Can't believe we took Zizic over the #1 rated prospect. I remember hearing about Skal Labissiere a year before he went to Kentucky.
He slides to #23 and we pass on him for this Euro Bum Zizic. Skal is the new NBA big man, shoots the three blocks shots, long athletic.
Calipari is a great recruiter not a genius Coach IMO. Coach Steven's would have worked wonders with a kid with this type of size and talent.
Calling him this #1 prospect is pretty disingenuous.
He wasn't the #1 prospect by the time the draft rolled around and that's why he fell to the 20s or 30s or whenever he got picked.
Zizic was a highly rated big man who was willing to be stashed. It was a no-brainer pick.
The Yabu pick came a bit out of left field.
He was the #1rated prospect just like Harry Giles was. If your ranked #1 anytime the seventeen to eighteen time frame. That means you have star upside.
And Sac has both of them.
High Risk/High Reward makes a lot of sense if you're picking in the 20's.
What's so striking to me is how the media attitude toward the Kings' management took a 180 flip - commentators were positively gushing the day after the draft this year.
Well Sac took Giannis the "Greek Freak" in the draft last year, and yes, I'm talking about Greek league sensation Georgios Pappagiannis and not the lesser known Greek prospect on the Bucks.
Sac could only improve after that pick.
But that brings up an important point. Pappagiannis was picked 13th in that draft and was the third center taken after Bender (4th) and Jakob Poeltl (9th).
In terms of what was available for centers in that draft the Celtics probably did at least ok since they picked Zizic 10 spots lower then Pappagiannis and he's inarguably outperforming him in Summer League right now.
You can also make a case that he's performing at the same level as - or perhaps even slightly above - Poeltl and Bender currently. He's out-rebounding both of them and averaging more blocks. Both Bender and Poeltl have been able to score more and play more minutes. Poeltl is scoring at the highest efficiency of the three.
My observation on Skal is that so far he has shown himself to be the same player he was in college in the NBA - extremely streaky. He can give you one great game that makes you wonder why he wasn't a top 3 pick, and then disappear completely for several games at a time... Celtics Fans had a love/hate relationship with Kelly Olynyk for the same reasons so it's at least up for debate whether Skal was really that big a miss.
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Topic: Poll: Was Zizic over Skal Labissiere a mistake (Read 9975 times)