10 years ago, the main question before the 2007 NBA Draft was of the two players which Portland Trail Blazers would choose between with the top pick. One of the best options was Greg Oden from Ohio and the other was Kelvin Durant from Texas.
It is anything but difficult to thump the Blazers for what happened. They drafted Oden, whose injuries constrained him to 105 games in the NBA.
Durant, who went No. 2, has turned out to be one of the best scorers in basketball history. A week ago, he was named the Most Valuable Player in the NBA Finals after the Golden State Warriors crushed the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games.
However, the biggest lesson from that draft 10 years prior is that were it held today, Portland would not require the advantage of knowledge of the past to know to pick Durant over Oden. Indeed, in today's NBA, Oden wouldn't be one of the top picks by any stretch of the imagination.
Understanding the development in the style of NBA basketball since the 2007 draft clarifies how this Thursday's draft is probably going to unfurl.
Among the possible lottery draft picks, it appears as though for each customary fixate who is centered around ensuring the edge and scoring down low, there are two Swiss-Army-cut style big men who are as open to shooting 18-foot jumpers as five-foot bunnies.
Doubtlessly having a better than average point guard is urgent in today's amusement, while the middle position has presumably been a little depreciated of late.
The way that theBoston Celtics have a star in Isaiah Thomas, and in addition the No. 1 pick (in view of a pivotal four-year-old exchange with the Brooklyn Nets), has made its own show. The best player in the draft is Markelle Fultz.
So the word, first revealed by Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski, is that the Celtics will maintain a strategic distance from that excess by exchanging their pick to the Philadelphia 76ers (who will choose Fultz).
With the third overall pick they would get consequently, they are relied upon to pick one of the two conventional wing players bound to go right on time in the first round: Josh Jackson (Kansas) or Jayson Tatum (Duke).
Boston would connect him to promptly and attempt to move beyond the Cavaliers in next season’s playoffs, which they neglected to do this season.
Such points of interest sound insignificant, yet they are most certainly not. The exact request of those high draft picks matters an incredible arrangement, as does practical insight.
Consider what occurred in 2009. That draft class was correspondingly loaded at point guard, with upwards of five (contingent upon how you characterize them) brought with the initial 10 picks that June.
The Minnesota Timberwolves utilized the fifth and sixth picks to choose two point guards in Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn.
Since that draft, the Timberwolves have never made the playoffs and looking at the betting odds for the 2018 Timberwolves season, put them very far from reaching the playoffs any time soon.
With the seventh pick, the Warriors chose what apparently ought to have been the fourth-best point guard, Stephen Curry. We all know how that turned out...
