The 2014 NBA Draft Class — assuming that Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Joel Embiid and the rest of the young stars declare — has been hyped as the best thing since 2003. That may turn out to be an overreaction.
After the three players mentioned above were eliminated the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, some in the media swung the pendulum too far the other way saying these guys are not going to make a big impact in the NBA, that they couldn’t handle pressure (based on one game at age 19). That was an overreaction, too.
The real question for this draft is how good are these players going to be in three to five years? That’s what teams are drafting them for, not their rookie season.
Boston’s basketball decision maker Danny Ainge has tried to play down draft expectations for a while — which is smart as he is going to draft high this year and bring in a big name and he’d like fans not to expect instant miracles he knows are not coming.
Ainge was saying that again in a live stream video on the Celtics Web site, transcribed by CSNNE.com.“I’ve been saying all along that the experts on ESPN and so forth are blowing this draft out of proportion,” Ainge said. “First of all, we don’t even know who’s in the draft yet. There are a lot of underclassmen that are projected, so we’re prepared for those underclassmen that are projected draft picks but we don’t know who’s going to be in the draft.
“There aren’t any game changers in the draft. There are a lot of nice players and players that we’ll be excited to work into the development, but they’re not going to come in and turn our team around in one year or two years. But hopefully we’ll be able to get a couple of players this year that will be rotation players in the NBA for years to come.”
PBT’s draft expert, Ed Isaacson of NBAdraftblog.com and Rotoworld (check out Ed’s regional previews of the East, South, Midwest and West), agrees with Ainge. To a degree.
“I think Ainge has the concept right saying there are no ‘game changers’ in this draft, though the phrasing may be a bit broad,” Isaacson said in an email. “Guys like Wiggins, Embiid, Julius Randle, Parker, if any or all declare, will certainly have an impact on any team they play for. Depending on the team, the impact could be felt much more right away. Ainge’s explanation though of his statement gets to the part where I agree — none of the players in this draft are the kind to change the fortunes of a franchise in a year or two. Not to say that they can’t be franchise players at some point in their career, but people expecting this group to take the league by storm when they get in are probably off base.”
Again, the question isn’t “can Andrew Wiggins lead the Bucks/Sixers/Magic/whoever to the playoffs next year?” The question is can he or Embiid or whomever be a franchise cornerstone in four years? Can that player, along with a couple other pieces, make your team a contender?
In that sense there very likely will be a couple of game changers in this draft. Just don’t expect them to play that way next year. (And no, that is not argument for keeping them in college longer so colleges and coaches can get rich off their free labor, those guys will develop faster into whatever they will be in the NBA than another year of limited practices against inferior competition.)
The problem for Ainge and other GMs of lottery teams is it will be impossible to put the expectations genie back in the bottle.
