šŸ€ Hoos in the NBA 2024-25

I think NBA fans are gonna look back years from now and wonder how the fuck Kon Knueppel got drafted before Ace Bailey and Tre Johnson.

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Maybe but he’s the safe pick here and is very likely to have at least a solid NBA career. I don’t hate it for the hornets who seemingly always bust with guys like Bailey. Also, Ace didn’t want to go there so there’s that.

Would’ve preferred Tre but Kneuppel fits nicely with their roster

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I am kinda low on Tre Johnson. Sure, everyone hated Rodney Terry’s offense and are thinking he’ll look better in an average NBA scheme, but he didn’t have markers of being an impactful athletes. Barely any rebounds, low FT rate, way more midrangers than rim attempts, and no defensive box score stats.

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Would somebody PLEASE take the cocaine away from Steven A. Smith!!! Holy crap!!!

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Uh…what is New Orleans doing? Giving up an unprotected first for the sake of grabbing Derik Queen?

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https://x.com/SpikeEskin/status/1938033896295137770

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Kon will be an average NBA player at best, but good for him for getting drafted so high. I’m just glad that my Sixers didn’t get stupid with their pick.

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Who will be a better pro?

  • Kon K
  • Hugo Gonzales
0 voters
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This why I watched the draft coverage on ESPN instead of ABC. Much easier to watch with still getting analysis of players that I wasn’t that familiar with.

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Stephen A Smith is why I don’t watch ESPN based NBA studio coverage at all. Whenever he’s on TV, I find something else to watch of do for however long he might be talking.

I’m glad he’s getting called out for it, but I fully expect that ESPN will continue to confuse irritation with ā€œcontroversy,ā€ and give him another raise for creating more clicks.

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Yeah, ya know, I don’t know him personally. He may be the nicest guy in the world. And I don’t mind his New York shock-jock bit. But the guy screams his takes and continues to get louder and louder as he’s speaking. I thought that the co-analyst was going to put his hands over his ears several times. The only people I’ve seen that act like him are jacked-up big time on some sort of uppers. If that is his problem, then I hope he gets help soon before his heart explodes.

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Nowadays don’t watch any draft on TV - find your fave online guys and stream it.
I watched the Celtics guys - which is all I cared about anyway

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Stephen A. Smith, Bob Myers and Marty Smith on ABC? :grimacing: Yep, glad I watched on ESPN as well

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https://x.com/TStapletonNBA/status/1938073841672098035

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Heh. Dude must be low on international players: Demin, Traore, Saraf were all in Hollinger’s top 30. And I guess doesn’t like Danny Wolf much.

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Hollinger’s rankings varied significantly from the consensus. I liked his rankings though, they aren’t bad or anything. I found his scouting reports the most useful thing though

Yeah, Hollinger indexes on stats a little more strongly than most (not as much as Kevin Pelton at ESPN). I like his rankings because I think he does a better job than most of considering the positional value/archetype value of different players.

Speaking of Hollinger, he’s flaming the Pelicans today: Pelicans’ trade for Derik Queen shows how much teams were willing to pay on NBA Draft night - The Athletic

Choice quotes to follow.

Execs be trolling:

But the Queen trade was on a completely different level, and the talk of the league. For instance, I texted one exec from another team not involved in the deal after the draft, congratulating him on what I thought was a solid move by his club.

The reply: ā€œThanks, but I’d rather be the team that traded Derik Queen for AJ Dybantsa.ā€

Pels’ fans should be feeling sick at reading this:

Also, um … can we set the bar a little higher than 13 here? Execs I talked to thought New Orleans could have moved up much higher than 13th if they had made that pick more widely available, perhaps even into the top 5.
…
Instead, they recklessly chased a guy who wasn’t good enough for them to take at seven , but still somehow warranted sending out both the 23rd pick and a likely future lottery pick to take at 13.

Lol this is the kind of player acquisition approach that might work if you’re…Georgetown, but is ridiculous in a NBA team that has no reason to limit themselves geographically:

While Dumars is in charge, sources say he’s leaned heavily on [Troy] Weaver, along with some of the other ex-Detroit staffers Dumars recently hired, to run things — especially the draft. Just in the last three days, the Pels traded for Jordan Poole, who was with Weaver in Washington. They traded for Saddiq Bey, whom Weaver drafted in Detroit and then had again in Washington last season. And, in Wednesday’s trade for Queen, they brought in a big guy from the Maryland-D.C. area, combining the two go-to defaults for virtually every decision Weaver made in Detroit.

But besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

This takes us, inevitably, to larger questions about the Pelicans. After their postseason non-search for a new GM led them to Joe Dumars, and only Joe Dumars, the stories leaking out of New Orleans already are generating smirks around the league. They have a coach none of the players like, that they somehow can’t fire, a star player nobody wants around but they can’t get rid of, and, as the last 48 hours showed, a new front office throwing spaghetti at the wall.

I hope Trey doesn’t get stuck there for too long.

Finally gonna get to the bottom of this
https://x.com/getmoneyjord/status/1938286855222337602

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So when AI (either Iverson or a robot) says ā€œhave you considered reducing the number of games or rolling back the player participation policyā€ what are they going to do?

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