NBA Draft Piker Presents: Derrick Williams

If you have heard even one NBA draft guru pontificating on Derrick Williams, you have probably heard that he is a tweener. Ewwwwwwwwww a tweener. Who wants that? Why can't he just be a power forward or a small forward? Why won't his stupid body choose one?

As long as we are willing to forget about everything we have ever seen on an NBA basketball court, the "Tweener's just suck" mantra is a perfectly good way to judge prospects. But let's take it even one step further, and actually examine NBA history for a moment. A cursory glance at Bill Simmons' pyramid of NBA greats leaves the mind positively tingling with shock! a 6'9" POINT GUARD who can guard every position? A 6'5" POWER FORWARD, somewhere north of 250 lbs? Who are these freaks of nature and what are they doing on a basketball court? They are Magic Johnson and Charles "The Round Mound of Rebound" Barkley. AGGGGHH Hall of Fame tweeners! And yes that semi-rippling physique below is the same brilliant blob of goo you see on TNT every night.

As if that wasn't proof enough let's play a quick round of NBA Tweener fantasy draft. I give you their oddball measurements, and you pick which tweeners you want! Help yourself to one serving from each pool.

Pool A: Frighteningly lengthy skinny guys who probably can't play either forward spot.....
#1 6'9", 230 lbs
#2 6'9", 240 lbs

Pool B: Too short to play shooting guard, too beefy to play the point?
#1 6'3", 210 lbs
#2 6'2", 205 lbs

Pool C: Tub of love small forwards who power forwards can probably shoot over with ease....
#1 6'8", 250 lbs
#2 6'8", 240 lbs

Scroll Down for Results!
















So who did you pick?

You picked all the #2's right...

Congratulations! You got Marvin Williams, Marcus Banks and Leon Powe, bon chance!


For those of you who chanced into team 1, congrats! You got Kevin Durant, Chauncey Billups, and LeBron. So yeah, if you are a tweener, you suck. It has nothing to do with how good you are at basketball, you just plain suck. And with that let's go to the tape on Derrick Williams!

Highlights - short version(click here if you have a job)
Highlights - long version (unemployed people I love you too, I know you are on your grind)

Crashing the boards, and whiskers on kittens,
Pull up 3-pointers, and warm woolen mittens,
Colossal slam dunks thrown down in transition,
These are a few of his favorite things.

So yeah he is a tweener, but in all the best ways! Watch him glide lazily into people's bodies and throw in deft bank shots! Watch him get stuffed going up to the rim, regather, then jump into the former shot-blocker's chest and flip it in, turning his would-be assailant into a crying child! Take in his calm, sweet 3-point stroke. Is his athleticism off the charts? No, it is on the charts. But after watching Zach Randolph rip through the Spurs without ever leaving the ground, we must remember that a hefty, fearless, determined dude with touch softer than a baby's bottom doesn't need to soar through the air to dominate. We've all played against that guy in a rec league, and it is not fun! Throw in the fact that, like Z-Bo, he drains outside shots and you have a serious offensive weapon. He likes flying around and blocking shots, and moves his feet well enough, and there are only a handful of legitimately tall power forwards who can score (ahhhhhhhh DIRK) so I deem him "not a liability" on defense. Let's go to the interview portion of tonight's show to make sure that unlike Z-Bo, young Derrick won't be having any run-ins with the law.

Interview.

Derrick Williams surprised me not so much by what he said, but how he said it. I don't know how else to put this, other than to say he sounds a bit like bugs bunny. All right, I'll stop being coy, the guy has a little baby lisp. This has nothing to do with basketball, it may however, have something to do with Derrick William's soul, qi, kami, personality, or whatever else you want to call it. He loves calling himself as an underdog, and apparently was lightly recruited out of high school. These are probably good things. His goal is to be rookie of the year. This is a good thing. He is soft-spoken, unexcitable, and in general seems like a well-adjusted, good humored, slightly lispy gentleman. He had me at, "ahhhh, I'd probably thay ummmmm the Duke game,"6 seconds in!

That is until he made it perfectly clear that he was only interested in playing small forward. WHYYYYYYY DERRICK! Don't give into the tyranny of the perimeter. LeBron has definitely sexified the small forward position waaaaay too much. As long as Williams is willing to crush his enemies in the post it doesn't matter what position he plays, but after that interview I am more than a little worried that he may get a bit Josh Smith bang-bang loco at times. NBA Draft Express notes that the most physically comparable player in their database is DaJuan Summers (eeeegads!), but that just means that Grandmama is not in their database. That's right the great Larry Johnson (6'7", 250 lbs) has already blazed the trail for young Derrick (6'7", 250 lbs) so long as he is ready to smash on people in the post like the great LJ, his future will be bright.


Darko Time!

Next up, Turkish delight Enes Kanter!

NBA Draft Piker Presents: Kyrie Irving

Welcome friends, NBA Draft fans, and the dozens of starry-eyed youths currently vying for a spot in Kyrie Irving's posse. Though I can't tell you who will be lucky enough to win entrance into that prodigious club, I can tell you exactly how good Kyrie Erving will be in the NBA. How?!?! you might ask. Aren't NBA GM's paid by the bushel to ponder such imponderables? Don't hundreds of scouts trot the globe to scientifically dissect each and every aspect of a young prospect's mind, body, and soul?

Well yes, they do. But if they knew what they were doing would we have Eddy Curry and his love handles going in the lottery? Stromile Swift? Michael "The Kandi Man" Olowokandi? Adam "Johnson's no more tears" Morrision? Hasheem Thabeet? I could go on.... And I will.... Nikoloz Tskitishvili, Frederic Weis, and please let us not forget Darko Milicic and Greg Oden. Of course the Blazers do have an airtight defense; if the history of the NBA draft has taught us one thing it is that you don't pass up a guy whose legs are different lengths, and is unsure whether he wants to be a dentist or an NBA center, so long as he has a good pilates gameface. Similarly, when you can get a bleached-blond Serbian teenager as phillosophical as Darko, "I think it’s difficult to compare us. It’s like apples to pears. Lebron plays the 2-3. I play the 3-4, so it’s different," you take him! Apples to pears indeed, Mr. Milicic!

But seriously, there must be a better way, no? Of course there is. Using 3 simple steps pioneered by Professional Basketball Scientist, and Peace Corps extraordinaire Benjamin Kvamme Conway, you too can be privy to the mystical secrets of each and every NBA draft prospect.

Step 0: pick a player! for the purposes of this post, we will use Kyrie Irving.

Step 1. Watch a highlight video of your chosen player on youtube. The longer the better, and unless the music is too unbearably bad shoot for the video with the most previous views. Reader beware, this is a HIGHLIGHT TAPE. If at any point during step 2 you find yourself watching Timofey Mozgov klutz his way into the missing third Klitschko brother and then stiffly bank in a layup, your chosen player probably isn't going to make it. Same thing goes for anyone raining in threes on guys who have yet to hit puberty, see the aforementioned Adam Morrison.

Step 2. Watch a long interview with your player on NBA Draft Express. Here are some useful questions you should be asking yourself during step 3:
Do i like this person?
Would I enjoy playing basketball with this person?
Would I trust this person with my grandmother?
Would I want this person to be in one of those Modern Warfare 2 style foxhole's with me?
And finally, does this person seem like he would rather be a dentist?

Answers for Tyreke Evans: no, no, heavens no, no, thankfully no. James Harden: yes, yes, yes, yes, no. You can see how step 2 separates the wheat from any wheat-like substances that may have gotten past step 1.

So without further ado, I give you Kyrie Irving.


Step 1: Highlights. The first red flag on Irving is that his highlight reel is all of 3 minutes long. I know, he played only one year at Duke, and was injured for 2/3 of the year. But until I get a good explanation of how either of those facts bodes well for Irving's NBA career I will continue to hold this against him. Bottom line, your highlight tape should be 2 or more seconds longer than Selena Gomez's "A Year Without Rain".

On the plus side, Irving looks like a great passer with quite a high basketball IQ. He only swishes one Jimmer style heave (or Gilbert Arenas style heave, for the NBA purists out there), and he is constantly looking to create open shots for his teammates (somewhere Anderson Varejao is smiling). On the down side he does not look like a tremendous athlete. On a few different occasions he flies down the court on 2 on 1's and instead of going hard to the hoop and finishing with a thunderous explosion to the rim, he slows down and makes awkward passes to his teammates that may not cut it at the next level. As a point guard it is useful to know your physical limits (somewhere a team of bio-physicists are trying to enlighten Russell Westbrook on this topic as we speak), but Irving's limits are so readily apparent that we can rest assured Kyrie Irving will NOT be the best player in this draft. Reminds me of: Chris Paul playing with 3 pounds of lead in each shoe, Stephon Marbury, if he had gotten a lobotomy, Mike Conley.


Step 2:
Interview
If you hadn't already taken my word for Irving's athletic limitations, let the man himself enlighten you:

Q: "If it wasn't for a rule, would you have tried to have gone pro out of high school?"
A: "Aw, no sir, no, no, no......It's just a different age now, a new generation, where our bodies aren't the same as back then, they were a new breed back then, as you can see in the NBA now, so I wouldn't have tried to come out. "

Q: "Can you make an immediate impact as a rookie?"
A: "Right now, I'm not sure"

"I guess some people see different things in me that I dont even see in myself sometimes."

He is practically pleading with NBA GM's and fans not to be judged against the standard or Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Deron Williams, and Russell Westbrook. If he were headed to say the Knicks, or Mavericks, with talented guys around you might love these answers. However, as a likely top 3 pick you have to wonder about a guy who may not view himself as a franchise player. Have fun throwing nifty passes off of Samardo Samuels' chest, back, and face!

On the other hand he seems like a genuinely intelligent, well-spoken, hard-working guy, so it is difficult to imagine him flaming out Gerald Green style, or ever playing with Samaki Walker on Al-Jalaa Aleppo.

Do I like him? Yes.

Would I enjoy playing basketball with him? Unequivocal yes.

Would I trust him with my grandmother? Yes. He seems like he would be willing to at least pretend to try to learn the rules of bridge for an hour or so.

Foxhole test: Doesn't have enough of the Jordan/Kobe killer instinct, but he doesn't seem like he would be the guy to fall asleep on his watch either. Passes, but not with flying colors.

Would he rather be a dentist: Irving brings up a pact with his father which requires him to graduate from Duke in the next five years. This reminded me of Vince Carter right up until he was asked what would happen if he broke the pact: "That's a punishment that my father is going to have to come up with, five years from now I'm going to be 24, I'm going to be a pretty grown man, so, you know, no offense to my father, but the punishment- I think I can take it."

All in all, I am very confident Irving will be a good NBA player, and will not embarrass whichever franchise takes him. That said, there is almost certainly a better player in this draft. In the coming days and weeks we will continue using Dr. Conway's simple methods and uncover exactly who that better player might be.

Final note to David Kahn: Kyrie does NOT want to be in Minnesota:
Q: "Have you ever been to Minnesota, do you have any desire to do so?"
A:"They have connecting tubes everywhere."

Darko Time!

Next Up: The ephemeral tweener, Derrick Williams.