Bilas' Take On Jeff and Roy's Prospects

[lichoya68]

roy and jeff both withdraw from the draft and stay yup thats my lichoyas predicts we shall see but my prediction out there go hoyas go roy and jeff

[GIGAFAN99]

chep3 said:

To be fair, Ndudi Ebi is foreign the way that Ben Gordon is foreign. Born overseas but played hs ball here, and would have gone to Arizona. Outside of that, I don't think that Kapono is much better than many of those guys , and worse than Darko, Pietrus, Pvlovic, Diaw, and Barbosa. It's really easy to be a spot up shooter on a team with DWade and Shaq. I'm sure he wouldn't look nearly as good in that role on the Nets or GS. The reason Kapono dropped is all of those guys either have size or athleticism. Kapono has neither.

Really? A 6'8 spot-up shooter with no athleticism? Those other guys seem to be, um, shall we say less-than-convincing in their cases against picking Kapono over them. 6'8 is big. None of these guys are very "athletic" unless you count being unseen for most of their young careers as athletic (which is what the NBA does).

And he ISN'T much better than those guys. But he wasn't the first round pick. 9 of those guys were for not much more than having "upside" by being a mystery.

[chep3]

Fair enough, I thought he was shorter than 6'8. But still, I do think the whole NBA just likes foreign players wihtout knowing anything about them thing is a little overused. Truth is scouts mess up all the time. You can name a bunch of crappier players that were picked over Kapono in the 2003 draft. But, lets look at the 2004 draft. Anderson Varejao was drafted in the 2nd round, and look at some of the guys out of college drafted ahead of him: Rafael Araujo (8), Luke Jackson (10), Kris Humphries (14), Kirk Snyder (16), David Harrison (29). Is it safe to say that if Anderson Varejao was actually named Sideshow Bob, he would have been drafted in the first round? Try it with any draft. It's really easy to start with a conclusion and find support for it here because these scouts mess up so much.

[GIGAFAN99]

chep3 said:

Fair enough, I thought he was shorter than 6'8. But still, I do think the whole NBA just likes foreign players wihtout knowing anything about them thing is a little overused. Truth is scouts mess up all the time. You can name a bunch of crappier players that were picked over Kapono in the 2003 draft. But, lets look at the 2004 draft. Anderson Varejao was drafted in the 2nd round, and look at some of the guys out of college drafted ahead of him: Rafael Araujo (8), Luke Jackson (10), Kris Humphries (14), Kirk Snyder (16), David Harrison (29). Is it safe to say that if Anderson Varejao was actually named Sideshow Bob, he would have been drafted in the first round? Try it with any draft. It's really easy to start with a conclusion and find support for it here because these scouts mess up so much.

I agree with you actually and I think NBA teams are even worse with other things like youth, "athleticism," and "upside." It's really not that their European precisely that's the issue, it's the mysterious "upside." It's almost like if a scout thinks a kid has a 80% chance of averaging 12 and 9 in the NBA and playing good defense he's valued lower than a guy that has a perceived 1% chance of being the next Dirk Nowitzki. It used to be high schoolers, then it was Europeans, now it might be the "one-and-dones" that gain from this boom or bust thinking.

[chep3]

You'll get no argument from me about that. Every GM is too afraid not to gamble.