The draft, Masai Ujiri, Fred VanVleet, and more

Some thoughts from a wacky few days

If you’re looking for draft grades, you’ve come to the wrong place.

I don’t do anything with my time except the NBA. No football, no fútbol, no college basketball, no TV shows, no movies, etc. It makes me tremendously boring at parties. I have no idea how people can claim to cover multiple sports at once; I’m not that good.

So I have no insight into whether Derik Queen will pan out for the Pelicans, who traded what is almost certainly going to be a fantastic unprotected draft pick in next year’s loaded draft class to Atlanta to move up 10 spots in this year’s first round and take the rookie big man. It’s been a universally derided move (“This is the worst trade, non-Luka division, that we’ve seen in at least a decade,” said one executive to The Athletic; arrest the Hawks for committing bird-on-bird crime against the Pelicans again), but I’ll let things play out a little before I judge.

But plenty of other things happened in, around, and adjacent to the draft that I wanted to mention.

• The theme of the draft was trades, but sadly, almost none involved real NBA players. The one major exception was Phoenix trading for another Charlotte center after grabbing Nick Richards from the Hornets last season.
  
  This time, they sent the #29 pick, which became UConn wing Liam McNeeley, a likely late 2029 first-round pick, and former Hornet Vasilije Micic (who was given eight million completely undeserved dollars to make the salary work) for former Blue Devil Mark Williams.
  
  The Hornets have been desperate to get off Williams and nearly scored a coup from the Lakers last season at the deadline before he failed his physical (which may or may not have been a result of LA’s frosty feet). The fact that they have tried so hard to be out of the Williams business should be a red flag to any potential buyer.
  
  It’s not just a health thing, although Williams can’t stay on the court. Williams’ defense is truly terrible. I had high hopes for him after a promising rookie season, but he’s never developed the sense of timing or discipline required to be a real rim protector, and he hasn’t held up well on the perimeter, either.
  
  That said, he has real offensive talent. His windmill arms give him an insane catch radius near the hoop, he has soft touch, and he has quick-read passing vision on the move at the center spot:

  

  Two bad firsts are a reasonable price to pay for a guy with Williams’ potential, but the Suns had few trade chips to begin with and spent nearly all of them here. Phoenix will really struggle defensively with the group they have now. Perhaps rookie Khaman Maluach, another Duke center they drafted just minutes apart from the trade, can pair with Williams for a defense/offense platoon. (Getting two centers in a five-minute span was a little puzzling given the presence of Richards, a perfectly competent backup center in his own right, but we’ve seen the value of big man depth enough now that I’m not too riled up about it.)
  
  The real kicker is that Williams is in the last year of his rookie deal. The Suns shouldn’t be too eager to extend him at a big number until he proves he can withstand the rigors of an NBA season, but at this point, I’d be shocked if Phoenix doesn’t drown him in dollar bills tomorrow.