NBA Draft Combine notes: Day 1

With the 2015 NBA Draft a little over a month away the Internet is starting to buzz with incessant mock drafts, prospect breakdowns and ephemeral rumors that flutter from one computer keyboard to the next. And just as Groundhog Day demarcates a collective anticipation of warmer weather, nothing quite embodies the arrival of draft chat like the annual NBA Draft Combine.

Though the Combine is virtually useless in revealing information about players not already known by NBA general managers — and to a large extent your average draft nerd like myself — it is no less fun to watch and pontificate over. If nothing else it’s an incredibly reliable mechanism to get your juices flowing for the upcoming draft.

Thursday was the first day the Combine was filmed and Friday will be the second and last day it will be aired on live TV despite the event stretching nearly a week. So, being the dratnik that I am and knowing the limited window I have to catch a glimpse of the action, I decided to call in sick to work (sort of… not really… it’s a long story) and watch ESPN’s coverage of the Combine for four full hours Thursday afternoon.

Here are some notes I jotted down while watching:

— Karl-Anthony Towns, Jahlil Okafor and D’Angelo Russell seem to be consensus top three picks on everyone’s board at this point. I think Chad Ford might have Emmanuel Mudiay at three on his Top 100 list, but otherwise it’s Townes, Okafor and Russell — and in that exact order.

I guess I find this interesting for a few reasons but mainly I think it says a lot about how legit big men are still so highly valued in the NBA. If you’re over 6-10, athletic, offensively skilled and can defend at a high level, you’re a guaranteed top-five pick in the NBA draft. That’s just how the NBA is structure, how it always has been structured and how it always will be structured. It’s a game of giants. It’s why the Cleveland Cavaliers surrendered two first-round draft picks for Timofey Mozgov and why guys like Kwami Brown, Michael Olowokandi and Hasheem Thabeet have gotten drafted with top-three selections in the past and will continue to get drafted with lottery picks well into the future.

I’m not so stupid as to sit here and tell you Okafor and Towns aren’t worth top-five picks. Both will likely have long and illustrious careers in the NBA. But I do think because they’re big and skilled and young and fairly athletic that their weaknesses are willingly overlooked. They aren’t picked apart quite like everyone else. And I think this is unfortunate, mostly for NBA GMs who’s jobs depend on these types of selections.

— Willie “Trill” Cauley-Stein is the biggest wildcard slated to land top 10. Some mocks have him at six, some have him at 10, some even have him outside the top 10. As far as I can tell no other top prospect has such a wide range of possible landing spots.

And this is good news for the Nuggets. Though Cauley-Stein isn’t going to be the superstar the Nuggets are in desperate need of, he’d be a fantastic sidekick to pair with Jusuf Nurkic, solidifying the Nuggets’ frontcourt as one of the best in the NBA, especially from a defensive standpoint.

But more than anything Cauley-Stein’s range says a lot about how talented this particular draft is up front. If he’s slated all the way at 10 or lower, that means there’s some pretty damn talented guys going ahead of him — which, again, is a win for the Nuggets.

— The ESPN panel, which was basically Fran Fraschilla and Seth Greenberg, agreed entirely that Kristaps Porzingis will go top five. NBA.com even published an article on Friday quoting several GMs who believe he has a solid chance of sneaking into the top three.

While NBA scouts and GMs are much more informed about Porzingis than I am, I can’t help but think this is becoming redolent of a bust situation. This is just exactly the type of atmosphere that’s been associated with bust picks in the past. The recipe is as follows: You start with an intriguing international prospect, often a very tall one, who has an arsenal of skills and can even shoot the ball (!), strap some mystery around him, and then you begin to obsess over his potential, over and over until you become brainwashed, biased, until you don’t even want to see reality because what you want most is to see the thing you’ve created in your mind come to fruition. I get this sense with Porzingis and his surrounding hype. He reminds me exactly of those big, tall, skilled, white European dudes who time after time after time we’ve prematurely anointed the next Dirk Nowitzki and who time after time after time end up departing the NBA after their rookie deals expire.

At some point we’re gonna figure out there is only one Dirk Nowitzki, just as there is only one Magic Johnson, one Michael Jordan, one LeBron James. However, the amount of times GMs swing and wholeheartedly miss at a prospect thinking they’ve found the next Dirk is something I’m more than willing to observe as an innocent bystander.

— You heard it here first: Cameron Payne (who reportedly killed it in the interview process at the Combine) is gonna be an awesome point guard in the NBA — and the Nuggets should definitely trade Ty Lawson for him on draft night. As of now Payne is slated to land somewhere in the 11-20 range. If that’s the case the Nuggets could easily trade for a mid first-round pick and take Payne as their point guard of the future. Being that he’s still fairly young it’d be in the Nuggets’ best interest to keep Jameer Nelson as a starter and mentor, but a few years down the road Payne could be a stud and core member of the Nuggets young, up-and-coming starting five.

— The Orlando Magic’s Tobias Harris played the role of player-host during ESPN’s coverage of the Combine and when asked about his greatest strength in transitioning to the NBA, Harris claimed intelligence. He said without it he probably wouldn’t have been able to grasp NBA defensive schemes and that a lot of guys who struggle in the NBA simply aren’t smart enough to figure things out.

I wish there were more guys like Harris in the NBA. I wish more guys would speak up about the cerebral aspect of the game and how vital it is to success at the next level. To me, this is the single most important factor in analyzing prospects outside of innate talent. If you’re a gifted athlete and you play the right way and work hard and make the effort to understand the NBA and the greater world around you, you have an outstanding shot at succeeding in the NBA. Conversely, if you’re a great athlete who plays selfish basketball, shuns defense and ditched classes in school, you will likely fizzle out just as fast as you started.

We’ve seen this time and time again in the league. Guys who have the intelligence tend to succeed and guys who don’t, no matter how talented they may be, often end up playing overseas and exhausting their paychecks on material possessions until they’re flat broke and working as used car salesman.

It’s not rocket science, but to make it in the NBA you need a brain. You also need spirit, dedication, heart, passion and all the other traits and emotions that go along with success. If Tim Connelly values these characteristics as much as Harris does, I think the Nuggets will be in great shape come June 25.

— On this same subject, if there’s one thing the Combine is good for it’s making you think about what you value in a future NBA player. For me, it’s simple: defense, character, altruism and that one specific skill you specialize in that will allow you to play a role on whatever team you’re signed with.

In the NBA there are about 20-25 stars whom teams build around. Everyone else is a role player. That’s just how the league is structured. Look at Cleveland for example. They’re lucky enough to have three of those 20-25, yet everyone else on their team plays a role: Mozgov is the interior defender, Shumpert the wing defender, J.R. Smith the sixth man, Tristan Thompson the rebounder, Mike Miller the veteran player-coach, Kendrick Perkins the enforcer-goon and so on down the line. The same can be said for the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat over the last decade.

If there’s one thing the Nuggets need it’s a star. This has been the case ever since Carmelo Anthony was traded to the Knicks in 2011. If they can find one in this draft, all the better. But these types of perennial All-Stars are rare. That’s why when making an imminent selection on draft night you’re always best to ask: Does my guy play defense? Does my guy read the game at a cerebral level? Does my guy put others before himself? Does my guy do one thing better than everyone else on the floor? If you can answer yes to all those questions, you have yourself a pick.

— Pat Connaughton is why I love sports. This is a guy who might very well be one of Matt Damon’s 12 brothers in Good Will Hunting, yet unassuming Irish-Catholic looks didn’t stop him from registering the second highest maximum vertical leap in NBA Combine history. Connaughton is an insanely talented two-sport athlete who throws a 96-mile-per-hour fastball for the Baltimore Oriels organization and still stands a decent chance of getting drafted in the NBA. To get a better understanding of Connaughton I highly suggest watching the videos below. I also highly suggest the Nuggets draft him with their lone second-round draft pick if Connaughton’s still on the board at 57.