Come on, you knew I’d be coming back to this well. I’m going to start with some of the draft grades handed out to Golden State. Generally speaking, the Warriors earned a “B.” From Chad Ford at ESPN.com (Insider Subs.)
We’ve been tough on Taft most of the year, but in the second round he’s a steal. If he plays with a chip on his shoulder, he could end up being the best pick the Warriors made on Tuesday.
No one had been this hard on Taft, the worst written was that he might fall to the start of the 2nd round, not the middle. Chad Ford saved most of his abuse for Taft’s agent:
It’s a good thing Taft’s agent, Billy Ceisler, barred me from the gym before I got a longer look at Taft. At the start of the season, most had him as a top five pick. After seeing his lackluster workout, I was going to drop him only a few spots, into the mid- to-late first round. Now he’s swimming in the second round with Von Wafer and Travis Diener. This is a fantastic pick for Golden State in the second round. Taft has the potential to be a great player. He has great size and athleticism. He just doesn’t have much of a motor and conditioning is a big issue.
Taft’s agent was an idiot. Right now Ceisler is just breathing a sigh of relief that Villanueva (another of his clients) got a lottery draft.
They got three athletic specimens in Ike Diogu, Monta Ellis and Chris Taft. Unfortunately, Ellis is a high school kid who’s going to need a lot of time to develop, and Taft is known for a poor work ethic and a lack of conditioning. But if Diogu lives up to billing and turns out to be even a poor man’s Elton Brand, and one of the other two pans out, team president Chris Mullin will be happy. Other than maybe going the international route in the second round with an Andriuskevicius or Mile Ilic, it’s hard to argue with these picks.
So, he wasn’t wild about them but they are reasonable decisions. Does this even reach a tepid endorsement?
From FoxSports/DIME Magazine:
Golden State was clearly looking for front line rebounding help and they got it in Ike Diogu. Diogu is a monster in the paint, attacking the glass like his life depends on it. Couple that with his improving offensive game and the Warriors have themselves a solid post player to go to work with Troy Murphy under the hoop. High schooler Monta Ellis is an intriguing talent and could be molded into an NBA point guard in time. Golden State’s third pick, Chris Taft at No. 42, is well worth the gamble. If he ever figures it out, he could be a steal.
The NY Post has comments from Taft’s high school coach.
During his sophomore year at Pitt, there was talk that Chris Taft could be a lottery pick or even a top-five selection in the NBA Draft.
But as the actual draft grew closer, concerns mounted that the former Xaverian star had made a mistake by leaving school and hiring an agent.
Those concerns became a reality last night when the 6-10 forward fell all the way to the middle of the second round and the Warriors with the 42nd overall pick.
“It’s disappointing,” said Xaverian head coach Jack Alesi. “Anybody who cares about Chris hoped he would stay another year. I’m convinced he has the ability to be a good player, but I think teams had questions about his heart.”
Alesi, however, does not.
“His emotional ability might need some work, but I think he can be a good player,” Alesi said. “I just wish he was going to develop in school. Somebody just sold him a bill of goods.”
The person who rescued Taft from falling further was another Xaverian grad, Golden State’s Chris Mullin.
“I’m glad someone like Chris took him,” Alesi said. “He’ll look after him. Hopefully he proves himself. I still believe in the kid.”
Selling kids a bill of goods is another theme after the draft.
The guilty should be exposed. They are fathers and agents, summer coaches and leaches, handlers and enablers. They are anyone and everyone responsible for what happened Tuesday night — the most humiliating NBA Draft in history.
Every year, a player or two is stunned to slip on NBA Draft night. Rashard Lewis thought he was a first-rounder in 1998. Marcus Taylor thought he would be drafted by someone — anyone — in 2002. It’s sad, but it happens. It’s routine.
What happened Tuesday night was not routine. This was obscene. Multiple players with promise — some collegians, some high school seniors — were shocked not to be drafted in the first round. Or any round.
Players made these decisions, but the people around them deserve scrutiny, too.
…
Today is humiliating for all of those players … and for draft rejects like Alabama junior Kennedy Winston and Kentucky freshman Randolph Morris … and for second-round surprises like high school senior Andray Blatche and Pittsburgh sophomore Chris Taft.The players should be humiliated. They did this to themselves.
But let’s not fool ourselves. They had help.
The sub-theme is that if you thought the SEC was down in basketball last year, this coming season will be even worse with the talent lost but not drafted.
Tuesday night, a looming lose-lose proposition came home to roost on the Southeastern Conference. And in the end, it was worse than even the most devout pessimists could have envisioned.
On the whole, it was a validating night for the stay-in-school activists. Eleven seniors were picked in the first round, and 14 of the first 38 picks were throwback players who actually embraced the quaint notion of a four-year, expenses-paid education and on-the-job basketball training. Eighteen of the 30 first-rounders were college seniors or juniors, continuing a trend that says three years of college is a sensible minimum for all but the most gifted players.
It was significantly less validating for guys like Chris Taft, who left Pittsburgh early and was exposed as under-skilled and under-motivated in NBA workouts, subsequently plummeting to No. 42. It definitely wasn’t good for the six high school players who slipped into the second round — a development none of the sweet-talkers who counseled them on making the jump ever mentioned.
And it was a night that left nobody from the gutted SEC happy.
No league had more underclassmen declare. When the NBA scouts yawned in their direction, when the mock drafts ignored them, when the analysts predicted draft-night humiliation — most of them stubbornly stayed in anyway. And then Tuesday night was a disaster for the deluded.
Exactly one SEC player was drafted in the first round — a senior at that. Florida’s David Lee was the 30th and last pick in the guaranteed-money zone. After that came LSU sophomore Brandon Bass at No. 33, Mississippi State signee Monta Ellis at No. 40, Georgia signee Louis Williams at No. 45 and Mississippi State senior Lawrence Roberts at No. 55.
The SEC had 6 underclassmen declare and not get drafted.
A couple other notable undrafted players, John Gilchrist of Maryland and Chris Thomas of ND. Both are point guards considered better prospects than Carl Krauser. In the Chicago predraft camp, Thomas started ahead of Krauser on the workout squads and Gilchrist dominated him in a game. Krauser better be thinking long and hard about where he wants to play basketball this year.
On a much more amusing note, the Bill Simmons Draft Diary. Oh, what the heck, one more gratuitous shot at Villanueva:
8:14 :– Remember my running joke about Charlie Villanueva looking like the lead singer of Midnight Oil? Well, Charlie has a new claim to fame — he just became one of the top-five worst picks in the history of the NBA draft. Toronto took him seventh. Seventh! Seventh! Rob Babcock just drafted Rafael Araujo and Charlie Villanueva with back-to-back top-10 picks when he already had Chris Bosh! And he just left Green and Danny Granger on the board! Throw in the Carter trade and are we absolutely sure that Babcock isn’t Scott Layden using a fake Canadian passport? You’re lucky I didn’t start out as the Toronto Sports Guy, I would have been capable of 25 to 30 straight Babcock columns this summer.
8:16 : After listening to Bilas and the crew killing his selection for 90 seconds, a shell-shocked Charlie gets interviewed by Stu, who wraps up his interview by singing, “It’s Brooklyn in — it’s Brooklyn in — it’s Brooklyn in da house!” Who else is waiting for Charlie to jump up brandishing a pistol and screaming, “All right, who’s the bust now? Huh? Huh?”
I’m not sure, but Taft vs. Villanueva on the stat sheet could be a running post on this blog starting in the fall.
