After watching Daequan Cook lead the Heat in scoring last night as a rookie who just turned 20-years-old, some of my faith is restored in the Spurs' domestic scouting. Cook was the Spurs' number one target in the draft, with Splitter being number two.
A guy that young scoring 17 points in his NBA debut is pretty impressive ... even if his team is pretty bad at this point.
Good point. I remember being skeptical of the Spurs having Cook so high on their draft board. They're obviously the professionals and not myself.
I still think I'm glad we got Splitter though. Quality bigs are always harder to find, and Tiago looks pretty special. Plus, who knows how much better he might get after a year as "the man" with Tau? The preliminary results have been pretty nice.
Yeah, kudos to Cook. Color me surprised his debut was among the best of the rookies. I'm very happy with Splitter. It was just that #33 pick that was awful. Still not clear who'll be the best 2nd rounders. All have started slow.
Based on what I saw in summer league and what the Spurs need, my re-do pick would probably be Dominic McGuire. But yeah, too early to tell which second round picks are worth anything.
I'd pick Dominic McGuire, too. Awesome rebounding and shot-blocking ability and he was a primary playmaker on his team last year. Can anyone say 'long three'? Yeah. For some reason we went for 'long two' instead. Make that 'longshot two'.
Zeke may be terrible when it comes to running a team and handing out contracts, but he seems to have a pretty good eye for young domestic talent (or his scouts do, anyway). The fact that the Knicks waived Nichols says less to me than the fact that they drafted him in the first place.
correction: I just remembered he was drafted originally by Portland, but I don't know if that was prearranged with NY or not.
Last edited by ThomasGranger; 11-03-2007 at 06:55 PM.
Agree as a general principle. Isiah drafts extremely well.
The fact that those others had guaranteed contracts is totally irrelevant. That just means that they'll get paid whether they're on the team or not. NY isn't going to keep an inferior player at the expense of a better one just because the inferior player's contract is guaranteed (sunk cost). If Nichols had been one of the 15 best players, he would have made the team. Period.
Im not sure...one part of me says he can become that long 3 who can knock down the three and play servicable defense... he has the tools to do so
Height w/o shoes -6'6.5"
Height w/shoes -6'7.5"
Weight - 211
Max Vert - 32.5"
Lane agility - 10.39
He tested NUMBER 1 in the lan agility test at the pre draft camp, he beat out all the point guards and smaller guys, thats basically a test lateral movement. He has a standing reach which is just 1.5" shorter than that of Joakim Noah whos a 7 footer... and despite being shorter, his standing reach is better than that of Domini Mcguire. A running vert of 32.5" for a 6'8" guy is pretty good also... he was one of the best athletes in the draft.
He has all the physical tools to become a good defensive player, theres half the battle without the fight.
Look at the contracts & the players they had...
Marbury
Randolph
Curry
Richardson
Crawford
Rose
James
Jefferies
Robinson
Balkman
Jones
Chandler
Lee
Collins
Morris
All of these guys make over $1 million dollars or they are the young guys that NY likes...like Morris, Lee, Collins & Chandler...Nichols was competing with jefferies, Richardson, Jones all of which make multi million dollars...NY was not going to buy any of those guys out...Nichols had a non guaranteed contract which unfortunately for him caused him to get caught up in the numbers game...How is NY going to know if he is a better player?.. he is a rookie...going up against vets..I would think that they would need to keep him around for a while before they declared him a better player...sorry man, the NBA is a business & if they could get rid of a non guranteed instead of paying for someones buyout AND pay Nichols, thus saving them money..I understand why Nichols got cut.
Well the Knicks knew they had all these guaranteed contracts when they went out and traded for Nichols, so that pretty much debunks your entire theory. So "sorry man," but Nichols was cut because he ultimately wasn't good enough. It's that simple.
Next.
actually, if you want to believe the ny rumor mills, the knicks had an agreement with nichols' agent that he would go overseas for a year while the knicks worked out their roster issues. unfortunately for the knicks, nichols fired his agent, and decided that he wanted to play in the nba now, whether or not it was with the knicks. so he forced them to make a decision: either make room for him now, or cut him loose and allow him to find a job on another roster.
lol..owned.
I forgot about that. So it sounds like the Knicks were fairly high on this guy but just couldn't get it done in the end. I feel fairly strongly that I'd trust the Knicks' domestic scouts before the Spurs' (given an extensive history of nabbing draft steals). So maybe we should give Nichols a hard look, huh? Especially considering we'd be able to stay under the cap while doing so.
I was all for Nichols as the 33rd pick for exactly those reasons. The guy is a natural shooter, he's long, and I thought he had the abilities to be a good defender. Then I saw his lane agility result...wow. The talent is definitely there.
Indeed, and if he gets cut by 2 teams in a row, I can see him having a little humility too. The only drawback is NBDL access. IIRC, Bruno said that you can only have 2 Players from the team on the NBDL roster at a time... Signing Nichols would give us a bit of a roster crunch with Mahinmi, Nichols, and Washington.
Judging by the way the Toros drafted this year (they took something like 5 PGs) I don't think they're really vouching on having Washington around anyways.
The Toros are only going to keep two point guards, and half of the ones drafted could play SG in the D-League.
Still, my point is simply that they don't look like a team that thinks they have a solid PG in the bag. They're shopping around looking for a couple productive points.
I take that as sign that they will send Washington down eventually, but I can see how the opposite could be surmised.
How do you figure? I'm just honestly not sure why you see that? What am I overlooking here?
As well as Washington has played, he is far from perfect. He has already been excluded from the rotation once and his minutes will remain sporatic and will dwindle to nothing when Vaghn gets back. If our regular point guards are healthy, there isn't much reason to have Washington playing 0 mintes per game when he could be playing 35 minutes per game for a month or so in Austin.
There is also the argument that none of the point guards the Toros are getting are near as good as Washington, and that relying solely on those guys could hamper the development of guys like Mahinmi, Williams and Pittsnogle.
And because they play fewer games that are mostly scheduled on the weekends, D-League teams also practice a whole lot more than NBA teams. That's another advantage to sending Washington down.
Pittsnoggle!
Yeah, you'd think he'd have a pretty sweet nickname at this point.
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