if you’re drafting for a major need – particularly inside defensive presence – the greater the likelihood of disaster. (See 2004 – #8, Rafael Araujo to Toronto) I’m not saying Thabeet is the next Araujo or Channing Frye, I’d just like to point out that with Petrie most recently having addressed the post via Hawes, Thompson and Greene – it’s more likely for him to now address the need at PG if possible. The lack of a quality distributor/perimeter defender seems just as glaring as the lack of a shot-blocking big.

Your argument for whether any of the other PG prospects (Teague, Jennings, Curry) are worthy of being selected as high as 2 or 3 is impossible to know at this point. I skipped over them in my post because I was analyzing strictly from the perspective of having the first pick. Obviously that could very well not occur – so there is a lot to be decided between now and draft night. Maybe Teague leapfrogs Thabeet and Hill and into the top-3. Maybe Thabeet leads UCONN to the National Championship and dominates in workouts. We’ll find out…

You’re stating hypotheticals here. I hate hypotheticals, particularly since more than a month of tittilating Kings basketball is still upon us. I’ll address this point by point. You are officially being Otis’d.

My note below is that we desperately need help at both the post and the point. No more concerns about other players taking JT or Hawes’ minutes – now they’re all too much alone.

Funny, I didn’t read that quote as JT & Hawes being alone in the rotation as bigs. I read that as they aren’t good enough to take this team to the next level, and they’re going to need help to get there. That’s fine. That’s your opinion. The only way anybody see’s their opinion happen is to wait this out for the next few years, and see whom is correct.

My concern is not that you prefer Rubio, thats fine, he looks to be a good prospect (my concerns about hype based on poor competition [barring one game in the Olympics] are well documented) – its that you reject outright any other player or position and leave yourself (and us) no options, no recourse.

This is where your bias towards college basketball hurts you. The assumption that the NCAA is better competition than the Spanish League is one rooted in both arrogance and ignorance. Arrogance that Americans at a younger age are better than Spaniards, or any other young group of players, as they once were about 20 years ago. There’s a reason the gap has narrowed: players around the world are much better now. I’m not enamored of Rubio because he’s a PG or the fact he’s currently 18 , or the fact that he’s 6’4, or the fact that he’s a flashy passer that reminds of J-Will and Maravich, or that he’s considered to play great opportunistic defense, or that he’s fluent in English and Spanish already, or the fact that he’s been playing in one of Europe’s toughest leagues professionally since he was 14, had a line that made Wilt Chamberlain roll over in his grave in the 16 & under Euro championships, or maybe that he helped JKG win a title with Rudy Fernandez a year ago. Nah, this guy ain’t no good. (Note: This is all sarcasm)

Fact: Rubio is 18. Fact: He’s Spanish. Fact: If the Spanish League isn’t a tougher league to play in than the top level of NCAA (And I mean the 30 best teams or so), than it’s very very close. Which is better? I do not know. I’m not an expert on the two. I do know that quality competition makes players better, and Rubio has been playing against quality competition professionally for nearly 5 years now. That impresses me. (It kinda reminds me of another kid who was playing in a crappier European league. He eventually married a fake boring broad whose voice is like listenings to bats squeak while a record is being scratched. Oh, and he’s a damn incredible scorer who scored 55 pts earlier this season. I think we know which French PG I’m talking about. This crap about the NCAA being better than the Euro League’s, is, umm, crap.)

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve seen Draft Express’s Jonathan Givony state the Spanish ACB league is the 2nd best league behind the NBA. Whether that meant it was better than the NCAA or not, I do not know.

I’ve never stated a backup plan. Why? I don’t know what backup plans are available yet. I don’t know what players will be available. When everyone has declared, isn’t that the time to state it? Mostly, right now, other than Griffin, Rubio, and somebody like Teague, I’m interested in gettiing as many scouting reports on as many players as I can. I’m interested in throwing all this information in the hopper, and at some point, figure out which players could help the team next season or down the road. There are so many considerations here that I don’t want to have to speculate only to change my opinion because of this that or the other reason. If you don’t understand that, lttg, then you don’t. I’m not going to spend comment after comment trying to explain it to you.

 If we get the #1 we’ll pick BG or trade down only a spot or two (unlikely I think), if we get the #2 and Rubio does not declare (tick tick tick) what then? Is there another PG you’d take with the 1-3 pick?

Let’s walk down that road when we get to it. Why speculate? Doesn’t that bore you? Isn’t there better things to do than this? (Answer: Yes. Watch the conference championships. Watch EuroLeague. Watch the Kings and other NBA games. Go out to dinner with your wife if you have one.)

Darkknight dismissed out of hand any other PG for a top 3 pick, and rightly so IMO and went on to look at the players likely to be available latter.

Any fan here who has watched opposing players fly freely to the rim almost at will, must aknowledge that additional help/depth in the post, at defense in particular is also a big, big need.

These are 2 separate issue’s. The first is simple. Let’s know what players have come out before we decide what players are top 3 and aren’t. That includes, like, everybody.

As far as what the Kings needs are, they are going to have spend some time and energy looking at players to help them shore their weakness’. So does every team in the NBA. If the KIngs magically fixed their defense, ran a perfect motion offense, got the shot blocking and rebounded 10 more times a game, I think we’d be talking about a championship team next season. This team is not going to win a championship next year. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Which is equally applicable. The funny thing is, we’re choosing 2 ways of saying almost the same thing.

So let me qualify my conjecture statement by saying this: Everything we say here is conjecture! Everything we believe is conjecture, or opinion stated by someone else that we’ve simply adopted as our own opinion. At some point, I think I lost my point by covering it up with the “conjecture” angle. What I meant is there is a difference between stating something like hyperbole, and something like fact (Blake Griffin being from OKC for instance is a fact—how tall he is is hyperbole).

And now for why I explained that, please read this.

Of course, and there’s always the possibility that Griffin makes Rubio irrelevent, and that Petrie thinks it’s better to look for that type of players because Griffin is way too magical to pass up.

Now, whether I believe that’s a strong possibility is another story. So, in a sense, I’m going to walk away from this one now. I believe I’ve said everything I can possibly say on this particular topic.

(I’m more interested in seeing what the current lot of Kings doesn’t do well, and more accurately, does.)

I hesitate to answer it for 2 reasons. 1 is, I don’t know enough yet. And, I would be piggy backing off a site like DX who has a 2010 mock draft up. Do you really want me piggy backing off DX for 2010 players?

The 2nd reason is simple: I don’t like having to narrow it down. It usually comes down to minor things that teams separate players, and it’s sometimes years before we know what those “things” are. So, in a way, it would be an exercise for fun.

The reason I’m really against this whole exercise is that at some point, I could say that John Wall is the best 2010 PG, and in the end, unless he’s the draft, and unless he went, say, 1st or 2nd overall in 2010, does it really matter?

The Griffin vs Rubio argument is rather simple.I prefer Rubio for reasons said multiple times already. Some of them are obvious; some of them maybe aren’t. I fail to see how Griffin makes the KIngs that much better with what he does. This is opposed to Rubio who fits a need, and more importantly, could make the team better with his presence. I’ll put this another way: It’s more difficult for me to see Griffin getting to the upper echelon of players at his position than Rubio.

I think it’s way too early to write off JT and Spencer. One is a rookie and the other is 20 years old. I wouldn’t risk a top 3 pick on Thabeet. I think he’s too much of a risk. Obviously you disagree.

I also believe that we need to take a PG with our 1st pick unless there is a can’t miss guy who is better than the available PGs, like Griffin at #1. Jennings, Teague and even Curry are PGs I’d rather have than taking a risk on Thabeet.

As for the MLE crap, I thought I addressed that when I said:

I think we can address our depth issue at the 4-5 with one or both of our later picks.

I wouldn’t sign any FA this summer. Maybe a qualifying offer for McCants. We have Martin, Beno, Cisco, JT, Hawes, Donté, Nocioni, and K9 under contract. That’s 8 plus 3 draft picks = 11 or 12 with McCants. That gives you your 10-11 players that will ever see the floor, barring injury. Fill the rest of the roster with league minimum guys.

Using a late 1 and/or early 2 on a backup big is ideal. Find someone like Powe, Landry, Hickson, McGee. One of those kind of guys would be perfect to back up Shock and Hawes.

that it could be his go to move. He still possessed the ability to get to the rack when he needed.

If you say we’ll take the #1 player with the #1 pick you’re in danger of reading GPs apparently unfathomable mind – a sin.

Where typos have become so common I just automatically change them over to what the right word should be. If we got judged on our typo’s, I would have been voted off the island in March of 07.

I understood what your point was. I fear, however, that you’ve missed mine. Karl Malone was a franchise player. If Blake Griffin is not, then in my opinion, he’s not the clear #1 overall player. (If he is, umm, well, full speed ahead with the Griffinator then.)

They both have merits. I assume you are referring to Pistons/Darko. Whether you are drafting for need or best available, then it is important to draft smartly. Darko wasn’t smart. When they drafted Darko it seemed to me that they read espn.com too much and didn’t actually evaluate the talent well enough. Same with Portland’s gaffe on Oden over Durant.

I would trade down to 4 or 5 and take Teague if Rubio isn’t available, but that’s just me.