I’m writing this post on the 22nd as I won’t be around on the 28th (when you’re reading this) and scheduling it to be published around two hours before the Hornets officially draft Anthony Davis with the 1st-overall pick. Obviously, the Nets don’t hold many picks in this year’s draft (just the 57th overall pick from Miami obtained in the Chris Quinn trade from a few years ago) but they have been reported as looking to buy or trade into the late or even middle of the 1st-round to pick a prospect for this rebuilding team.
This draft class was viewed, basically up until the end of the regular season, as one of the deepest in memory but in recent months has been slowly torn down by draftniks and experts alike who just don’t foresee many future NBA stars coming out of this draft, unless, of course, your name is Anthony Davis.
As talked about seemingly endlessly on this site, the Nets don’t have their 7th-overall pick because of the Gerald Wallace trade, a trade that at first, was roundly criticized as giving up a lottery pick in a stacked draft. However, in recent months, the trade has been more widely accepted and approved due to the overall degrading of the 2012 draft class.
The Nets could really go anywhere with the 57th pick and since the roster is mainly bare right now, I could really see Billy King going for a swingman with his sole pick. Marcus Denmon, a 6-3 shooting guard from Missouri, would be a nice compliment to Marshon Brooks and Anthony Morrow at the 2 because Denmon is a much better shooter than Marshon and is quicker and better at penetrating a defense than Morrow.
William Buford from Ohio State is another shooter who can add more scoring to the Nets in a bench role while Darius Johnson-Odom is another shooting guard, who is from Marquette, that is projected to go much higher than the 57th-pick but could always fall down to the Nets’ pick. Johnson-Odom is a tenacious player on both the offensive and defensive ends that would provide a nastiness and crazy athleticism to a Nets team that simply didn’t have much of that last season.
While it would be nice for Billy King to pull off a trade garnering an additional draft pick this year for the Nets would be great but in all honesty, the draft isn’t and shouldn’t be a main focus of the team and the front office this offseason. However, Billy King and his fellow executives should spend more of their time trying to work out a trade with Orlando for Dwight Howard, trying to re-sign D-Will, Humphries, Lopez and sign maybe a prime free agent bigman like Ryan Anderson or even Ersan Ilyasova.
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