicks can set their sights toward LeBron and others in the hope that their franchise-defining big deal of the teens turns out a little better than the last decade.

Point Guard 

1. John Wall
2. Jeremy Lin
3. Greivis Vasquez
4. Dee Bost
5. Ben Uzoh
6. Armon Johnson
7. Mikhail Torrance

This is John Wall and not much else. I like Lin quite a bit as a sleeper pick in round 2 and Vasquez as a good career journeyman, but other than that this group of PGs just isn’t up to par with recent years. 

Combo Guard 

1. Eric Bledsoe
2. Avery Bradley
3. Jon Scheyer
4. Willie Warren
5. Devan Downey
6. Andy Rautins
7. Matt Bouldin
8. Nate Rohnert
9. Rodney Green 

Not a wildly impressive group either. Bledsoe and Bradley still have some intrigue as highly-touted freshmen. Scheyer is an intangibles guy and Warren could become a pretty good scorer. But there’s no player here who should be considered before pick #20.

Shooting Guards 

1. James Anderson
2. Xavier Henry
3. Jordan Crawford
4. Elliott Williams
5. Dominique Jones
6. Manny Harris
7. Aubrey Coleman
8. Scottie Reynolds
9. Terrico White
10. Sylven Landesberg 

Not a bad group. I feel Anderson and Crawford are both undervalued going in and any of the top 5 are worthy of a post-lottery first-rounder. 

SG/SFs 

1. Evan Turner
2. Paul George
3. Landry Fields
4. Tyler Smith
5. Lance Stephenson
6. Marqus Blakely 

Players who fit somewhere between SG and SF. They could end up playing either position, so I just separated them. Turner is the best player in the draft. Paul George is a player worthy of a top 10 pick and Landry Fields is a solid late first-rounder. This is a pretty strong group. 

Small Forwards 

1. Wesley Johnson
2. Gordon Hayward
3. Tyren Johnson
4. Darington Hobson
5. Lazar Hayward
6. Quincy Pondexter
7. Devin Ebanks
8. Stanley Robinson 

My advice to any team thinking of taking Wes Johnson at 3 or 4 is: Draft the best big guy and go for another Johnson, Tyren, in round 2. There is some good quality here, but as a group this bunch is a tad overrated. 

Combo Forwards 

1. Damion James
2. Al-Farouq Aminu
3. Luke Babbitt
4. Trevor Booker
5. Patrick Patterson
6. Craig Brackins
7. Charles Garcia

This is a strong group for this position. There’s a little bit of everything. James is a solid player. After him we have the project, Aminu; the gunner, Babbitt; the defender, Booker; and the team player, Patterson. 

Power Forwards 

1. Derrick Favors
2. Ed Davis
3. Jarvis Vanardo
4. Luke Harangody
5. Derrick Caracter
6. Dwayne Collins
7. Gani Lawal

A decent group, but after Favors most of the buzz in the frontcourt has been around combo forwards and centers, rightfully so. 

PF/Centers 

1. Greg Monroe
2. Larry Sanders
3. Ekpe Udoh
4. Tiny Gallon

I decided to separate these guys from the centers or PFs. They’ll play both positions at the next level and I’m doing a lot of separating into groups and sub-groups this year, so this makes sense. I don’t see a dominating player in these four. Monroe could become one of those star role players, but that’s the high end for any of these four. 

Centers 

1. DeMarcus Cousins
2. Hassan Whiteside
3. Cole Aldrich
4. Daniel Orton
5. Dexter Pittman
6. Omar Samhan
7. Solomon Alabi
8. Hamady N’Daiye
9. Brian Zoubek
10. Jeff Foote

This is a class that has the potential to be legendary. It also has the potential to be very disappointing. If nothing else that should make this a fun group to watch over the years. Teams that pass on Cousins, Whiteside and possibly Orton eventually could come to rue this draft day. The centers seem to be the top foreign position also. As to where that group would rank here, I’d place them in the 5-10 range without putting too much analysis into it.

John Wall, Kentucky: The consensus top pick since last summer. Wall has held onto that spot all year and his status as top dog has never really been in question, at least if what I’ve read is correct. Since he is considered the best, we should line him up against the best of all time. Here are the best PGs to come into the league in recent years in their freshmen seasons: 

It is still early, but I can say that John Wall fits in with this group fairly comfortably. As a PG he has shown he can run an offense, score with good efficiency and handle the physical side of the NBA. That pretty much sums up what a PG needs to do and Wall has it all covered. His career curve remains wide at this young age, but considering his natural ability, size and freshmen numbers, his range goes from solid player to superstar.

The thing that keeps nagging at me about John Wall is I think everyone is overrating him. The reason is there just isn’t one number that really stands out as dominating. That hasn’t always been necessary, but I’d have liked to have seen something dominating. Of the top PGs this decade, Paul and Rondo had the high number of steals. Rondo also had a high 2-point pct. Deron Williams and Derrick Rose each led a team less talented than Wall’s Kentucky team to the championship game. I might be nitpicking here, but I felt all year that the hype Wall received was a little overboard. I didn’t feel that his performance quite matched the hype.

That being on record, being slightly overrated shouldn’t keep Wall from being one of the top picks. Of the four who have been on top all season, Wall plays one of the most difficult positions to fill and he plays it well. I was very impressed by the way he has stepped up to defend his teammate Cousins during the draft process. Empathy for teammates is a great intangible skill for a future team leader to have. In the final analysis I feel John Wall will be slightly less of a player than recent PGs Paul, Williams, Rondo and Rose, but still a pretty solid NBA PG who will have a long career that includes an all-star appearance or three. Not really a knock on him, just an attempt to put some perspective on where he really stands.

Evan Turner, Ohio State: A very good year. Really this was almost a historic season by Evan Turner in how truly impressive it was. I can’t imagine how overboard the hype would have been if this season had been accomplished by a player from Duke or North Carolina. Turner scored like the best SGs, rebounded like a PF and passed like a PG. There wasn’t anything here not to like. That it came during his junior year is a bit of a puzzle, because it makes me wonder where this player had been for two seasons. Here are the numbers for his career: 

His numbers weren’t terribly different these three seasons. There was steady improvement, but his efficiency, passing and defensive numbers were always top notch. The biggest difference was he was he started getting more scoring opportunities as a sophomore and that continued his junior year. He took advantage, scoring at a similar pace. The rebounds and assists improved, but he was always an above-average passer and rebounder for a wing player. The steals and blocks stayed about the same, another good sign as it shows he didn’t stop hustling when he became a star. It looks like Turner’s great season was more a case of him being given the opportunity to emerge than him actually stepping his game up to top prospect level.

As far as comping him to other players, there really isn’t much point. He’s statistically better than most past NCAA players at this point. I’ll throw some tables up for comparison sake. Here are SFs who posted an ASB40 over 8.5: 

The only player here who clearly had a better season was Danny Granger, who did this as a senior in a weaker conference than Turner played in. Davis was pretty good too. I had mentioned Davis before, figuring him for a smallish PF who just happened to pass well. This wasn’t Grant Hill’s best season, but it was his best passing season. The point is Turner stacks up very well against a strong group here. Next I’ll look at an SG comp. Here are junior SGs who topped .500 2-point pct, 22.0 P40, 0.8 A/TO and 10.0 RSB40: 

That’s looking at him as a SG. Again my main point is to show that he’s in pretty good company whether we look at him as a guard or forward. He also would qualify for the impressive list of players who averaged at least 2 steals and 1 block per 40 minutes that I used to sell Paul George.  I could compare him with Grant Hill to show that Turner’s P40, R40 and A 40 from this year are better than Hill’s career highs in each number. I just can’t look at Evan Turner’s numbers and not gush with enthusiasm for him as a prospect.

I feel Evan Turner is the best prospect in this draft. He stacks up well with the best ever whether we’re talking about SGs or SFs. A look at his freshman and sophomore seasons suggests he was a great player in need of more scoring opportunities rather than a player who had yet to develop into a star. The only real concern would be his high TOs, but I’m comfortable writing that off as a symptom of playing out of position at PG and that he’ll be fine in the pros when he has a real PG to handle the playmaking. Evan Turner looks to me like he’ll eventually become one of the better wing players in the league. I guess there is also a chance he could become a Doug Christie or Rick Fox, but that’s a chance any team has to take. This is a player with multiple all-star appearances and accolades in his future. In the end his career might look more like that of a Grant Hill or Scottie Pippen than a LeBron James, but that’s still a pretty good player to land.

DeMarcus Cousins, Kentucky: Cousins scored and rebounded at a very high rate. With pace adjustments, he was at 24.5 P40 and 15.9 R40, which placed him among the best freshmen centers ever. These freshmen centers topped 30 combined points and rebounds per 40 minutes while playing at least 500 minutes:

I’m a little suspicious of the numbers for O’Neal and Roberts. They played on the same team, the 1989-90 LSU Tigers. O’Neal was a 17 year-old freshman, Roberts was actually a sophomore playing his first season, possibly a prop 48 casualty. The team also featured Chris Jackson, who became Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf after entering the NBA. Jackson scored 27.8 PPG, so this was likely an extremely fast-paced offense. For that reason the numbers of O’Neal and Roberts might be a little bloated. Perhaps this was balanced out by the fact that the two young beefy Bengals were sharing the middle and the numbers available there. I don’t really know, but these are the raw numbers. I just thought that was worth a mention. More Tiger trivia from ’90: Redshirting for the team that year was another 7-footer with an NBA future, Geert Hammink!

But you haven’t read this far for an LSU hoops history lesson. This is about the future of DeMarcus Cousins. This list contains some good and some bad news for him. There are a couple of HOFers here, along with a few solid starters, some journeymen and some washouts. All played in the league for at least a short time. The two trends I notice are the better players posted a higher FG pct and blocked more shots. That’s pretty much it. The scoring and rebounding numbers didn’t vary much, other than Shaq’s rebounds. Cousins is OK on the FG pct and weak on the blocked shots. It doesn’t end there though the important thing I take from this list is that no freshman center who logged more than 500 minutes of court time scored as frequently as Cousins and only one, Shaq, was a better rebounder. Also probably important to note is Cousins’ 24.5 P40 is much higher than any other frosh on this list. I really can’t say what this means, because I believe you could have said something similar about Michael Beasley and freshmen PFs two years ago. I’m certain the rebounding prowess is a very good thing. As for the scoring, I’d be more impressed if the efficiency were the impressive part and the frequency was more ordinary. This might be nitpicking a little, as .565 is decent enough. It looks even better when looking at his splits for the year:

What I like is that he actually improved his FG pct as the year progressed. This is impressive, because usually it goes the other way, due to the level of competition improving dramatically. That Cousins improved his efficiency shows he was both working at his game and learning as a freshman. This is important.

The biggest concern is the relatively low numbers of blocks. One common trait of center prospects who go on to great NBA careers is they were great college shot blockers from the start. The best NBA centers who were below 4.0 as freshmen are Erick Dampier, Todd MacCulloch, Rony Seikaly, Brad Miller, Luc Longley and Ervin Johnson. Not a bad group, but hardly what any team would be anticipating with the 3^rd or 4^th pick in the draft. About all I can say in his defense here is he does block some shots, unlike a Mike Peplowski.

Cousins also has the label of being a bad apple and a guy with potential weight problems. I don’t have an opinion on Cousins specifically, other than to say he seems to be aware of the negative perceptions of him and wants to right things if you believe his comments are sincere. In general I feel these things are overstated. That should Cousins fail to live up to expectations it will be due more to an inability to get his defense to NBA level than being a bad guy. The attitude and weight issue are just a couple of things that are too difficult to project with young people. A lot of growing up can happen quickly, especially when there’s a lot of money at stake. Getting into shale can be taken care of simply by working with a personal trainer and dietician. I’ll just say that this stuff is a concern, but not as much as the one about his defense.

There’s a lot to digest here. We have a player with good center size who scores and rebounds at historically great rates. The only weakness in his numbers is a B40 number that is more the level of a good journeyman than an all-time great. My feeling is that we can go back to the ’90 LSU Tigers for a gauge of what the career of DeMarcus Cousins will be. As a big center, he’ll fall somewhere between Stanley Roberts at the low end and Shaquille O’Neal at the high end. He’s at a fork in the road now. At the end of one fork is Stanley Roberts, the other is Shaquille O’Neal. I’m generally optimistic, so my guess is he’s closer to Shaq, if not quite at that level. I see a player who will be a dominant rebounder, a good scorer and an adequate enough defender that he’ll be a very good NBA player who will be one of the better centers in the league for most of his career.

Cole Aldrich, Kansas: Aldrich is the good defense/no offense type. He’s also a very good rebounder. Here’s a list of NCAA centers who topped a combined 19.0 blocks and rebounds as Aldrich did:

Shaq, Hakeem and Mutombo all made the list multiple times, the season shown is their top RB40 season. The great players on the list are all over .600 FG pct. The journeymen are well below. While this pegs Aldrich as a likely NBA journeyman, it is worth noting that Ostertag, Johnson and Benjamin all played long careers.

With Cole Aldrich the analysis is pretty simple. He’ll be a good defender and rebounder on the inside and that’s a pretty valuable player to have. His offense has been weak for a prospect and his development there was disappointing this past year. About the only thing I might add in his defense is that it is possible his numbers were suppressed in the Kansas system and he’ll be a better offensive player in the pros. I doubt that’s the case, because the efficiency numbers are so low. I do feel Aldrich has a long NBA career in front of him and his defense will make him a valuable player.

Larry Sanders, Virginia Commonwealth: Sanders’ rep was first built in the final of the Colonial tournament when he had 20 rebounds and 7 blocks in a win over George Mason. He got the rep as a shot blocker in that game and his length only adds to that. But he doesn’t block shots anywhere near the level of the best of all time and also falls short of the best ones from this year, Whiteside, Aldrich, Udoh, Orton and N’Daiye. Sanders also plays at a small college, so it is very important that his numbers are more dominating than some of the other prospects. Here’s how he compares to past small college centers who played in the NBA:

The 3 best players here, Robinson, Smits and Kaman, all topped .600 and 26.0. Sanders doesn’t come close on either count, so I doubt we’re looking at an all-star here. Duckworth was a late bloomer and Dudley and Foyle both lasted a long time because of defensive skills. The defensive specialist would seem like the best case scenario for Sanders.

Dexter Pittman, Texas: A nice story, at least so far. It could get better. Pittman dropped over 100 lbs since his HS days, transforming himself from someone who was too heavy into a potential NBA player. He didn’t play a lot of minutes and that has to be taken into account. But when he played he was a very productive all-around player. Only 3 other players have topped .650, 20.0 P40, 10.0 R40 and 3.0 B40 in the same season:

Kind of a small group, but all were successful and Ewing is a HOFer. I guess what I want to show here is that Dexter Pittman can get the job done when he plays. He does have some issues. He’s still too heavy, doesn’t pass the ball very well and has never averaged over 20 minutes per game. But he’s pretty damn productive and having a guy like this on the bench for 10-15 minutes of inside banging a night has to be something most teams could use. Pittman could get lost in this group of long, leaping centers, but he provides enough that I feel he’s worth a pick in round two.

Omar Samhan, St. Mary’s: If there was one guy to take out of the lesser known center prospects, he’d be at the top of the list. Samhan scored and rebounded well as a senior with 26.4 and 13.4 as his per minute numbers. Here are his numbers compared with other NCAA juniors and seniors who also scored and rebounded frequently. As a cutoff I used 35.0 combined points and rebounds per 40 minutes with a minimum of 21.5 points and 12.0 rebounds. Players from small conferences were omitted.

I put the players in order of career NBA minutes so the list has a best-to-worst feel to it. I’m not saying this is exactly best-to-worst, but it is close. The two things that stand out as the most common factor in the better careers were a FG pct. over .600 and a lot of blocks. The only players with less than 15K career minutes who were over .600 are MacCulloch whose career was on track for at least 15K, but was shortened due to illness; Oliver Miller, who was basically too short and heavy for an NBA center, but always posted strong per minute numbers; and Rafael Araujo, who couldn’t play defense, as evidenced by his low number of blocks in college. The 2 players over 15K who were under .600, Mourning and Benjamin were excellent shot blockers in college.

The good news for Samhan is such players almost always at least made the league, got some PT and made some money. This was the case until the last couple of drafts when Aleks Maric and John Bryant were undrafted. John Bryant finished top 10 in the D-league in both rebounds and blocks last year. Aleks Maric has averaged13 points and 7 boards in 23 minutes per game in Europe this year, while shooting over 60%. Either one is still worth a look for a team in search of inside depth and finds Solomon Alabi a little wanting.

As for Samhan, he looks like he can play. If Chris Mihm and Nazr Mohammed played the minutes they have, Omar Samhan certainly can do the same. Things could be stacked against him though. The cases of Bryant and Maric show the league might be moving away from such players, possibly preferring to give backup center minutes to quicker PF-types. He’s also up against a loaded center class this year and it is always more difficult for a marginal prospect to stand out in such a group.

Solomon Alabi, Florida State: Alabi is very much a project. He comes up short in most of the important statistical categories and players in a similar place haven’t done particularly well as pros. He’s listed as a sophomore, but has played 3 seasons at Florida State, one consisting of only 9 games. He’s 22, the age of an older junior or younger senior. His numbers that would be considered weak are a FG pct of .534 and a R40 of 9.6. Here are college sophs and juniors who had something of a career after falling below .550 and 10.0:

There are 3 types of players listed here. The shot blockers: Ratliff, McIlvaine, Booth and Causwell. The players who got better: Magloire, Miller, Austin and Collins. Finally there’s William Bedford, a high draft pick who never lived up to it. Alabi isn’t a shot blocker in the class of the others. He should improve, but he is also older than every player on this list was at the time, by over 2 years in some cases. I haven’t even mentioned that once we get past Miller, Magloire and Ratliff, the list isn’t an impressive group and not at all what any team would want in a first round pick.

Solomon Alabi is both a project and a gamble. The ability and length is here, but he isn’t close to putting it all together. As an old sophomore, I can’t give him much credit for being young and inexperienced. Because he is tall and athletic, I expect him to stick around the league for awhile, but that will be more due to the league being unable to give up on him. As deep as this class is in big men, it would be a huge mistake to draft this guy in round one. Better to wait until round 2 and take a chance on Pittman or Samhan.

Tiny Gallon, Oklahoma: He’s more a PF height, but he’s a center’s girth and brings a nice enough wingspan that I’ll consider him here. Unlike the other heavy guy on this list, Dexter Pittman, Gallon just isn’t all that productive. He’s a better rebounder than most. That’s good, but that isn’t going to get him into the league by itself. He also differs from Pittman in that he has yet to show the discipline to drop the weight.

Gallon showed some promise as a rebounder and a scorer, but is a poor shot blocker and is way too heavy. He’s a long way from where he needs to be in terms of both his game and his shape. I doubt his high end of potential is high enough to make it worth the trouble of spending a draft pick on him in this deep group of big men.

Hamady N’Daiye, Rutgers: Not too many players have blocked shots as frequently as Hamady did this year. Here’s a list of all college seniors and 4^th-year juniors who topped 6.0 B40:

This group goes from Alonzo Mourning, a strong inside player with a complete game, to Ken Johnson, a shot blocking specialist. Coleman and Shawn James are the only two on the list who never played in the league, though the careers of Johnson, Williams and Palmer were very brief. Just looking at the numbers, one would think that if Theo Ratliff had a long NBA career, so could N’Daiye. But it doesn’t really work that way. Ratliff’s career exceeded his college stats and that just doesn’t happen very often. N’diaye’s numbers are below what would be expected from a prospect and he’s on the small side for an NBA center.  About all I can say in his favor is that if there’s one thing a big guy should do exceptionally well and still get drafted, blocking shots is probably the best one.

I doubt Ndiaye will be drafted in what is a pretty deep group of big men. I doubt even more that he’ll find a spot via free agency. I don’t see that his shot blocking is valuable enough to make up for his weak offense and ordinary rebounding.

Brian Zoubek, Duke: Zoubek’s career at Duke didn’t go as he had probably planned it, but ended on such a high note that it was probably worth the trouble. As a senior, Zoubek became a monster on the boards, averaging over 16 per 40 minutes. This puts him in some elite company. Here are college centers who topped 16 rebounds per 40 minutes:

For players who topped 16 more than once I used their best season. Random note: Chris Dudley won the Republican primary for Governor of Oregon. With KJ already running Sacramento, it won’t be long before ex-NBA players take control of the country. Then we’ll all have some fun. Back to Zoubek, while this is some fast company to be in with, he clearly isn’t in the class of some of the bigger names on this list. I just wanted to illustrate how impressive his performance on the boards was this year. He doesn’t match up with the all-timers on the list. His blocks are low and he doesn’t score very often. In fact his offensive repertoire is basically put backs and layups. The good part is his .638 FG pct. compares better with the greats. The exception here being Nigel “Big Jelly” Dixon who was an offensive force, but never got his defense and ball handling down enough to make it. The low number of blocks is a bad thing, but a look at his past years seasons shows some shot blocking ability. In his three previous seasons he was at 1.5, 2.4 and 2.6 blocks per 40 minutes, so there is some ability there.

Zoubek is also very foul prone. Before I condemn him too much for this I should also point out that all of the Duke big men posted high foul rates this year. Both Plumlees and Lance Thomas were similar to Zoubek this way. This suggests that fouling was either a strategy or a symptom of the strategy used by Duke this year. Since he’s a certain reserve at best, I doubt that will be a huge issue.

Like the rest of the marginal center prospects, Zoubek has the ability to help an NBA team and might get the best chance, because playing at a high-profile college helps a player get noticed and getting noticed helps a player get a chance. Good enough to give a team useful low minutes if he finds a spot. Not good enough to be much more than that.

Jeff Foote, Cornell: Passing as a skill for center prospects is a tough one as far as gauging its importance. I addressed it a little with Monroe and Udoh. Foote is another prospect who would list passing as one of his top skills. The best passing center in recent history, at least going by assists is Phillip Ramelli from Samford, who didn’t measure up anywhere else as a prospect. In statistics measuring scoring, rebounds and blocks, the all-time per minute leaders are dotted with all-time greats. Not so for passing. There are centers including David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and Dikembe Mutombo, who became perennial all-stars while posting low A40 totals in college. But centers with good passing skills also seem to have this habit of winning NBA championships, so as a skill it can’t be completely dismissed. Since I don’t have much in the way of data from small conferences, I’ll compare Foote’s season with the best passing seasons from center at colleges of all levels and work through the difference in level of competition later.

All but Rankin and Ramelli played at least some NBA basketball. The one thing that stands out is the four players who had long careers, over 10K career minutes, were the four players with a 2-point pct. over .600. This is good news for Foote, as his is .625. The bad news is the other 4 scored more points and blocked shots more frequently than Foote. The low points could be a big negative as this table comparing Foote with past small college senior centers who had some level of success as pros:

Most of these players appear in the Larry Sanders comment as juniors. Especially interesting is the development of Duckworth and Dudley. Rogers was very impressive, but he was a 6^th-year senior at the time. The important thing is every player scored more than 20 P40. Most were well above 20. This is a bad sign for Foote. The players who made it were likely the top option on the college team. Foote was the Big Red’s 3^rd leading scorer. This makes his .625 FG pct somewhat less impressive too. It is more difficult to put up a high percentage when you’re the player taking the most shots on your team and attracting the most attention of the defense. I’m not saying what Foote did this year was easy, but the circumstance he put up the .625 wasn’t as impressive to me as Smits hitting .626 while scoring so often.

Foote does some things well. He has center size, can pass and rebounds well enough. It wouldn’t surprise me if he found a place. But the fact that he was the 3^rd leading scorer on an Ivy League team is just a huge negative. Scoring a lot of points is a huge deal for prospects at every position and every level. A P40 of 20.0 is preferred for a center at this level. Foote didn’t hit that. Add that to his other negatives which include weak shot blocking and the fact that he was a non-prospect before his senior year and he becomes the longest of long shots in this group.

Artsiom Parakhouski, Radford, Jerome Jordan, Tulsa and AJ Ogilvy, Vanderbilt: Three centers who are out there, have played decent ball that falls short by prospect standards and might have been much hotter items in years where the position wasn’t so stacked with talent. Parakhouski is a good scorer/rebounder, but comes up short on the blocks. I included his numbers in the Foote comment for comparison. Jordan is a guy who has been close as a prospect for 3 seasons now, but never made the next step and even regressed some this year. Ogilvy was a hot item in the mocks briefly, but never lived up to that hype and is probably the weakest overall prospect in this group.

Greg Monroe, Georgetown: In the NBA it has always been a good thing for a big man to pass. Big guys who are extraordinary passers for their position have a habit of winning championships. Being a great passer in college just doesn’t seem to mean all that much for a big guy though. It is better for a big guy to do the things big guys do. Big guys need to show they can rebound, block shots and score at an efficient rate. If they can pass that is wonderful, but not really consequential to their chances. I mention this to start, because passing is one of Monroe’s best skills. Here are college sophs who posted a high A40 like Monroe did this year:

That’s John “Hot Plate” Williams who played at LSU. Not a great group. Walker was an all-star, but showed here that he could score, albeit inefficiently, rebound and defend. Ferry had a long career, but only because he could shoot. He was one of the biggest draft busts of all time. Williams and Mills put together journeyman careers. In Mills’ case his success was due to developing a 3-pointer as much as anything. The important thing to note here is Monroe’s numbers are more impressive than any player here, with the possible exception of Walker. Monroe’s big guy numbers are all pretty solid, with the exception of scoring.

The scoring has to improve. Both his P40 and 2 pt pct were low for both a PF and center prospect. He was better as a freshman though. Here is a look at Monroe’s 2 seasons at Georgetown:

As a freshman he hit the shots at an OK rate, which is a good thing. As a sophomore he was a better rebounder. While it would be better if he had been at .578 and 11.0 both years, this shows he is capable of getting to where he needs to be, which is a good thing. The SB40 is strong, but it is heavy on the steals for a big guy. In both seasons he has averaged only 1.9 B40, which is on the low side for center prospects. That he has a high number of steals is a good thing, but a high number of blocks would be better. That seems to be the case with everything Monroe does. His most impressive numbers suggest skills that would be good for a wing player.

Greg Monroe is a different sort of prospect. He does a lot of things well and that’s a good thing. He’s good enough when everything is considered that he definitely should be drafted in the top ten. I also expect him to have a solid NBA career, because he’s a smart player who has played a team-focused game that may have hurt his numbers some. But he is 6’11” 250 and those players need to do some specific things first and foremost. Monroe isn’t going to play much on the wing, so his passing skills just aren’t all that relevant. He is going to play inside and his big guy numbers just aren’t all that impressive. Because of this, I doubt Monroe will be much more than a rotation guy, but possibly a very valuable one.

Ekpe Udoh, Baylor: Udoh spent 2 unproductive seasons at Michigan before transferring to Baylor and finding his game. How much of a game he found is still up for debate. He had already been a pretty good shot blocker at Michigan, but added some rebounding and passing. As a scorer he still comes up way short, despite an ability to pop an occasional trey. Here is a list of NCAA juniors and seniors who had at least a decent NBA career after hitting less than .500 on their 2-pointers:

Before we declare Ekpe Udoh the 2^nd coming of Marcus Camby, I need to point out some things. For the most successful players on this list, the season shown represents a low point. The top 6 players all had seasons where they were over .530, and in Camby’s case .550. For Udoh his .498 is a career high and a pretty big step up from where he was. Other than Brown and Magloire, the best players were all polished offensive players. All were the leading scorers on their teams. Udoh was Baylor’s 3^rd leading scorer. What we can say is that Udoh is he’s one of the best shot blockers on the list and that is important. But overall this is bad news for Udoh’s prospects. It bunches him with players who were career reserves.

Another thing to know about Ekpe Udoh is he’s one of the older players in the draft, having just turned 23. This has to be considered another negative. Not only does it flatten the curve of a player who is something of a project, but historically players who took this long to emerge just don’t have a great history. I don’t want to go all negative here. Udoh has flashed a diverse skill set, has great length skills and I could see him becoming a pretty good player. But his ceiling seems to be that of a very good role player and his floor is an overmatched bust. There are just too many negatives here to make him worth a pick in the lottery.

• Hit .580 on 2-point shots and score 20.0 P40. In both cases, the higher the better. The best have typically been over .600 and pushed 25.0 P40 as they got older. For freshmen some leeway is given.
• At least 10.0 R40, preferably higher. The best have been at least 12.0. Again the higher the better here.
• Combined 3.5 steals and blocks per 40 minutes, or SB40. Blocks are more important, but if combining blocks and steals is what it takes to get a player to 3.5, that has been good enough. Players who fall way below this level need to develop an outside shot to stick.
• An A/TO that is at least 0.3. This one doesn’t need to be great, just not disastrous.

The 2010 group is pretty intriguing. Favors stands above the crowd and Davis looks like a solid pro. After that there just isn’t much, unless you want to count an impressive group of combo forwards or some of the smaller centers as PFs. Adding them makes the group a pretty impressive bunch. This is just the pure PFs. Here are the numbers:

Derrick Favors, Georgia Tech: An impressive young player. Favors handles all the important PF tasks very well. His numbers don’t exactly blow you away, but he’s very solid. Look at the PFs who had freshman seasons with numbers over .575 2-pt pct, 11.0 R40 and 4.0 SB40:

This is a pretty strong list. The top 4 will be on any short list of the best PFs of this generation. Laettner and Tisdale didn’t live up to their clippings, but still had solid careers. Skinner was a useful reserve for several years, Houston is 6’4” and Thomas is an angry young man who doesn’t take coaching well. Favors has put up numbers that place him with the best and has displayed none of the height or attitude problems that held back Houston and Thomas. His P40 is a little on the low side, but for a freshman I’d rather that be low than the shooting percentage.

Something I’ve mentioned occasionally during the season with Favors is the possibility that his teammates may have had a negative affect on his numbers. This one is always a tough call, because it is more subjective than anything. Georgia Tech is a team that featured a veteran in Gani Lawal who played the same position as Favors and is considered a prospect himself. For Favors this meant sharing the inside chores and numbers. Lawal didn’t like to pass the ball, finishing his 3-year career with 43 total assists in 99 games. Tech also featured a shoot-first PG in Iman Shumpert who can’t shoot. As a team they finished 256^th in the nation in A/TO and 324^th in TOs per game. Now I can’t say for sure that this affected his numbers in a negative way but it doesn’t appear to be the best situation for any freshman. It wasn’t a disaster either, because he’s slated to go in the top 3. But it is something to think about when assessing whether Derrick Favors might be a much better player than his already-impressive numbers suggest he is.

I like Favors as a prospect and see no reason he shouldn’t be considered one of the top players in this draft. He has shown terrific PF skills for a freshman and he has the size to play some center. He needs to keep the progression going. In particular his offensive game needs work. But he’s a player who, at the very minimum, looks like he can step in and handle the defense and board work in strong fashion. He has the size and athleticism and appears to have the right attitude to get his complete game to the all-star level. That’s a valuable player and it seems like the league has him pegged about right in the top 3.

Ed Davis, North Carolina: With Davis we have limited information. His first season was spent as a role player in support of a veteran roster that went on to win a NCAA championship. His 2^nd season started well in the non-con games as he started to develop into one of the core players on a young, talented team. When the ACC season started he mostly played injured, spraining his ankle in the 2^nd game against Clemson. He struggled after that, but seemed to be getting back to where he was before breaking his wrist and being put down for the remainder of the season. The problem here is while we have numbers from 2 seasons and 1357 minutes of major college play from Ed Davis, it’s better to have one complete season where he was on of the top players on his team. This way the numbers aren’t skewed by a heavier percentage of games played against weaker competition or too many garbage minutes he may have gotten as a freshman backup playing in blowouts. But this is what we were given to work with and that is what we’ll do. The first thing to do is look at Davis’ splits:

Ed Davis was a player who gave solid support to a veteran, championship team as a freshman. He showed some promise, but there were questions about his ability to carry an offensive load effectively. In the early part of his sophomore season he looked as if he would make the jump to star, averaging 22.2 P40 while shooting .631 and improving other parts of his game. This was extra impressive because NC plays one of the tougher non-conference schedules and Davis performed well against the likes of Ohio State, Michigan State, Kentucky, Texas and Marshall. Things didn’t go as well once the conference games started. A lot of that could have had something to do with an injured ankle he was playing with for most of the conference season. But the only real bad game he had was at Clemson, where he went 2-11 from the field and grabbed only 4 rebounds. That game skews his numbers downward some and he never got the chance to get them back because of the injury.

The most impressive thing about Ed Davis is his ability to rebound and block shots. He’s well above the norm in both skills, at 16.5 per 40 minutes when the two are combined. Here’s a table showing all NCAA sophs who posted a RB40 number over 15.9 in recent years.

I used 15.9, because that seemed to be the point where the good players became much less frequent. Once a player fell below 15.9 RB40, it was much less likely they would have an impact.  This is a pretty strong group. Not every player gave a career that matched where he was drafted, but all either played a long time in the league or were recent draft picks and are still in the league. So I think it is safe to say that Ed Davis projects to having a reasonably long NBA career based on this alone. That’s good, but a team spending a top 10 draft pick would probably like to get something more than 10 seasons of solid, above-average workmanlike effort from their investment. So let’s separate the all-stars from the rest. The players in this group who have made the all-star team at least once are Barkley, Webber, Davis, Johnson, Martin, Brand and McDyess. Some made multiple games, others just one. But these seven reached the level of NBA all-star, which is a pretty good measuring stick for a successful career. The most glaring number that separates the all-stars from the non-all-stars is scoring. Six of the seven all-stars hit well over 60% of their shots and scored over 20 P40. Only one of the six non-all-stars hit over 60% and one other scored over 20 P40. Davis is at 18.0 and .578. This casts more doubt on Davis’ ability to become anything more than a solid journeyman PF in the mold of Okafor, Smith or Brown.

The next, and final, question is whether a healthy Davis could have continued at or close to the .647 and 20.8 he was putting up before the conference schedule started. My guess is no. The reason is one near certainty in a college season has been that the numbers of big men decline as the season progresses, sometimes dramatically so. It would be naïve to think Davis would have continued to hit 65% of his shots. Considering his .518 mark as a freshman, I’m guessing the .578 is pretty close to what he would have put up in a healthy season. So with Ed Davis a team is at the very least likely getting a solid PF who plays good defense and holds his own on the boards. I doubt he’ll be anything other than adequate on offense, but there is obviously some decent potential there. Definitely a player worthy of a selection at the top of the 2^nd tier of players drafted.

Jarvis Vanardo, Mississippi State: Vanardo blocks shots very well. He has other skills, but that’s been his calling card and the reason he’s going to be drafted. What works against him is he’s smaller than a typical PF, at 6’9 210. So instead of looking at all the great college shotblockers, I’ll stick with the thinner players who are less than 7’ for comparison. It hasn’t been a wildly successful bunch:

This is interesting group. Ratliff beat the odds, but none of the others had an impact. Each player falls a little short in one or two of the other statistical categories. Shawn James is the exception to this, but he was 24 at the time of the 2008 draft. Vanardo falls short in P40. What I like about Vanardo is he’s a better rebounder and has a higher FG pct than most of these guys. I don’t know that this will be enough to make up for a weak offensive game.

Vanardo looks like he can become a good bench player. He has the good rebounding and shot blocking skills that are necessary for a strong energy player off the bench. He’ll never be a great scorer, but he doesn’t miss many shots and such players can get by on their active inside game. I feel he’d be a good pick late in round one.

Luke Harangody, Notre Dame: He had somewhat of a disappointing season. He was touted in some places as a preseason POY candidate. His numbers were down a tad for the season, he got injured and his team went on a tear without him. He did come back and showed some class and grace in accepting a lesser role for the team when he did. Harangody is a scorer more than anything. Here is how he stacks up with other NCAA senior PFs who have scored over 25.0 P40:

This is a fairly long, relatively unimpressive list of players. That’s often the case with seniors though. The top 3 players each made one all-star game. Cage and Thomas put together long, productive careers. Van Horn, Lefrentz and Henderson all had some big moments, but never hit 20,000 total minutes. The others only stuck around a long time if they learned to hit a 3-pointer. In general the more successful players had the higher shooting pct, rebound rate and SB40. There are some exceptions. Horace Grant had a low SB40, but became a 4-time all-defensive 2^nd team member. Everything about Alan Henderson looked solid, but he struggled with injuries some and just never got his game to the all-star level. Harangody looks like one of the weaker players on this list. The FG pct is low and the SB40 is brutally low. But I would add that if Pat Garrity had the career he had, Harangody could do the same if his 3-pointer starts to fall.

For Harangody it probably will be all about whether or not he can get the outside shot to fall consistently. If he can do that, he probably has enough in the way of rebounding skill to make it as a stretch-the-defense reserve PF. I remember reading last year that he was a pretty impressive shooter in some workouts. On the court he has hit 42 of 129 on his career, which is less than a third. I tend to go more with what happened during the games than the workouts, so I’m going to say he isn’t there yet as a shooter and for that reason he’s a long shot to make it.

Derrick Caracter, UTEP: Most probably remember him as the highly-touted Louisville prospect who just never got things going in his two seasons there. Caracter transferred to UTEP and rebounded with a solid year. His numbers still come up a little short and his messy episode at Louisville doesn’t help his cause. Like the rest of these players listed from here down, he’s worth a look.

Dwayne Collins, Miami: Collins gets a mention because he’s been a very efficient scorer and a solid rebounder in his 4 seasons. He gets to the line a lot. As a junior he had 193 FGAs and 192 FTAs. For some reason he played low minutes his entire career. He averaged about 24 minutes per game for his career and was never over 26 for a season. I’m not sure why this was, because he doesn’t have a high foul rate. It can’t be good though. I can say that he won’t be averaging close to 26 minutes per game in the NBA. But he has shown enough that he might be able to give a team some decent minutes as an inside player.

Gani Lawal, Georgia Tech: I mentioned him briefly in the Favors comment. The focus was on his TOs and that has been a big problem for him. He hasn’t gotten above 0.25 A/TO in three seasons and that says he’s too error-prone a player to make it at the next level. If he is able to improve this TO problem, he’s a good enough rebounder and defender that he can probably give a team some help on the inside.

Bryan Davis, Texas A&M: Davis is a long shot, but someone worth mentioning. His defense looks very good and he has the size and length to play some center. The offense is pretty poor, but he his FG pct did hit .532 and .541 in his sophomore and junior years, so he’s probably better than the .482 he posted this year. As a rebounder he’s also a little shaky. He posted a solid 12.4 R40 as a senior, but that was his first year in double figures. In his defense he spent three years sharing the inside with the likes of Joseph Jones, D’Andre Jordan and Chinemelu Elonu. This was the first year he was the main man in the middle and he responded pretty well on the boards. Not in his defense is the fact that it took this long for him to take charge. Davis is a good player to go the UFA route with. He has shown enough to think that he’s capable of being a useful big body off the bench.

Tony Easley, Murray State: Listed as a center, but is only 6’9” 200 lbs. I thought I’d toss his name out there as someone who might catch on somewhere as an energy player off the bench. The thing to know about Murray State is they play a very balanced offense and players rarely average more than 30 minutes per game under Bill Kennedy’s system. As an example, this past season their top 6 players averaged between 21 and 27 minutes per game and 9.7 and 10.6 points per game. Each year under Kennedy has been like this. It is a system that works, culminating in an NCAA tournament first round upset of Vanderbilt this season. The system does keep players who may be good pro prospects hidden though. Easley’s per minute numbers suggest there is a pretty good player here who is worth a look. There are some negatives though. He’s a 5^th-year senior, is too small and wasn’t much of a shot blocker until this season. With that in mind he isn’t worth more than a look as an UFA. But he definitely is worth a look.

• Offensive skills are a given just like for every position. The player must approach 20 P40 with good efficiency. It’s also important to have a varied offensive game, meaning a decent outside shot. Part of the appeal of such players is the outside shot that can pull the opposing PF to the perimeter and clear space underneath.
• Rebounding and defense. The prospect has to be at least adequate here and the better he is, obviously the better prospect he becomes. I think the important thing here is that opposing PFs won’t kill this guy on the boards or offensively when he comes in. For the purpose of this I’ll say the closer he is to 10.0 R40 and 2.5 SB40, the better. As always, the higher the number, so much the better.
• As far as passing and turnovers, the main thing is not to be terrible. Since this is typically a bench position, being a low-mistake player is pretty important. It’s not necessary to be a great passer, but the prospect should show he’s both willing and somewhat able to pass the ball. As with every position, a high rate of turnovers or a low A/TO is a very bad sign.

I ended up going with James as the top guy, but I could see buying into the potential of Aminu. I just see James as more of a sure thing and I doubt the high end payoff Aminu offers is worth the gamble.

Damion James, Texas: James is listed as a G-F, is the size of a SF, but has the numbers most like a PF. While he scored more this year, his greatest strength has been rebounding. What I wanted to look at was the best rebounding SFs and SGs in recent years and see if James is in their class. Here are players who averaged at least 11.0 R40 while attempting at least 50 3-pointers:

My biggest concern with James this year had been his TOs. His A/TO dropped this year when he started scoring more and that is often a problem. Looking at this chart, I’m not sure if that’s such a big concern. A low A/TO didn’t stop the likes of Big Dog, Posey, Ceballos and Richardson from forging decent NBA careers. Plus, James A/TO number is due more to low assists than high TOs. If any thing the two big factors seem to be scoring and defense. All the successful players were well over 20 P40 and .500 2-point pct. Players who fell below that mark in either or both of the statistics didn’t have anywhere near the careers the others had. Defense seems to be important also, as the two top players on this list, Marion and Granger, were by far the top SB40 players.

This chart is good news for Damion James. He fits in well with the successful players. James looks like the type of player who can make a successful transition to the wing. He has all the traits of a player like Posey, Howard or Richardson. He’s a very good rebounder for his size, scores often and efficiently from inside and out, and has put up strong defensive numbers. The low A/TO is in the back of my mind as a concern when I write this, but I feel Damion James is in for a good, long run as an NBA forward. I doubt he’s all-star level, but he certainly looks like a solid starter.

Al-Farouq Aminu, Wake Forest: Has been a different player as a freshman and sophomore. The difference was likely in the situation. As a freshman he was the 3^rd option behind Jeff Teague and James Johnson who both were drafted in the first round of the 2009 draft. As a sophomore, he was asked to lead the team. Here are the numbers:

Being the third option is much easier than being the first. Aminu went from a pretty decent prospect to one who struggled with both efficiency and TOs. On the positive side he improved his rebounding and defense to the level only the best prospects typically reach. So that gives us two angles to look at Aminu. Is he the inefficient scorer who struggles with TOs, or the monster rebounder/defender? I’ll throw a couple of tables out there and try to figure that one out. The first is the negative. Here are college sophomores who, like Aminu, finished with a 2-point pct below .500 and an A/TO below 0.5, and had an NBA career:

I included both small and power forwards, because at this point I’m not sure which position he’ll play. I doubt this list is that telling, because Aminu is a much better rebounder and defender than at this point than any player on this list. He also posted a .570 as a freshman while scoring more points than the majority of players on this list. I think it is a safe bet to say he’ll have a better career than any of these players. But this shows how poor his scoring efficiency and passing were this year and how far he has to go offensively to justify the top 10 draft pick expected to be used to acquire his services. Next I’ll take a more positive angle. Here are NCAA sophomore forwards who topped 13.0 R40 and 3.5 SB40 as Aminu (barely) did this past season:

This is a much better bunch to be grouped with. There are some all-stars here and at least one HOFer. The problem is there are also some journeymen and Aminu’s stats are more in line with theirs than the all-stars, especially when looking at FG pct. Plus he’s on the low end in both rebounds and blocks. Even though there are some excellent players on this list, it is hard to project Aminu as an all-star based on this.

From looking at this I think the one thing that stands out is Aminu looks much more like a PF than a SF at this point. He’s more SF size and has had some limited success, developing an outside shot. The problem is his A/TO rate is very low for a SF. Historically the only SFs with low A/TOs who made an impact were the ones who could shoot the lights out, so getting that shot to fall will be huge. The fact that his strengths are rebounding and defense also say he’s a PF. He’s on the small side, but is about a year younger than most sophs and he should be able to bulk up. He also has a 7’3” wingspan that will definitely help him on the inside.

As an early first round pick I feel he remains a huge gamble. As a PF he would need to become a better inside scorer to justify the pick. As a SF, he would need to become a better passer and shooter. That’s a lot of work to be done either way. There is also the question of how good will he become at the high end? Can he become an all-star in the mold of Nowitzki, Granger or Marion? Or will his high end be that of a very good role player like Derrick McKey or Chris Morris? At this point I would have to go with the latter. Great players usually show at least some signs of greatness from the start. The only number Aminu can point to right now is his 13.0R40. As the 2^nd list shows, this in itself is far from a sure ticket to greatness. Drafting this guy in the top 10 bring a lot of bust potential.

Luke Babbitt, Nevada: The strength of Babbitt this year was his ability to score. He is a terrific shooter, hitting .416 on treys and over 90% of his FTs. On 2-pointers he was at .521, which is a low for a traditional PF, but is probably OK for a combo. Here are the NCAA sophs who scored over 20.0 P40 and .400 3-pointers with at least 50 attempts, as Babbitt did this past season:

Most of these guys were SFs. I think Grant and Smith are the only PFs in the bunch. Grant was 22 at the time, so I doubt he’s a fair comp. The more successful players generally had a higher 2-point pct and SB40. Just looking at the SFs, the successful ones also rebounded much better. As for Babbitt, he rebounds well, but his low 2-point pct suggests he’s something short of both a star and a starter.

I do like Babbit though. The reason is he can score often and efficiently. He looks like a guy who can become a good enough shooter that he can make the defense adjust with his shooting ability. The flip side of such a player is usually how bad he gets killed on the other end and on the boards. Babbitt brings rebounding numbers that are slightly below what is typically needed for a PF and defensive numbers that would have to be considered poor. While I feel he could be adequate defensively in some cases, there will be some players who absolutely kill him. Of course if your idea of defense is outscoring your guy, Babbitt can probably do that on most nights. Babbitt is a player who can help out on offense and will have moments where he really lights it up. In that sense he’ll have some value. But he’ll be a liability on defense to the point that his role will be limited.

Trevor Booker, Clemson: Any team looking for a player in round two who might provide something in the way of immediate help should take a long look at Booker. He isn’t much of a scorer, but he has good defensive numbers and his role in Clemson’s full court press suggests his defensive abilities extend to the perimeter. The latter part of that is something that would be vital for Booker, because he’s SF size with PF numbers. Here is what his career looks like:

Not great, but he does show a decent skill set. The scoring is low in both efficiency and frequency, but it isn’t terrible. The rebounding is adequate and the defense is strong. He’s probably about where Patterson and Aminu are as a 3-point shooter in that he’s shown some promise, but with limited attempts we really don’t know how good he is. I’ll just say that like the ability to defend the perimeter, getting his outside shot to fall will be a key for Booker.

Not a great prospect, but Trevor Booker has shown enough that I’d use a 2^nd round draft pick on him. He looks like a player who could give a team some minutes immediately as a defensive specialist and could develop into a Bowen-type of player if he can consistently hit the outside shot.

Patrick Patterson, Kentucky: The thing that strikes me about Patrick Patterson is how highly he is thought of, despite being a player who has been around for 3 seasons and has never been the leading scorer on his team. I know circumstances were different at Kentucky, but in general players who are going to make a big impact at the next level aren’t deferring to the likes of Jodie Meeks or politely stepping aside when a couple of hot freshmen join the team. Here are Patterson’s numbers for his 3 seasons:

The best thing about him is his efficiency. Being over .600 the past two seasons is good. It is more impressive than a lot of players who have accomplished this, because he is more than just a putback/easy layup guy. While it is a good thing to be over .600, it isn’t a ticket to the NBA by itself. The best PFs have typically been well over 20.0 P40, were around 12.0 R40 and over 3.0 SB40 by their junior years. Patterson’s numbers in rebounding and defense are similar to the likes of Marcus Fizer, Mario Boggan, Ike Diogu and John Wallace. Something those four players had in common with Patterson is the high 2-point pct. and a 3-point percentage that was promising enough in small usage it would have been considered an asset at the time. To be fair, I can also offer up Otis Thorpe and AC Green as a couple of players who posted rebounding and defensive numbers that were less impressive than Patterson’s. Because those two played before the shot clock came to college basketball, I wonder some about their numbers.

The most important thing Patterson did this year is start hitting the 3-pointer. While he’s hardly a proven gunner like Babbitt or James, showing he has some skill is important. It is actually very important, because he comes up way short as a PF prospect. Over the course of his college career, Patterson hasn’t put up numbers in points, rebounds, steals or blocks that would put him with successful PFs. He hasn’t been an aggressive player, preferring to let teammates take the lead. I just can’t see him having much of an NBA career. If he gets that shot going, he might stick around as a role player, but he isn’t going to make it solely as a PF. While there are some things to like about his game, this group of forwards is way too deep to be taking a chance by drafting Patrick Patterson in round one.

Craig Brackins, Iowa State: The poster boy for the “Get out of school and start making money ASAP” crowd. Brackins fell apart as a junior after a sophomore season that had him a possible first rounder. Here are the numbers:

About the only good thing I can say is that improved passing, defense and 3-point shooting made him slightly more diverse as a player. But he fell so much in the other parts of his game that I couldn’t imagine using a draft pick on him. The thing to point out here is he wasn’t great shakes as a prospect after his sophomore season either. He probably would have been drafted in round one, thanks to a weak crop of big guys. But his numbers look a lot like those of Luke Harangody, who I’ll cover with the PFs. Lots of points, good rebounding, but poor efficiency and defense make him a shaky prospect.

I doubt Brackins will make it. He has the nice soph season to his credit, but even that was subpar as future NBA players go. He needs to get back to that level and then some before he can make the next step.

Charles Garcia, Seattle: Since he’s getting some buzz, I’ll weigh in on him quickly. He looks like he’s way too erratic to make it. There are some obvious skills here, but the numbers he put up just aren’t all that impressive, considered he did it at a small college. He’s low in efficiency and defensive numbers, but way too high in TOs. Long, athletic types are always worth a look-see, but in Garcia’s case best to go the UFA route and use the draft picks on players who have shown more promise.

Wouldn’t it be great to see what a healthy Greg Oden could become? For the record Dikembe Mutombo did not play as a freshman. His first season, when he was a 22 year-old sophomore, he played 374 minutes and blocked 8.0 shots per 40 minutes.

Hassan Whiteside, Marshall: The man can block some shots. Looking at the list above, Whiteside appears in line for a long career as either a star NBA center or a ridiculously overpaid NBA center. The thing that does concern me is his low A/TO. On the list it shows as 0.2, but that’s because I round to tenths. It’s actually 0.16 which is very low for freshmen of any age. Here’s a list of freshmen college centers who also posted an A/TO below 0.2. I only included players who played over 300 minutes. I lowered the bar from the usual 500 so I could include Dikembe Mutombo and David Robinson.

I listed the players in order of how frequent the assists came. The idea here was to separate the players who simply didn’t pass from the players who were erratic passers. On this list are 2 players who could legitimately called busts based on their draft position: Turpin and Dare. Claxton hardly had a career, but was drafted in round 2, so not much was expected of him. The others either met or exceeded expectations. The point is Turpin and Dare were the two most notorious non-passers in the bunch, along with Willis. Willis, drafted after Turpin in the legendary ’84 draft, defied the odds and played 21 years with one all-star appearance to his credit. Turpin actually improved his passing by his soph season and that wasn’t the reason for his not living up to expectations. This is important for Whiteside, because his passing numbers are more in line with the players at the middle of this group who all forged careers that were at least journeyman level, but included a couple of one-time all-stars and a couple of legends. The point is Hassan Whiteside’s weak passing numbers don’t appear to be so weak that they’re going to keep him from an NBA career.

Going to the shot blockers table at the top, there are six centers in that group who had careers that stood above the others: Mourning, Camby, Hakeem, Shaq, Duncan and Ewing. These players typically had a higher FG pct. with scoring and rebounding numbers that were at least decent. Whiteside meets 2 of these criteria. He scored a solid 19.1 P40 and posted a R40 higher than all but 4 players on the list. The FG pct. is low, something made worse by the fact he declined throughout the season with monthly splits of .590, .516, .479 and .460. With a player who is raw and in his first college season, it is obviously better to see improvement or at least a flatter decline. A decline in numbers is common for any player, but this is pretty sharp and coming in Whiteside’s freshman it suggests that teams were figuring him out as the season progressed. This tells me that coming in Whiteside’s offense will require a lot of work.

Hassan Whiteside has a long way to go as a player. He needs to bulk up and work on his offensive game. He was outplayed by Jerome Jordan in their 3 matchups this year and every center in the NBA is a better player than Jerome Jordan. He’s also about a year and-a-half older than most freshmen, and that flattens his career curve some. Statistically he’s behind the all-time greats, but ahead of where the likes of Dalambert, MacIlvaine and Bradley were at the same point. For that reason I see him at least having a long NBA career. As to how successful it will be, the potential is pretty high. He’s already a solid rebounder and is potentially a dominant defender. That combination in itself will get any center plenty of PT. Should he add an effective offensive game to his arsenal, he’ll be a force. While I see it more likely that he’ll spend most of his career as a semi-regular with great per minute numbers, the fact that he has the potential to become a dominating center separates him from the rest of the draftees once the impact players are off the board. For this reason I can’t see how any team can let Whiteside slide too far out of the top 5. I understand that he’ll require more time and effort than someone like Wesley Johnson and there could be little in the way of payoff for that effort. But a dominating center is the single most valuable player any team can have and Whiteside has such potential. The opportunity to develop such a player doesn’t come along that often and is not something to be passed on for a mediocre perimeter talent.

Daniel Orton, Kentucky: Orton comes into the draft as something of a mystery. He came off Kentucky’s bench as a freshman, which is rare for a prospect, but not unprecedented. He doesn’t bring the numbers that fellow freshmen Whiteside and Cousins do, but was fairly impressive in his own right. As the above chart shows he’s in some pretty fast company with freshmen who blocked over 4 shots per 40 minutes. His other numbers aren’t as impressive, but were put up while playing on a talented roster, so they could be a little suppressed. He was also recovering from ACL surgery that caused him to miss most of his HS senior season and that has been known to suppress a player’s numbers for a year or so after recovery. Here are his splits:

There is some good news here for Orton, mainly the fact that he hit 68% of his shots in the final 2 months of the season. I should note that this is for an average of 2 FG attempts per game, but it is impressive nonetheless. A common trait of the best centers ever is a high FG pct. from the start. For Orton putting up a .676 against the toughest part of the schedule is impressive. On the negative side it ignores his slow start and his much less impressive .539 overall number. Even if the .676 on a low number of attempts is a real indication of his ability to score inside, it merely places Orton on the same class as Jelani McCoy, considering his other numbers.

For that reason it is hard to rank Orton too high. We can say that right now he looks like nothing more than a NBA journeyman. But there are enough unknowns about him to add some intrigue to his prospect status. An athletic big man who has shown flashes is never a bad gamble as the draft gets past the lottery stage. Orton’s potential isn’t anywhere near as impressive as Whiteside’s. To me he looks like a player who could spend a long time in the league, but will be nothing more than a low minute, backup center for his entire career.

Here is a quick recap on what to look for in SFs. This might be a little vague. That’s due to the nature of the position. Rather than always having a defined role, such as scorer, rebounder or distributor, a SF is often asked to do many different things. Therefore, the more skills any SF prospect can flash the better.

• Scoring: The best SFs have been at or over 20.0 P40 by the time they were seniors with an Adjusted FG pct of at least .530. In each case, the higher the better. The younger a player is, the more leeway is given here. This year there are no freshmen and only 3 sophs who would be considered prominent prospects. For that reason I’m going to hold most of the players pretty strictly to these guidelines. It isn’t necessary that a player can hit the 3-pointer, but it doesn’t hurt.
• Rebounding: A R40 of 7.0 seems to be the minimum here. Again, the higher the better.
• Passing and defense: For SFs I’ve been using their ASB40 as sort of a combined passing/defense rating. The number is simply combined assists, steals and blocks per 40 minutes. Historically it has been very important for a player to be over 5.0 ASB40.

I think the easiest way to explain successful SFs is this: It is very important for them to score often and efficiently. It is also important for them to have at least one other skill they do exceptionally well, be it rebounding, passing or defense. In addition they shouldn’t be below 5.0 on ASB40 or 0.7 on A/TO.

This group is players who look like they’ll mainly play SF. The last group was players who looked like they might be able to swing between SF and SG. Next up will be the combo forwards. Here are the numbers:

Combined with the SFs reviewed in the previous post, this is a deep, interesting group. Players are listed in order of preference, all other factors being equal.

Wesley Johnson, Syracuse: Johnson spent two seasons at Iowa State, before transferring to Syracuse. Because he sat out a season in between, he’s the age of most college seniors. He wasn’t much of a prospect at Iowa State and that could have been because he just wasn’t utilized properly. His sophomore season there, almost half his shots came from beyond the arc. At Syracuse he was the main guy in the offense and his numbers took off. Here is a look at Johnson’s numbers for his first two seasons, compared to this season. Below that is a breakdown of his splits for this year.

Wesley Johnson definitely spent his year off in productive fashion. He went from a non-prospect to a top ten prospect. What concerns me though, are the splits. Johnson’s top 5 draftee rep is built on an ultra-impressive 2-month run to open this season, when most of the games were played against small colleges. Other than those two months he was tepid for two seasons at ISU and fairly ordinary as far as prospects go for his final 3 months at Syracuse. Overall his numbers for the season are good, but don’t place him in the top echelon and this is a problem, because he is slated to go top 5 if the rumors are correct. The biggest problem is he didn’t score as frequently as successful college juniors usually do. Here is a table showing NCAA juniors who scored less than 20.0 P40 and went on to have successful careers:

I think the best thing to say about this list as it relates to Johnson is 3 of the most successful players on the list, Carter, Battier and Jefferson, all came from major programs with crowded rosters that could have suppressed their P40. With Johnson it would be hard to argue that his scoring was suppressed at Syracuse, because he was the top option this year and he didn’t exactly light it up at ISU before transferring. It is also a good thing that Johnson’s numbers are all in the top half of these players. Not so good is that the only real star in the group is Carter. Carter’s offensive prowess was evident in his .649 Adj FG pct. Johnson’s is a solid, but still fairly ordinary .564. Most of these players were simply very good role players. Players like Battier, Horry, Corbin, Lynch, Morris, Augmon and Walton all stayed in the league a long time because of their ability to excel while playing a supporting role.

I have to believe that this is the future for Johnson. That he’s not much more than a good supporting player. That he’s a 2^nd banana at best and probably not even that good. He just never scored at the level star SFs historically have been at and there’s nothing else in his numbers to suggest he’s anything different. Normally a career like the one enjoyed by a player like George Lynch or Shane Battier would be a good thing, especially considering where Johnson was a year ago. The problem is that Johnson is currently ticketed to go as high as #4 in this draft. That could and should change by draft day, but if it comes to pass there will be unrealistic expectations on Johnson and would likely result in a label of “bust”. That wouldn’t be a good thing for anyone involved. But the truth is Wesley Johnson looks like nothing more than a very good NBA role player at this point. He never has shown the type of scoring ability that has been necessary to become a star and expecting as much from him will only hurt his career.

Gordon Hayward, Butler: On the surface, Gordon Hayward doesn’t look like much of a prospect. He played at a small college, didn’t score a lot of points and has few other numbers that would blow you away. He seems like the type of player who would be overrated simply because he was the star of the team that was the best story of the year in college basketball. And that might be the case. But there are signs that suggest he’s a  pretty good prospect. Look at Hayward’s numbers from his freshman and sophomore seasons:

As a freshman he looked like a very promising prospect. Hayward was super-efficient scorer with good passing and defensive numbers who just needed more looks to prove he belonged. He got those looks his sophomore year, but was much less efficient, especially from behind the arc. There is one other important difference in his seasons though. As a freshman, he played the perimeter in what was often a 4-guard offense surrounding Matt Howard. As a soph he moved inside more often, because the Bulldogs were short on inside players. As basically the PF, Hayward hit 59% of his 2-pointers and averaged 10 R40. Honestly that’s pretty darn impressive. More impressive is that his spending more time on the inside is probably what drove the Bulldogs’ great season more than anything. As far as his prospect status goes, in two seasons at Butler, Hayward has hit .592 from 2-point range in one season and .448 from behind the arc in another. That suggests he has some serious potential as a scorer. I’d prefer that he had done this while scoring more frequently, but these numbers are impressive. Before I go on, I need to address a couple of points about Hayward:

• I wrote in the last piece that small college forwards who succeeded in the NBA usually scored over 26 P40 and that would be correct. In two seasons Hayward has a high of 18.7. I’m not going to hold this against him too much. One reason is that really only applied to seniors. The other is Butler just does things a little differently. They really are driven by team success and Hayward was the leader of that. This has to count for something.
• Addressing Butler’s small college schedule, the Bulldogs played 8 of their 12 non-conference games against major college opponents. Throw in 6 tournament games and another game against a tournament-quality team in their bracket buster vs. Siena and that’s 15 of 37 games against quality opposition. Not quite at the level of a major power that plays about 80% of their games against quality opposition, but better competition than most small colleges.

So where does Gordon Hayward rank? That’s a tough question, because I’m still not sure after spending 3 paragraphs defending him. The truth is I still think the mocks that have him going in the lottery overrate him a little. Right now he’s a player who has great potential as a scorer, but is probably a little soft defensively. The problem is he hasn’t shown he can handle a big scoring load, just that he can be extremely efficient with a lighter load. Because he is a sophomore, I can give him a bit of a break there. I’m impressed that he led a moderately-talented team to such a high level this past year. That just has to be considered a plus for him as a prospect, even if there’s no number I can place on it. It does help his case that he’s still just a soph. Because he’s young the potential is still there. I can see that he has 20 PPG potential, where the others have eliminated themselves from such classification with their play during their careers. Hayward hasn’t had the opportunity to do that yet. He is hitting the draft while he’s hot, which is a smart move. The other edge of that sword is the bust potential that comes with being a higher draft pick. Hayward is definitely a gamble, but because of the offensive potential he has flashed, he has to rank second in this group behind Johnson.

Tyren Johnson, Louisiana-Lafayette: The common story of the SFs of 2010 is the many seniors who emerged as semi-serious prospects in their final seasons. Even juniors Wesley Johnson and Darington Hobson are players the age of a college senior who emerged at a new locale. I doubt there was any emergence more unlikely than that of Tyren Johnson. Johnson wasn’t even a regular until this season and wasn’t anything other than a semi-intriguing prospect until about mid-January. Around then he took off and was one of the better forwards in the country. Here are his numbers by year followed by his monthly breakdowns for his senior season.

The March totals are for only one game, as La-Lafayette wasn’t even good enough to get into one of the many post-season tournaments. Johnson played a total of 1476 minutes his first 3 seasons. He wasn’t much of a scorer the first three years, but played good defense. As a senior he came alive offensively, continued to play solid defense and became the Ragin Cajun’s leading scorer and a borderline NBA prospect.

There are some problems with Johnson as a prospect. Just looking at his numbers, he passes every test I would ask of a SF. He scores often and efficiently enough. The defensive numbers are solid and his passing numbers are OK. His TOs are a little on the high side, but not terrible. But his case is based solely a scorching month-and-a-half stretch where he came alive as a player after 3 dormant seasons. It is a good thing that this stretch came at the end of his career, rather than the beginning or middle. But it happened in the Sun Belt conference, a mid-major, and followed 3 seasons where he had only progressed to the level of 5^th-leading scorer. It is better to have a period of sustained success, because that shows the player was able to adjust when opponents would gear their defenses to stopping him. Johnson didn’t have that, just a crazy good stretch at the finish to get his numbers up to snuff. For that reason I have to downgrade him some.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Tyren Johnson beats the odds, gets a spot in the NBA and fashions a decent career. Players with similar numbers have a decent history of NBA success. The only other player in this group I can say such a thing about is Wesley Johnson. I have to respect that and that is why he ranks 3^rd in this group. But prospects rarely take this long to put themselves on the map and they almost never emerge after 3 such ordinary seasons. For that reason I’m extremely wary of him. Teams are in a good position with such a player. He isn’t a hot item and will probably be available as a UFA. If it turns out his final run was just a fluky hot streak, not much will be lost.

Darington Hobson, New Mexico: Hobson had a tough road to get to where he is. He went through several high schools and a junior college before ending up at New Mexico this year. All this moving around cost him a year, so he’s 22, the age of a typical college senior. He made the most of his opportunity at New Mexico, leading the Lobos in scoring, rebounds and assists and to the tournament. He has himself solidly in the draft discussion. His strength as a forward is passing. His passing numbers look like those of a PG. Here are former NCAA junior and senior SFs who, like Hobson, averaged an A40 over 5.0:

The top 3 were the only players who were more than journeymen. The next 4 all stuck around for at least a little while. The bottom 3 never played in the league. The one trend I notice in this group is that the more successful players had the higher SB40. I normally use this stat only for PFs, but added it here since it seems to have some importance. Hobson is on the lower end here, at 1.9, which needless to say doesn’t help. His biggest strength other than passing, rebounding, doesn’t seem to be a factor in success. Also notable is 2 of the top 3 scored a lot of points. The other one, Hill, actually had a big scoring year as a junior in both frequency and efficiency, without the passing skills he showed as a senior. Hobson is an average scorer in frequency and a below-average one in efficiency. I think what we can take from this table is that Darington Hobson doesn’t look like a player who is being undervalued.

What I look for in a player like Hobson is whether there is anything here that suggests he’s better than his numbers. There isn’t. His strengths, passing and rebounding, don’t fit his position or size particularly well. He doesn’t score as frequently as a SF prospect should and he doesn’t have the efficiency or defensive numbers that successful SFs have traditionally posted. There are too many negatives here to think Hobson is anything other than a long shot.

Lazar Hayward, Marquette: Another senior who stepped things up. In Hayward’s case he had actually been a pretty good scorer for three seasons, but was stuck behind the likes of Dominic James, Jerel McNeal and Wes Matthews. This year it was his turn and he did OK. Overall he doesn’t quite measure up as a prospect. His efficiency is a tad low and his ASB40 of 5.0 just barely makes it. Another negative is his A/TO was too low until this season. He’s also 23, a year older than most seniors. I give him an outside chance of making it. The fact that he has been a decent 3-point shooter works in his favor and his long arms suggest he has some potential as a defender. Like all the other players here, he would have been better off arriving as a prospect in a draft that wasn’t so thick with similar marginal, but intriguing SFs. But life is random that way. Hayward is a long shot, but like the rest of this group he has enough to make him worth a look as an UFA.

Quincy Pondexter, Washington: Like Lazar Hayward and Tyren Johnson, Pondexter emerged from obscurity as a senior to put himself on the prospect map. The problem for him is the place he emerged just isn’t quite at the level Johnson and Hayward reached, let alone enough to stand out in this crowded class. The biggest problem with Pondexter is other than his impressive scoring numbers, his stats look weak. Successful SFs usually do something well other than scoring. Pondexter is an adequate rebounder, but his passing and defensive numbers are very soft. Another negative is he has yet to develop a consistent 3-pointer. He did hit .353 this year, but that was for only 51 attempts and was boosted by an 8-11 stretch during 5 games in January. Other than that he was at 25%. Quincy Pondexter had a nice senior season to cap a decent 4-year career. But all he is right now is a good college player and no team should be wasting a draft pick on such a player in this crowded draft.

Devin Ebanks, West Virginia: Ebanks just isn’t there yet as a prospect. He falls short in every important category and has yet to show any ability to hit a 3-pointer, which can always be sort of a saving grace for such a prospect. If anything he has shown some poor judgment shooting treys, hitting only 8 of the 70 he’s hoisted up in 2 seasons. There are a couple of things that give Ebanks a glimmer of hope. The first is there have been players before him who were close to where he is as a sophomore who forged long careers:

The only impact player here is Schrempf, who became a 3-time all-star. I guess the only comment I would have on this group is it is a short, unimpressive list, but if Detlef can do it, Devin also has a chance. The other thing is that West Virginia may not have been the best place for a player like Ebanks. The two players ahead of him as scorers, Butler and Jones were similar players, big SFs. This left Ebanks doing a lot of the defense and board work. But his numbers are still pretty weak.

Drafting Devin Ebanks would be a reach. He does have great athleticism and length for a player his size and it is possible he’ll be a late bloomer. But that’s a pretty big reach. He just hasn’t done anything that would suggest he’s a prospect after 2200 minutes of college ball. With so many good small and combo forwards available this year, I don’t see any point in using a draft pick on Devin Ebanks.

Stanley Robinson, Connecticut: To say Robinson emerged as a senior like these other players have would be a stretch. He was a decent role player for 3 seasons at UConn, before stepping into a bigger role as a senior. That role was the 3^rd leading scorer on a team that missed the tournament. His non-scoring numbers were solid, but unspectacular. This general mediocrity didn’t stop him from being ushered into the late lottery for a long time this year in the mocks around the WWW. He still is hanging around as a bubble first rounder in most lists, meaning some teams are likely considering using their top pick on Robinson. I find this completely baffling. I’m not mocking the mocks here, or Stanley Robinson. They just report what they’re hearing and he basically is what he is. I just don’t understand how such a mediocre NCAA senior could be so highly thought of by the league’s experts, especially considering how crowded the field of SFs is this year.

Looking back through recent history, the only SF who scored less than 17.0 P40 as a senior and made a noticeable impact on the league was Bryon Russell. The only SFs who made a noticeable impact averaging below 4.0 ASB40 as seniors were Chuck Person, Jason Kapono, Hakim Warrick, Johnny Newman and Tony Campbell. The only SFs with a A/TO below 0.5 as a senior were Person, Newman and Campbell. Robinson falls below these numbers in all 3 categories.

In four seasons at UConn, Stanley Robinson has never looked like a serious NBA prospect. He has yet to show he can score, pass or defend well enough to be effective at the next level. If this were someone like Devin Ebanks, who is younger, I might be able to buy into him as a 2^nd-rounder. Robinson is a senior who has had every opportunity to shine, but just hasn’t gotten it done. Any team drafting Stanley Robinson in round one would be making a serious mistake.

I’ll get into what makes for a successful SF prospect a little more in the next post. For now let’s just say that with a weak class of SGs, teams with a need on the wing might be looking to players like this for help. Players are listed in order of preference.

Paul George, Fresno State: Right now George could be listed with either the SGs or SFs. I prefer him here, at SF because his size and skills suggest as much. That’s not to say he couldn’t excel at SG though. The best thing about George is his defensive numbers. Not too many sophomore SFs have topped 2.0 S40 and 1.0 B40 as George did this past season. Those that did have had a solid record of NBA success:

This is a pretty solid group. There are some perennial all-stars, a couple of players who never caught on and some very good role players. Statistically George measures up well with this group everywhere except scoring efficiency. Right now I can’t say whether or not that will be an issue, but it certainly places him below the Manning/Pierce/Battier level at this point.

Since were looking at George as both a SG and SF, here are successful sophomore SGs who hit 2.0 S40 and 1.0 B40:

This group here is a little different. There are 2 truly great players, but a lower rate of overall success. Moten and Clack were both 6’4” college SFs who couldn’t transition to the NBA backcourt. Trepagnier never scored frequently enough and Roby never scored efficiently enough that they would be considered much of a prospect. George is 6’9”, so he doesn’t have the height problems that likely held these players back. He scores enough, but just like with the list of SFs, he comes up a little short on efficiency. Improving his efficiency and lowering a high TO rate will be the two keys for George.

The thing I like best about Paul George is that he’s a high floor/high ceiling player. Looking at his numbers, at the very least he’ll be the type who can fill the role of a 3^rd or 4^th option, giving a team solid defense, spectacular dunks and a decent outside shot. Such players can be pretty valuable and for that reason George is a safe lottery pick based on his floor alone. The big “if” here is whether or not he can harness his natural ability enough to improve the efficiency and lower his high TO rate to the point that he’s a 20+ PPG guy and an all-star. He seems to have that type of ability. Right now I’d bet on him being the super role player who never quite puts it together as an all-star, but the fact that he can be seriously looked at as a potential all-star should push him into the top 10 of this draft.

Landry Fields, Stanford: A player who took the long road to get to where he is. Fields spent his first couple of seasons as a mediocre 3-point shooter in support of a team led by the Lopez brothers. As a junior he was the 3^rd option behind seniors Laurence Hill and Anthony Goods. He busted out his senior season as one of the best players in the nation. Here are his season-by-season numbers:

His first couple of seasons saw roughly half of his FG attempts come from behind the arc. That changed to about 26% and 16% as a junior and senior respectively. This is a case of a player’s efficiency improving dramatically after he stepped into a role better suited to his talents. While it is normal and right to downgrade players who didn’t emerge as prospects until their senior seasons, circumstances like this should be taken into account. The positive things about his career are he can fill it up when asked, is a good rebounder for a player his size, doesn’t have an issue with TOs and is a decent enough 3-point shooter. The number that is of biggest concern is the .519 adjusted FG pct. That is low for successful SFs, at least ones who enter the league as seniors. But it isn’t so low that I’d definitely dismiss him. The list of semi-successful players who, like Fields, were this low and didn’t bring extraordinary defensive or passing skills includes Johnny Newman, Tony Campbell, Don McLean, Ruben Patterson and Matt Harpring. Not exactly Dream Teamers, but certainly the type of career someone like Fields would take.

As far as where Fields ranks, I would have to say the second round is a good place to start considering him. He isn’t a future star by any stretch and wing players who don’t have that going for them just aren’t worthy of the first round. The careers of the 5 players I listed above seem like a likely career scenario for Fields. That would be a SF who is good enough to find a place in a rotation and possibly stick in the league for a long time, but would need to find the right situation to catch on as a starter.

Tyler Smith, Tennessee: Smith was dismissed from the Tennessee team in early January following misdemeanor drug and weapons charges. He’s been playing in Turkey for a couple of months and seems to be doing pretty well there. Smith looked like a terrific prospect to me as a sophomore, but has seen his career sputter since then. Here are his three seasons at Tennessee:

As a soph he was an excellent role player who showed a variety of skills while scoring efficiently. As a junior he moved into the lead scorer role and didn’t fare so well there as his efficiency and defense suffered. He got back to his sophomore numbers as a senior, but his season was cut off prematurely. His senior numbers are probably a little inflated, because they were put up against a non-conference schedule.

The big negative I see here is simply the fact that when Smith was asked to become the lead scorer on the team he just didn’t get the job done efficiency-wise. That has always been a pretty big deal for prospects. Smith excelled as the 2^nd or 3^rd option, but didn’t get it done as the lead guy and that has never been a good sign. He does have some ability though and it wouldn’t surprise me if he got into the league for a time. During his career he has been a very efficient scorer in a supporting role, one of the better passing forwards in the game and a player who can put up strong numbers in both rebounds and steals. At best he’s potentially a good role player, but not much else.

Lance Stephenson, Cincinnati: I doubt I’d even give this guy a mention if it weren’t for the fact that he came in as a highly-touted phenom and seems likely to be drafted. I have him rated here instead of SG, because this is were his skill set puts him. The only real strength I see here is he’s an above-average rebounder for a player his size and that really isn’t saying much. There have been both SGs and SFs who scored less often than Stephenson did as a freshman who later went on to long NBA careers, but they typically showed at least one of three traits as a freshman. These are the traits and players who fit them:

• A high ASB40: Billy Owens, Ron Artest, Shane Battier and Gerald Wallace.
• Efficient overall scoring: Danny Manning, Vince Carter and Mike Dunleavy.
• An ability to shoot the lights out: Glen Rice, Dell Curry, Michael Finley, Dennis Scott and Chuck Person.

Stephenson has shown little in any of these areas. His ASB40 is a barely-acceptable 5.04. If we’re calling him a SG, his 1.3 S40 is a huge negative. He doesn’t score often or efficiently enough from inside or behind the arc. The best I can say about his chances is he is ahead of where Tyrone Corbin, Monty Williams, Malik Sealy and Derrick McKey were at the same point in their careers. He’s also close to Trevor Ariza and Richard Jefferson. But I could have said the same thing about hundreds of other NCAA freshmen who will never get the close look that Stephenson is getting now.

I can’t completely dismiss Lance Stephenson as a prospect. There is some skill here and as a freshman he still has room to grow. It appears he’s going to get an opportunity to play somewhere and that is the most important thing. But players who are where he is now rarely make much of an impact. Considering the glut of talent at the position and general lack of demand for 6’5” wing players who can’t shoot, I can’t imagine why any team would use a draft pick in round one or two on Lance Stephenson.

Marqus Blakely, Vermont and Kevin Palmer, Texas A&M Corpus Christi: A couple of small college players who deserve a at least a mention. Blakely led the Catamounts in minutes, points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. He hit .561 on 2-pointers, which was down from his career high of .618 he hit as a freshman and .613 as a junior. He was pretty much a dominator at this level, which is a good thing for any small college player to be. Kevin Palmer is kind of a late arrival as a prospect. He only emerged in this, his senior season. He put up some nice numbers this year, but remains a little raw. Both players are small to be forwards, though Blakely comes in with a 7’1” wingspan that should help compensate for that. Neither has shown the type of shooting range that will probably be necessary for a long stay in the league, though Palmer has been notably better than Blakely from behind the arc. To get an idea of what it takes for a small college SF to make it, here’s a table showing 4 small college SFs who made it and 4 who didn’t:

This is limited to players I pulled from a quick scan of my files, but I’m guessing it covers small college SFs pretty well. Jones and Nelson actually played at mid-majors, but none of these guys played college ball in a major conference and including these two helps make my point. The strength of the four players who made the league and played a lot of minutes was scoring a lot of points in college. In this case all were over 26 P40. The strength of the bottom 4, who had no impact whatsoever in the league, was their all-around game. All were strong rebounders or passers with a high ASB40. None of them scored anywhere near as frequently as the 4 successful players. The bottom 4 players were better as a group at everything other than scoring frequency. The point is historically it has been better for small college SFs to be scorers first and foremost and leave the grunt work to others. The players who scored at good, but not great, levels and do the grunt work just haven’t been as successful. Both Blakely and Palmer are good scorers/grunts and because of this they face long odds. This isn’t to say one or both can’t make it. I’d go so far to say I’d be happy if my team brought either one in as a UFA. But both are fighting history and history usually wins.