One Sure Thing About 1996 Draft: No Superstars via Chicago Tribune

One Sure Thing About Draft: No Superstars
Iverson Probable 1st Choice In Group Full Of `Potential'
June 25, 1996|By Sam Smith, Tribune Pro Basketball Writer.



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Allen Iverson is expected to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft Wednesday.

This is good news for Iverson, who was sentenced to time at a work farm a few years ago, where getting a new uniform is not always good news.

But that Iverson is expected to be the top pick in the draft isn't necessarily good news for the NBA because if he is the best there is, well, what will the second--as well as third, fourth and fifth--pick look like?

"There's no consensus No. 1 pick," says Pistons personnel director Rick Sund, "not like when Patrick Ewing came out or Shaquille O'Neal or David Robinson. There are no superstars in this draft, but there are a lot of players with potential."

Of course, you also will see them around your closest playground.

Potential is the nastiest word to hang on young athletes because it means they're not good yet, but someone thinks they will be.

Like Stephon Marbury, the freshman point guard from Georgia Tech.

Some team executives say he may be an even better point guard than Iverson, who thinks shoot more than pass.

Said Marbury, building his own case: "I think with me or Allen, you know what you're getting. It's just a matter of who you want to take. He's more of a scorer first. I look to create first."

Creating a fuss, as it turns out, because Marbury is just one of several young players in a draft that could have more than 20 underclassmen taken in the first round (more than 40 underclassmen have declared). This is the first true Generation X draft.

Marbury wants to go to Minnesota to play with his good friend Kevin Garnett, so he declined to work out for Vancouver.

Kobe Bryant, the talented high school kid, wouldn't go to Indianapolis because he said it was too small a media market for him, as is Sacramento.

But one Kings executive noted, "This is a draft, not a recruitment."

Hope Bryant likes the rice fields of Central California.

Center Erick Dampier refused to visit any teams and had everyone come to his home in Mississippi.

Marcus Camby said he didn't want to go to Vancouver, where he may well be now that California freshman Shareef Abdur-Rahim seems to want back into the draft after a tear-filled press conference to say he was going back to college.

That's the best there is, all underclassmen, until perhaps Villanova's Kerry Kittles gets picked toward the bottom of the top 10.

Which doesn't please NBA teams all that much.

"Did Golden State win more games last season because of Joe Smith?" asks Sund. "Not really. Did Minnesota win more because of Kevin Garnett. Not really. These guys didn't make a big difference with their teams, and when underclassmen come out I don't feel they get a chance to fulfill their potential.

"It doesn't mean they cannot turn out to be good players," says Sund. "Look at Shawn Kemp. But what would he have been like with two years of college?"

That's another reason there's an increasing emphasis this season on European players.

Perhaps four or five European-born players and others who have refined their games there could wind up as first-round draft choices.

"Both of them," says Warriors personnel director Ed Gregory about Efthimis Ritzias and Predrag Stojakovic, "if they were going to school in the U.S. would be top 10 picks."

They're in the second tier of the draft. Iverson, Marbury, Ray Allen, who some scouts say would have been the No. 1 pick if he came out last season, Abdur-Rahim and Camby represent the top-echelon players.

Next comes the best Chicagoan, Kentucky's Antoine Walker, along with Kittles, Dampier and perhaps Syracuse's John Wallace, Memphis' Lorenzen Wright and foreign-born center Vitaly Potapenko.

But all are flawed in some way. Walker isn't a good shooter, Wallace has some attitude problems, Wright recently broke his ankle in a pickup game and the foreign-born players are, well, foreign-born.

"I think there are at least 10 players everyone is looking at," says Pacers President Donnie Walsh.

Or at least he hopes so because he traded Mark Jackson to get the No. 10 pick from Denver.

"You can go down 30 or 35 picks and get a player you feel good about," says Walsh.

Or pick one off the top, whom you're not all that thrilled with.

Gentlemen, open your checkbooks.

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krazy88s said:

In the NBA, has another player dictated where he was going like Kobe did? I remember reading NJ was gonna draft him but he outright refused. And now Sacramento.

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OGStoker55 said:

 

krazy88s said:

In the NBA, has another player dictated where he was going like Kobe did? I remember reading NJ was gonna draft him but he outright refused. And now Sacramento.

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It's happened dozens of times since the draft began -- the most recent coming to mind at the moment being Steve Francis refusing to play in Canada for the Raptors.

Interesting article, although hindsight is always 20/20.  It was very funny to see the sheer dis-respect towards foreign-born players near the end of the article, especially when considering Peja Stojockavic, Steve Nash, Vitali Potapenko, Zydrunas Illgauskas, Efthimis Rentzias, and Martin Muursepp were all born on foreign soil, and were eventually selected in the first round of this draft.

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krazy88s said:

In the NBA, has another player dictated where he was going like Kobe did? .

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Marcus Camby said he didn't want to go to Vancouver,

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CP1708 said:

In the exact same article you just read........

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Ricardo Malta said:

Nah, I kinda get the difference between the way Camby went about doing it and the way Kobe did it.

It's one thing for a dominant junior who was the College Player of the Year and going 2nd in the draft to voice his displeasure about being drafted by a crappy team in another country.

It's another thing for a perceived diva coming out of high school who wore dark shades to his press conference and went to prom with Brandy to voice his displeasure about any team drafting him.

Everyone remembers Kobe being a baby about where he wanted to get drafted. Nobody remembers Camby doing it.

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Ricardo Malta said:

The KG slander

Any time a draft has 4 HOFers (AI, Kobe, Ray, Nash), then studs like Starbury, O'Neal, Camby, then key role guys and leaders like Big Z, Fisher, Shareef, etc you got a damn good draft.

View media item 930184
They had the juice

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xbiker47 said:

This photo will always be te me

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Drones said:

People are saying that about this draft! I think we're going to see 3-5 franchise players come out of this draft.

Wiggins
Embiid
Parker

Maybe Exum
Maybe Smart

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