2011 NBA Draft

[Jacob]

Jordan Hamilton 6'8.5" (6'6.75"), 228, 6'9.5".

Hamilton is pretty tall. That last number is his wingspan.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Hamilton is pretty tall. That last number is his wingspan.

Hamilton and the Morris brothers coming in with alligator arms...at least relative to some of the knuckle scrapers out there.

[Jacob]

Hamilton and the Morris brothers coming in with alligator arms...at least relative to some of the knuckle scrapers out there.

The funny thing is, their wingspans are slightly longer than normal. They just don't have freakish wingspans. The NBA is a league for freaks. And Leonard quite clearly has freakish arms and hands.

Kawhi Leonard 6'7" (6'6"), 227, 7'3"

Normal would be a wingspan about the same as your height in socks.

[Jacob]

Chad Ford, in discounting athletic testing like vertical jump, just said that Blake Griffin didn't do so well in this a few years ago, so it may not be accurate. Say what? Blake had a standing vert of 32 and running of 35.5. That's top level for big men. That's better than Dwight Howard did. Better than Favors did.
That standing vert is 2 inches better than John Wall and Westbrook. He beat Dwayne Wade on both measurements.

It's no Jason Smith of Colorado State (seriously, that white dude can jump: 33.5 and 37") but who is?

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Jimmer's span was 6'4.5", height 6'2.5" in shoes.

[Jacob]

Impressive Jimmer numbers:

Jimmer Fredette: 6'0.75" w/o shoes, 6'2.5" w/ shoes, 196.0 lbs, 6'4.5" wing, 8'0.5" reach, 7.7 body fat, 8.0 hand length, 8.5 hand

He's pretty cut. Good wingspan. I think he'll impress with his vertical, or at least it won't be bad at all.

[Hot Lunch]

Impressive Jimmer numbers:


He's pretty cut. Good wingspan. I think he'll impress with his vertical, or at least it won't be bad at all.

I think a lot of scouts are interested to see how Jimmer tests in the lateral/quickness drills and compares to the other prospects. The kid can shoot lights out. Can he create off the dribble in the NBA is something they want to find out.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Derrick Williams just left only two pegs on the max vert...I have no idea what that means.

Kanter looks really awkward on the no-step vert.

Edit: Keith Benson, 6'11" center from Oakland cleared them all, so they raised it up higher. So now I have no idea what Williams' vert meant.

[MarkGrace]

I think a lot of scouts are interested to see how Jimmer tests in the lateral/quickness drills and compares to the other prospects. The kid can shoot lights out. Can he create off the dribble in the NBA is something they want to find out.

They're not going to figure that out by measuring his lateral quickness (to the extent that silly lane drill even measures lateral or legitimate basketball quickness).

[MarkGrace]

Knight is not as tall as I hoped. Just shorter than Deron.

Wasn't Knight always 6'3"? That was his listing at ESPN the entire year.

Deron vs. Knight:

Brandon Knight 6' 1.5" socks and 6' 3.25" in shoes. 6' 6.75" wing

Deron Williams 6'1.75" socks and 6'2.75" in shoes. 6'6.25 wing

I guess Deron should have worn Brandon's shoes.

[smokymountainrain]

I think a lot of scouts are interested to see how Jimmer tests in the lateral/quickness drills and compares to the other prospects. The kid can shoot lights out. Can he create off the dribble in the NBA is something they want to find out.

True, but he can't elevate enough on his jumper to get his shot off.

[Hot Lunch]

True, but he can't elevate enough on his jumper to get his shot off.

I think there is a picture that was on the cover of SI that would argue against that.

[Hot Lunch]

Wasn't Knight always 6'3"? That was his listing at ESPN the entire year.

Deron vs. Knight:





I guess Deron should have worn Brandon's shoes.

One thing I like about Knight is he has a frame that can carry 10 to 15 pounds more as he matures and gets stronger.

[MarkGrace]

Chad Ford, in discounting athletic testing like vertical jump, just said that Blake Griffin didn't do so well in this a few years ago, so it may not be accurate. Say what? Blake had a standing vert of 32 and running of 35.5. That's top level for big men. That's better than Dwight Howard did. Better than Favors did.
That standing vert is 2 inches better than John Wall and Westbrook. He beat Dwayne Wade on both measurements.

It's no Jason Smith of Colorado State (seriously, that white dude can jump: 33.5 and 37") but who is?

I agree with Ford, and the discussion seems to be moving in this direction with more talk about on-court athleticism. The athletic testing in this thing is mostly silly and I think people are starting to discount it in general. I used to get all hyped up about it, but in following it closely the last handful of years it's produced too many wacky results for me to put much stock in it. Part of me wonders if that's the reason so many kids aren't participating. What the hell can you tell in running them through some silly tests that likely don't even transfer to a basketball setting that you can't tell from the hours you've spent scouting or watching tape?

There have been some odd results in the past, but when Durant went out and bombed worse than any projected top pick in history, I totally bought into actually thinking it meant something about his athleticism. Yeah, that was dumb, and watching him now I've basically given up on reading much into the combine thing. I know I post this article every draft year, but I think it's always worth considering around this time. It takes a bit of silly angle, but I think the gist of it is pretty applicable.

He has a 7-6 ¾ wingspan, and a 9-3 ½ standing reach. He jumps out of the gym with a 39 inch one-step vertical, bench presses 185 pounds 24 times and runs a 3.3 in the three quarter court sprint. But can he shoot? Dribble? Catch a rebound? Play? Do we even care?

It’s that time once again, our favorite time of the year of course; a few weeks before the draft when everything logical in regards to analyzing basketball gets flushed down the toilet. Instead we focus on superficial things that have proven again and again to have very little correlation with actual success in the NBA.

The combine results are hardly the Holy Grail in the evaluation process as far as NBA decision makers are concerned from what we are told, but people who did not pay much attention to how players performed during the season seem to place a much larger emphasis on them then they probably should. As one NBA scout told us last year “it’s not really something we take into our war room and make decisions off of. It’s more something to glance at and use as another small part of the complicated puzzle that ends up telling you what we’d hope is the entire picture.”

The main point we are trying to hammer across here is that there are major concerns about whether or not the tests that are being done on the players at the pre-draft camp are actually transferable to a real basketball setting.

From DraftExpress.com http://www.draftexpress.com/article/...#ixzz1MuZ20m4B
http://www.draftexpress.com

[Jacob]

I agree with Ford, and the discussion seems to be moving in this direction with more talk about on-court athleticism.

I agree on the relative importance of it. It is a small factor in evaluation among other, more important factors. But his example of Blake Griffin was just plain awful. Griffin measured as one of the great big-man athletes of all time. If you think a guy is an explosive athlete like Griffin or Howard, and his vertical leap is significantly less, you know you aren't getting the explosive athlete you thought.
But if you thought he was an explosive athlete because you watched him, you are almost certainly right and his vertical measurement will confirm it.

As for Durant, he couldn't bench, but that was about it. He measured out really tall, long, with a decent vertical. A little low on his no-step and a little high on his 3 step. His max vert was the same as Carmello, Aldridge, Felton, Chandler