JaVale McGee, DeMar DeRozan and Serge Ibaka also put on a good show, but McGee wasn’t going to beat Griffin in a fan vote in the finals. McGee’s two-ball and three-ball dunks were impressive, but it took him a while to make them, which lessened their impact, at least with the fans.
I think this will be the ‘forgotten dunk’ of this contest since DeRozan didn’t make the finals and the dunk (somehow) didn’t make the NBA highlight:
2009 Sprite Slam Dunk champion Nate Robinson of the New York Knicks will attempt to become the first three-time winner of the competition when he defends his title on NBA All-Star Saturday Night, Feb. 13, at American Airlines Center (8 p.m. ET on TNT) in Dallas. Robinson will compete against the Charlotte Bobcats’ Gerald Wallace and the Los Angeles Lakers’ Shannon Brown.
The Toronto Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Eric Gordon will compete in the NBA All-Star Slam Dunk-In, a single-round slam dunk competition that will be held at halftime of the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam on Friday, Feb. 12.
I’m interested to see what Shannon Brown can do. He’s a smallish guy (6’4″ passes for small these days) with great hops.
It’s a bummer that LeBron refuses to participate, but I can’t say I’m surprised.
The draft is just a few days away, so it’s a good time to take one final stab at mocking the first round of this draft. I’ll continue to update the consensus draft this week, but this will be my last attempt at predicting what will happen this Thursday.
First, let’s take a look at the most recent consensus. Chad Ford released the most recent version of his mock draft today, NBADraft.net also updated today, while DraftExpress updated their mock yesterday.
Now I’ll go, pick by pick, through the first round, taking the consensus into account while also throwing in my $0.02 here and there.
#1 CLIPPERS The Clips have shown no signs of trading away their opportunity to draft Blake Griffin. There is much fluidity with the next few picks, but the Oklahoma product is pretty much guaranteed to be the first pick. The Clippers will then (reportedly) try to move Zach Randolph or Chris Kaman, though it might be wise to move forward with Kaman and Griffin in the front court, Baron Davis at the point, and Eric Gordon and Al Thornton on the wing. Randolph is going to be tough to move. (I still can’t believe that Mike Dunleavy traded for him last season.) Pick: Blake Griffin, PF, Oklahoma
#2 GRIZZLIES The consensus says that Hasheem Thabeet will be the pick and I don’t disagree, even though he just pulled out of a workout with Memphis due to a shoulder injury. DraftExpress thinks that Memphis will go with James Harden and move O.J. Mayo to the point, which they say is his natural position. I don’t know that they’ve given up on Mike Conley yet, so I think they will go big with this pick. Their biggest need is at power forward, so trading down and drafting Jordan Hill is a possibility. But if they stand pat, Thabeet could very well be the pick, even though he doesn’t seem to want to play in Memphis. Pick: Hasheem Thabeet, C, UConn
Earlier in the day, I wrote about how Chad Ford is hearing that Ty Lawson is shooting up some draft boards, and now John Hollinger’s Draft Rater (where he takes college statistics and a few other metrics to predict a player’s production in the NBA) says that he’s the top player in this draft. Yes, he’s even ahead of Blake Griffin.
Lawson, who is coming off an electric performance in leading North Carolina to the championship, grades out highly for several reasons: Although he’s short for a point guard, his shooting numbers (47.1 percent on 3-pointers), strong assist rate and microscopic turnover ratio (9.1, first among point guard prospects) all point to him as an NBA keeper.
The Draft Rater puts Lawson slightly ahead of Griffin for first, but this doesn’t mean a team should take Lawson first. The standard error in the projections for point guards is higher than it is for big men, which means random noise could be putting Lawson ahead just as easily as on-the-court performance. If the consensus is that Griffin is the better player, I don’t think Lawson’s statistical record alone is strong enough evidence to refute it. Additionally, we’ve heard questions about Lawson’s work ethic and injuries.
But the rating is emphatic enough for me to say Lawson should be at the top of the college point guard ladder, ahead of Jonny Flynn, Jrue Holiday, Jeff Teague & Co. (If you’re wondering about Ricky Rubio, I’ll have more on him next week.)
Hollinger’s Draft Rater isn’t error-proof but it’s not a bad second opinion when trying to pick a player out of a group of two or more.
