It was crazy seeing team after team pass on Ryan Gomes in 2005, and amazing to see so many teams pass over Chase Budinger and DeJuan Blair in 2009. These guys just all seemed like very obvious picks that few teams seemed all that interested in.
DeJuan Blair really made no sense to me. I know teams were put off by his lack of size and the questionable state of his knees, but he hasn't had any health issues yet, and clearly he's quite a player.
Surely the Spurs weren't the only ones who could see that -- DeJuan was the best player for a very good, very high profile college team at Pitt.
That sort of mistake sticks out to me a lot more than missing on project bigs like Deandre. For every Deandre Jordan there are ten to twenty Ryan Hollins', Hilton Armstrongs, Hassan Whitesides, and Byron Mullins'.
Seems that relatively often, however, teams get burned by the DeJuan Blairs and Carlos Boozers (and Glen Davis's) -- guys who put up good numbers in good programs in college but for whatever reasons were considered injury risks or who supposedly weren't going to fit in the NBA.
I wonder the same thing about guys like Nikola Pekovic and Tiago Splitter (more recently Mirotic and Motiejunas). From what I've read, both were very good in international professional leagues and had reputations as very good players. Why do such players fall to the end of the first round? Is it just their age and questions about whether they'll come over?
Getting a proven player for 5-6 years ought to be better than getting a very young but totally unproven guy who might fall out of the league in a year, and you have to think these guys would commit to come over for good money if they were drafted higher. If you're a lottery team in the midst of rebuilding anyway, is it such a big deal if you have to wait a season or two before you get them?
I suppose maybe it's because a lot of GMs for bad teams are desperate to make moves that will improve the team right away, for the sake of keeping their job.
