Get Ready For This Week's NBA Draft By Watching The Best Plays From Last Year's Class
With just a few days to go until a new crop of young NBA talent enters the league, I figured why not get nice and lubed up by looking back and seeing how last year’s class did under the bright lights. It’s also Monday morning and I don’t want to work and know you don’t either but that’s besides the point. As we know, the 2017-18 class made quite the impression, and in my opinion will go down as one of the best classes we ever see. I’m talking about the rare air of the 1984, 1996, and 2003 classes. I can’t remember the last time we had this many rookies come in and make a legit impact right away, and not just from the top end of the lottery either. Sure we all know about Tatum, Simmons*, Baby Dirk, Fox, Lonzo, Dennis Smith Jr, Donovan Mitchell, etc. But when you look further down the draft board and see John Collins (19th), Jarrett Allen (22nd), OG Anynoby (23rd), Josh Hart (30th), Kyle Kuzma (27th), Jordan Bell (38th), Dillon Brooks (45th) there was legit talent everywhere. A total of 14 players averaged at least 10 points a night from this class, with 5 of them averaging at least 15 a night. We had 7 players break the 1000 point total, and 6 make at least 100 3PM. The offensive display we saw from the 2017 class was incredible. With that said, let’s look at their best moments
Not too shabby. I can only imagine the thrill an NBA GM has when he knows he hits on a pick and realizes he potentially has an All Star/NBA Starter level player on a rookie deal. The feeling of having that type of talent locked up for potentially the next 8 years is what every GM strives for. The opportunity to get high end production for a fraction of what that would cost on the open market is why teams are able to one day build championship squads. You know how the Warriors were able to do what they did? Because their drafted players turned out to be fucking awesome. Especially with the salary cap not really jumping like everyone initially thought, finding that stud rookie becomes even more important.
Now I won’t sit here and tell you that this year’s draft is going to have this same sort of impact on the NBA that the 2017 class had. The top of the Draft sure looks filled with stud guys that will make a difference for their prospective teams, but I’m not sure the second half of the first round/second round will give us the same sort of crop of talent that we got last year. That’s the beauty of this process though, you never ever know how a 19-20 year old kid is going to shake out. It seems CRAZY that so many other teams would pass on Donovan Mitchell now doesn’t it? The same could be said about Kuzma or OG. So you can almost bank on the fact that there will be a handful of the later guys that have the perfect combination of situation/opportunity where we get to like January and can’t believe they fell as far as they did. If I had to guess as to who some of those guys might be, I’d probably go with
– Jalen Brunson
– Kevin Huerter
– Anfernee Simmons
– Mitchell Robinson
– Jevon Carter
The point is if the last few drafts have taught us anything, it’s that the young talent entering the league is getting better and better with each class. Unless you play for a coach like Doc Rivers or Thibs that absolutely despises young players, chances are whichever team you root for is going to have a kid who will show you enough promise to get you overly excited. Of course there will be some busts, but if last year was any indication the future of the NBA is looking pretty damn good.
Which begs the question, who do you think the biggest steal of this year’s class will be? Let’s keep it to outside the projected Top 10 because we all know guys like Ayton, Bagley, Young, Jackson Jr, Doncic, Bamba, Bridges, Carter, Porter, Knox etc, are going to be awesome. Who ya got?