After two of stronger, deeper drafts ever, the 2009 draft is going to be fairly normal. There are no can’t miss stars and the best player, Blake Griffin, is more of a hard worker than a great athlete. This is mainly due to a weak freshman class. The sophomores who stuck around from last years’ incredible class are by themselves a more impressive group than the ‘09 freshmen. That means the winners from the 2009 draft are going to be players who stayed in school for another year, because they’ll be making more money and will have the security of coming in as higher draft picks. The losers will be the teams with multiple picks in round one who will find the pickings pretty slim after the lottery. That’s Minnesota and Oklahoma City.
I listed 60 players in sort of a tiered system. It’s not really a mock draft, but how I would rank the players at this point in time everything else being equal. These rankings are based on current stats, the player’s history and their size/athleticism/potential. It’s mainly about the stats though. These rankings are also very fluid and will likely change quite a bit as the season gets into the tournaments. Don’t expect many, if any of these players to improve their stock, but there are some who will decline. This includes NCAA players only. I’ll bring the international players in on this later.