2023 nba draft thread: starring victor, scoot... and more!

I mean even by big time college sports' amoral and demented standards the way this has been handled is crazy

a lot of it will prob come down to how much teams think he was really involved in it and whether thats reflective of his typical behavior or he just got swept up in a bad situation, the pat down dance was really bad if youre looking for some sort of barometer, if he ends up in legal jeopardy thats obvs very bad and maybe he doesnt get drafted at all

i think it's worth reading the big espn story on the incident. first off there's multiple instances where the police/prosecutors and defense disagree on what happened (most pertinently which side fired the first shot) & i think we won't have a set of established facts until the trial. maybe i'm a sucker but i read this and feel like miller prob thought he was bringing the gun for his friend's self-protection. which i don't think is a horrible awful outlier decision for someone to make. stupid and dangerous yes, obviously, but not egregious. it seems crazy to me that the other player from bama (darius miles) was charged w/ murder... miles' friend (the shooter) seems like the real bad guy who instigated all of this, to me

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/35777040/how-former-alabama-basketball-player-friend-ended-charged-death-jamea-harris

guy who can teleport is prob a pretty safe #1

Putback dunk off his own stepback 3 🤯 https://t.co/ARkuLYGsAI pic.twitter.com/fXgjzrIAmO

— NBA (@NBA) April 2, 2023

his game is unarguable. (but he maybe shouldn't be so much of a dribbler when he goes to the nba)

why even do all those moves when you can just shoot over everyone

I feel fairly confident in saying that missing a step back 3 —> putback dunk is something that has never happened in the history of basketball

in the wide view of the play it even looks pretty normal, but its not lol

yeah you need the angle that follows the ball, where wemby coming back in the frame like that just does not compute, in order to appreciate how insane it is

dink pate

NEWS: Dink Pate, a five-star recruit in 2024, has signed a two-year deal with G League Ignite, he told ESPN. Pate, who is graduating high school at 17, becomes the youngest-known American professional basketball player ever.

STORY: https://t.co/rSVQ8IJpKC pic.twitter.com/6tXyZBonvZ

— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) April 17, 2023

tough draw for wiz

Here's how the Wembanyama odds shifted from each lottery ball reveal (14-5-8-2) in the drawing room

(re-posting b/c of Excel formatting hating percentages) pic.twitter.com/kFqa69i3eN

— Ryan Bernardoni (@dangercart) May 17, 2023

wow! lmao

man him going to washington would've been really bad

so if i'm reading this right, not only did the spurs win the lottery but by the end of the draw they won the lottery despite having an equal chance as 4 other teams all of which were behind a fifth team that had a 54% chance? crazy

Wemby was happy Houston didn’t get the 1st pick 😅 pic.twitter.com/PhF1xyckSd

— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) May 17, 2023

their chances got worse along the way but then they pulled it out in the end, clutch draw by the spurs

haa wemby knows whats up

that ol popovich magic

oh yes forgot the Bulls don't have a pick now, thanks to the Lonzo stuff.

Does Pops have enough juice to get the Spurs back to the top? He hasn't coached a good team in a few years now. Obviously he's a tremendous dude and has a great track record but he's no spring chicken.

i wonder the same thing

is there a particular assistant there whos well suited to be his successor?

brett brown haha

chase buford

pop has definitely mellowed out in recent years...he had said he was going to retire when tim did, but the title window was still open with kawhi and he had made commitments to lamarcus to get him to come to sa. when his wife passed, i think retirement would've taken away a sense of purpose. plus i think he's just in love with hoops. he can't quit it. he'll die cussing out a ref.

I would say Becky Hammon but https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/becky-hammon-suspension-wnba-aces-1.6845099

jfc becky

it isn't great

tomorrow night we flood this thread with Content

i want for the record to say that kobe bufkin will be a solid nba pro

yeah i would love for us to use this thread tomorrow just so we can take a look back down the road :)

haa

Hornets GM Mitch Kupchak said today at a pre-draft press conference that final say on who Charlotte selects at No. 2 on Thursday night -- Brandon Miller or Scoot Henderson -- will belong to outgoing owner Michael Jordan.

More NBA from me: https://t.co/A6ycVmnrjq

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) June 21, 2023

hmm

getting one last kick in on his way out the door

thx for the video, seems like the comps are pretty obvious -- rose, wall, westbrook, ja etc. he looks like he'll be fun to watch. being undersized and not really shooting or playing defense is a bit of a red flag for me, though of course he could get better, by all accounts he seems to be a hard worker. I'm not saying it would be wrong to take a guy like that second, when it comes down to it the draft is really just a crapshoot, but to me that's not the type of player that you're seeing on a lot of championship contending teams

― k3vin k., Wednesday, June 21, 2023 12:42 PM (three minutes ago

posting this here so i can be dunked on in the future

i want for the record to say that kobe bufkin will be a solid nba pro

― slai gorgeous-alexander (m bison), Wednesday, June 21, 2023 11:26 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm glad that he and jett howard have basically switched draft stocks this offseason because kobe did all the little things right, while jett completely lost focus whenever the ball wasn't in his hands. pretty astounding how terrible of a rebounder he was, and he was somehow even worse of an off-ball defender. his jumpshot is silky tho

bufkin was a great engine of offense on a ramshackle team, lots of crafty moves to get to the basket and great court vision. he's not unathletic, but that's not really his game. he's smart, and has been one of the best players in his age group (he was a sophomore, but is younger than many of the one-and-done freshmen), with lots of room to develop.

kobe bufkin sounds like a tim robinson character name

guys i like as a watcher of college ball:
- kobe bufkin - explained above
- jarace walker - incredibly strong, great on defense, powerful on offense. better footwork and handles than you might expect.
- jalen hood schifino - great size for pg position, really good at everything but inconsistent at scoring efficiently. when his shot falls, he is a force.
- jordan hawkins - best shooter in the college game, doesn't need much room. not amazing at much else, but his shooting is good enough to play anywhere.
- trayce jackson-davis - a tweener, played center in college, where he's too small in the nba, but an underrated athlete with a deep bag of offensive moves.
- jaime jaquez - hard to believe he won't grab a bench role somewhere, great rebounder and defender

kobe bufkin sounds like a tim robinson character name

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 21, 2023 12:12 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

little buf boy

seems like the comps are pretty obvious -- rose, wall, westbrook, ja etc. he looks like he'll be fun to watch. being undersized and not really shooting or playing defense is a bit of a red flag for me, though of course he could get better, by all accounts he seems to be a hard worker. I'm not saying it would be wrong to take a guy like that second, when it comes down to it the draft is really just a crapshoot, but to me that's not the type of player that you're seeing on a lot of championship contending teams

― k3vin k., Wednesday, June 21, 2023 12:42 PM (three minutes ago

between his athleticism, build & wingspan it seems like he has the tools to be a good defender at the position. but unless you're either a jrue holiday type defender or a trae young type defender, your defense at PG prob isn't that important at the end of the day. it seems like a lot of it will come down to the shooting development

i think you can look at the very recent history of champions and say that a key component to winning is having a grossly overpaid 3 and D wing who hasn't lived up to his pre-draft hype on your team... but it's hard to reverse engineer the situation in that way. when rose, westbrook & to a lesser extent wall were healthy in their primes they were mvp, all nba level players on teams that were right in the thick of the top 4 seeds in their conferences. off the court stuff on ja aside he's another guy at that same level.

the scoot/miller situation feels kinda like fultz/tatum in terms of the positional value argument except maybe w/ the talent flip flopped. but maybe it will end up being the same thing all over again

Dink Pate can't be real

ive said it elsewhere, but i do not buy brandon miller as a #1 scoring option or paul george type. im not saying he'll bust or anything, but a guy who cant finish at the rim at his size is going to have trouble doing much anything besides camping out on the perimeter of teams scheme against him.

when rose, westbrook & to a lesser extent wall were healthy in their primes they were mvp, all nba level players on teams that were right in the thick of the top 4 seeds in their conferences. off the court stuff on ja aside he's another guy at that same level.

this is true, but to me, this is the model for the most overrated type of player of the past 10 years or so. rose and westbrook were probably the 2 worst MVPs of the past 20 years. ja’s reputation has outpaced his actual production too imo. wall…we’ve disagreed on him in the past too but ultimately injuries derailed his career. my sense, and this could just be my bias, is that these are floor raisers but not necessarily ceiling raisers, and players who are at risk of having shorter production windows. these are the types of guys you’re ultimately going to offer the supermax, but are you super thrilled about that?

you def need another star to balance a strong scoring pg in this mode, true. longevity thing is a question too, but not as big a concern when theyre 19, more a concern for if theyre getting supermaxed

all those things might be true but ultimately the question is is there anyone else you like more

a: no

well, wembanyama, but hes taken tyvm

amen is the only one i think has a higher ceiling besides scoot (and besides vic) but there are several ifs to get there, mostly 'if u learn to be an average jumpshooter ever'

my draft prediction is that with the number one pick the spurs will select victor wembanyama of france

thats what i love about ilh, it's is the place for bold takes

you def need another star to balance a strong scoring pg in this mode, true. longevity thing is a question too, but not as big a concern when theyre 19, more a concern for if theyre getting supermaxed

― slai gorgeous-alexander (m bison), Wednesday, June 21, 2023 6:16 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

all those things might be true but ultimately the question is is there anyone else you like more

― lag∞n, Wednesday, June 21, 2023 6:20 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you’re both right and I’m probably overemphasizing the long-term ceiling, if he pans out he’s probably great value over his first 1.5-2 contracts. I can just see the argument for a guy like miller if you’re truly talking about a franchise cornerstone, though his floor is probably lower

apparently he’s kinda been a mess in the g league too. might not have the athleticism