Despite some noise in recent days that seemed to point towards the Bobcats obtaining a second round pick (or even a first), the 2010 NBA Draft came and went Thursday evening with nary a mention of the Cats.
I wouldn’t doubt that the Trailblazers/Warriors trade from Monday, in which the Trailblazers reportedly paid $2 million just to move up 10 spaces in the second round from the 44th pick to the 34th, put a wet blanket on the Cats’ ideas. That deal probably set the bar too high for Jordan to buy into the second round.
Besides, with so many teams using their extra second round picks on long-term, crapshoot foreign prospects (Paulao Prestes, Pape Sy, anyone?) it’s reasonable to assume that a few decent future NBA players actually went undrafted and can now be had for a song.
Jonathon Givony of DraftExpress called it the “most random second round ever” and notes numerous interesting undrafted players. Need a swing? Manny Harris and Sylven Landesburg are out there. A Dukie? Neither Jon Scheyer or Brian Zoubek were picked.
Want a big backup point guard (and you know Larry Brown does)? Ben Uzoh and Mikhail Torrance are both available, though Torrance supposedly has a heart issue that scared off teams in the second round.
If I were the Cats, I’d be on the horn with Scheyer’s agent right now. With some time, I think he can run the point in the pros, and the jumper’s not going anywhere.
A few other thoughts:
- The General McChrystal story was a good get for Rolling Stone earlier this week, but what I’m really hoping is that a reporter was embedded in the Trailblazers front office this week to give us the grisly details of their unraveling. Firing GM Kevin Pritchard an hour before the draft? What a crazy story. Pritchard has been a darling of basketball nerds/insiders/Blazers fans for the makeover he’s engineered in Portland over the past few years, but has also revealed himself to be quite the egotistical frontrunner. Here’s Blazersedge with some more thoughts on the situation.
- I can’t decide what is more interesting: that the Heat only have two players under contract for next year (Chalmers and Beasley) and could potentially get 2-3 superstar free agents, OR that Riley apparently can’t give Beasley away to free up another chunk of cap space. I still think that, once Miami does its big spending in free agency, they might look at Raymond Felton to fill a need at point guard.
- With the aforementioned superstar free agency period around the corner, Mike Miller is (understandably) being overlooked. But if you could get him for a reasonable price, he’d be a nice piece on a good team. The Bobcats could use a shooter like Miller — too bad there’s no feasible way for us to get our hands on him.