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The Draft Just Got Better

Kentucky Wildcat freshmen Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones and junior DeAndre Liggins have declared for the NBA Draft, but won’t hire an agent, the school announced Wednesday. 

For a draft that has been robbed of underclassman talents like North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes and Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, the Wildcats trio makes the lottery much more formidable.

Jones is 6-8, 244 and has been described as already having an NBA body. The Portland native finished the season averaging 15.7 PPG, 8.8 RPG and 1.9 BPG, and while he mostly played power forward under coach John Callipari, he’s projected to be a small forward in the NBA.

Knight, who stands 6-3, 170, was criticized early in the season for making poor decisions with the basketball and showing a preference for scoring as opposed to passing. However he improved as the season wore on, finishing with averages of 17.3 PPG and 4.2 APG. Knight could develop into an NBA 3-point shooter, but still needs to work on his point guard skills.

Liggins is a 6-6 defensive ace who will likely be picked in the late first or early second round. He could probably step in for a successful team right off the bat, but may not have as much upside as his two Wildcats teammates.

{AUTHOR_BOX}King Has Seen It Before

How can anyone be expected to navigate an NBA franchise from four consecutive losing seasons, through a possible lockout and into the playoffs? After all, work stoppages prevent the kind of broad changes (trades, free agent signings, etc.) that can rescue a team from the NBA’s basement.

Thankfully for the Nets, the man at the wheel has done this before.

Before becoming general manager of the Nets, Billy King assumed the same position with the 76ers back in 1998—right before the last lockout-shortened NBA season. Even without knowing the details of the next collective bargaining agreement King still managed to target the free agents he wanted. And when labor peace was achieved, Philadelphia—a franchise coming off of seven consecutive losing seasons before 1999—signed two players (George Lynch and Matt Geiger) that helped push the 76ers to the 2001 NBA Finals. 

“It was almost identical in Philadelphia,” King told reporters Wednesday at the team’s year-end review press conference. “We played one year. Then we had the work stoppage. And we had cap space at the end of the year. I had targeted guys that we wanted, not knowing exactly what the cap space was going to be. But we had planned and were ready to react when it ended.

“It makes it hard in the standpoint of not knowing how much money you can spend to budget,” he continued. “It doesn’t make it hard targeting the guys you may like. It’s just then you’ve got to figure out how much you can pay them and what you would have cap-wise.”

In addition to scouring the free agent market, King is also charged with retaining his own free agents—primarily Kris Humphries and Sasha Vujacic. The Nets GM has repeatedly said he’s interested in keeping the former (10.0 PPG, 10.3 RPG, 1.1 BPG, 17.89 PER, 22.1 rebounding rate), but wouldn’t commit to anything regarding the latter (9.8 PPG, 2.0 APG 12.35 PER).

“It’s going to depend—all our free agents, even Hump—what the cap’s going to be and what they want,” King said. “You won’t be able to keep them all, and depending on what the cap’s going to be it’s going to determine how many of them we do keep.”

Unlike most of the bottom half of the NBA, the Nets don’t have their own first-round pick this offseason (it now belongs to the Jazz), but they do have the Lakers’ first-rounder. The question is, does this year’s draft have enough talent to satisfy the Nets’ needs at the end of the first round?

“Everybody says it’s a weak draft when there’s not that Derrick Rose or LeBron James,” King said. “Nobody thought Dwyane Wade was going to be what he was in the draft. So I think every draft we look at back at it and say wow this guy got overlooked. Tony Parker was 29. Gilbert Arenas went in the second round. So you’re always going to find guys. Just because there’s no marquee name, if you do your work you’ll find guys.”

King, who says the Nets need to add athletic players on the wing, insists the team will take the best player available because that’s the method that’s helped him have success in the past.

“We’re going to take the best player,” he said. “I think that’s what you do…The reason I got [Andre] Iguodala in Philadelphia is because Toronto needed a big and they passed.”

The overall tone of the press conference was pretty positive for a 24-win team. 

King praised coach Avery Johnson for “keeping the guys focused” and “continuing to teach them every day.” He admitted he was happy to hear point guard Deron Williams tell reporters that he hopes to continue playing with the Nets beyond his current contract (which expires after next season), but King added that he believed the team’s star point guard had felt this way for some time.

“I expect him to be back,” King said. “My thought process hasn’t changed from the day that we traded for him [in February] to him making those comments. I felt that, when I made the trade, and spending time talking to him and the more I’ve gotten to know him and the more we’ve talked, I felt like that’s the goal we’re working for, building something special here. From my mindset, it’s nice to hear but he and I have had some great conversations. When you have those kinds of conversations, you’re on the same page and I think we are.”

So what is this team capable of? King feels that the Nets are in a similar position to that of the 1998-1999 76ers. Even though a lockout is looming, they have enough flexibility to achieve their goals.

And just what are the Nets goals?

“To improve,” King said. “You can’t put a number on anything. I don’t think we’ll ever put a number on anything. We want to get better.  We want to be in the playoffs. If that’s a goal, I think that would be the goal, to be in the playoffs next year. I think, having Deron and having the right pieces I think we have the ability to put ourselves in that position.

“We are in good shape,” he continued. “We have some cap space with the existing agreement. We have draft picks [Lakers first-rounder and their own second-rounder], so a lot of good things can happen. But we have to get a CBA before any of it can be decided.”

Here are a few more King quotes on various topics:

• King listened to former Laker Jordan Farmar before flipping Terrence Williams and Joe Smith for Los Angeles guard Sasha Vujacic this season. The Nets GM thinks his current players could play a factor in determining which free agents the team will go after.

• Rookie and former Texas forward Damion James appeared in only 25 games due to injury, and since a lockout would prevent the Nets from being in contact with him, he’s expected to improve his game on his own this summer.

• King, who was himself sporting a soft cast on his right hand due to a broken bone, said that center Brook Lopez will have “minor” surgery next week to repair calcium deposits in his right arm.

And Who Won that Game by the Way?

Melissa Isaacson of ESPNChicago.com wrote a nice 25th anniversary piece for Michael Jordan’s 63-point effort in a double-overtime loss to the Celtics in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series in 1986.

What’s particularly interesting about the piece is that Bulls chairman Jerry Krause told Isaacson that Jordan shouldn’t have even been on the court because he was still recovering from the broken foot that forced him to miss 64 games that season.

Not many people remember how Jordan battled the Bulls to return to the court after having his cast removed, but Isaacson does a nice job of recounting the moments that led up to the historic performance, which, after all, happened to come in a losing effort.

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