Last night I put together a spreadsheet of many drafts, and this draft stood out as being pretty different than the others (Basketball insiders, Draft Express, Chad ford, etc.)
Mudiay isn't really falling because he's in contention at 3 where Russell is supposedly their choice, 4 because the Knicks are one of the teams like the Cs that nobody knows what they're going to do, and 6 SAC. ORL at 5 has Payton, and Kyler who's tied in there says they're not drafting guards. Mudiay has just started working out after unwisely skipping the Combine and supposedly is very impressive so we'll see whether he can get back above Russell with Philly.
Otherwise, no one else has WCS, Dekker, and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson going that low or RJ Hunter getting into the teens and Alexander and Mickey getting into the first round. Possible that it plays out that way, but I'd trust DX and Ford over Mannix when it comes to showing up at workouts and talking to NBA scouts/execs. This looks more like winging it a bit.
I do think WCS could fall because there are a lot of teams that need specific needs and don't need a center (DET, CHA, MIA), several teams that could go in any direction, and SAC and DEN which have a mess in the front offices. Booker OTOH could go as high as 8 or 9 as DET and CHA need outside shooting and this is not a strong draft for that.
Names popular for BOS at 16 are Portis, Lyles, and Dekker. No one else had Looney there. However, many think we going to move up.
There were 24 players who were first rounders in every mock. So when we get to #28 we're out of luck unless there's a slider or we move up. We show up with Christian Wood or Chris McCullough in several drafts each, both who are projects with big upside. There are also any number of foreign players who start coming into play in the late first round and mocks had us taking Vezenkov, Gauditus, and De Paula there or in the early second round.
Lastly, I tried putting together trading partners just using this year's picks and future second rounders only (no future firsts, no players) using the pick valuation model from Tankathon/82games. Practically we can't get into the top 5, SAC and DEN at 6&7 seem unlikely because they need to both make a splash giving the nonsense going on in their front offices and DET and CHA really need shooters which we don't have and are not going to be available at 16.
So I ended up with MIA and IND as being viable and achievable. MIA has starters though they could upgrade PF. Their bench is a big problem and we could give them a lot of picks to help that for the 10th. IND needs a PG but one of Payne or Grant would be available at 16 and they'd get other picks like 28 to get developmental bigs to replace Hibbert and West going forward. Both deals appear to be doable without doing much more than combining excess picks along with this year's firsts. I'd still like to keep the 33rd though to take a flyer on the best stash foreign player available and that would be doable in putting together trades like these. I know someone will come forth with the CHI-DEN trade from last year, but last year's draft was a little deeper in the second tier and CHI overpaid.
Topic: Mudiay falls to 6 in latest cnnsi mock (Read 6839 times)