How were his defensive numbers last year? Are we looking at a guy that can play defense and rebound? Ben wallace without the massive contract?

I love this pick. You need to swing at the fences in the early second round, and not draft Daniel Ewing over Monte Ellis. I’m so glad Jordan and CDR dropped, it made it impossible for the clips to draft someone like Demarcus Nelson (aka the next jared jordan, chalmers, ewing, whoever else the clips drafted in the 2nd round). This kid would have been a top 10 next year and is an athletic freak. I completely agree with the NBDL analysis, send him to anaheim. I’m so glad the Clips are starting to emulate the more successful franchises in the league (Detroit is doing the same thing with Amir Johnson, and it looks like he’s gonna at least be a solid role player). Do any of you think we should have drafted CDR instead? I personally think this is the right pick over CDR.

I’m not as pumped on the Mike Taylor pick. Though I agree he has a much better chance to make a roster than an average pick in the 50s, giving up a future 2nd rounder is too much. If the clips go lottery again, they gave up a pick in the 30s. A 30ish pick can usually make an nba roster and sometimes even be productive (see landry, baby davis last year). A pick in the 50s rarely makes it in the nba. Couldn’t the clips just have called him up last year from the Dleague and then had his rights anyway?

The Clippers do not have the luxury to waste their picks on players who may or may not develop in areas where they do not have needs. Stated another way, they really aren’t in a position to benefit by emulating good teams in this fashion. Particularly where, as here, the draft is fairly deep, and there were players on the board that they could actually use (and that would be equally acceptable risks). CDR is a player they could use and that could develop into a good NBA player. Jordan, not so much.

We already have and are developing Baby Shaq, Josh Powell, Davis, et al. Why not start developing some SG/PG talent?

I love this pick. The Clips have enough big men that they can take on a project like this.

The D-league point is well-taken, and the Korolev example is exactly right. A big part of the frustration with YK is that he never ever got on the court—if he had been mediocre in the D-league we might have a different feeling about the whole debacle, and MD himself might have been educated. Part of the issue is transparency and accountability, which isn’t a Dunleavy strength. Let the kid play, somewhere. And for all the skeptics out there, don’t expect that Jordan is going to get big minutes in Summer League or the preseason. Instead, MD has a nasty habit of giving minutes to cusp guys who aren’t going to make the team (Lamond Murray).

But I digress and don’t want to dwell on the negative (where’s Stuckey?! what’s he doing today? does he want to go to the beach? to yoga?).

I’m hoping that Kim Hughes is the key man. The development of Kaman has been long and painful, but it seems at this point to have worked out very well. (Another quick aside: isn’t Kaman hurting a little bit with rising gas prices? I mean, the guy has a yacht and a trucking company, right? Not to mention various other big boy toys. Is there any way to green up Kaman, just a little? We know he’s working on yoga and mindfulness, and he has started reading books…) With Jordan, I think it’s not just Hughes but Kaman himself, who has a lot to pass on to a young guy at this point.

It will probably come down to personality. Let’s not forget that he’s a 2nd round pick, so his contract issues are negotiable, and he’s going to have to earn his money, it’s not just going to be handed to him. It’s funny, but when a kid like Jordan drops to the 2nd round, you see clearly how the lottery and first-round picks can turn certain kids’ heads completely upside down. They’re not getting 150 or 250k-a sizable chunk of money out in the real world-but instead people like Wilcox and Miles are getting a few million. And then they play just well enough to somehow get double digit millions more. Kaman himself, it seems, didn’t get it the first couple of years, but he did have a good time spending his money. He filled out and got bigger, and he had his own psychological hurdles, but his game never really got going until the end of year 3 and he didn’t make the big leap until year 5. So we’ll see what kind of kid Jordan is, and I think the fact that he’s a 2nd round pick might speed up his progress, because he’s going to have to do the work to get paid.

One of my fears about the Clips taking Jordan instead of CDR is that they’re still holding a roster spot for QRoss. In my own (nonexistent) Clipper roster, I have Livingston penciled in to take that spot and replace Ross, which gives the Clips flexibility to sign another PG, and the alternative to Liv is Marcus Williams. Marcus Williams is a guy who should be part of the CDR discussion. Williams excelled in the D-League, and the Clips have firsthand knowledge of his game. And oh, by the way, he still almost never got minutes on a team that was tanking hard and losing virtually every game. If the Clips had drafted CDR, there’s a 98% chance he would play less than 100 minutes next year, if there was even a roster spot for him. Let’s also not forget that Mobley is on the roster and playing over 2500 minutes (despite chronic injuries). Is CDR a better bet than Chalmers, Ewing, or JJordan? Yes. But would he get a shot on a team with a provisional roster with Maggette, Thornton, Thomas, Mobley, Gordon, Livingston, Ross and Williams?

On the other hand, if Maggette ships out for a PG, and Ross sticks somewhere else and MD tearfully watches him depart, Liv can’t play, and Williams is mediocre, the Clips would be thin enough at SG, basically just Mobley and rookie Gordon, that they could use a 3rd string SG. But that’s a lot of ifs.

One question is whether the Clips would have taken Chalmers instead of Jordan. I hope they would have. And the fact that they went after Taylor once Chalmers was off the board seems to confirm that. They wanted to get some kind of serviceable PG in the 2nd round, and they got one, but he probably wasn’t the one that they wanted.

I had my eye on Giddens, even though he would have run into the same issues as CDR. I’m not worried about Giddens character issues, but his draft spot is interesting as he was the last pick in the first round, so he gets a guaranteed contract.

Reading over the above post, I notice that I moved from writing about Mario Chalmers to mentioning esteemed former Clipper 2nd round pick Lionel Chalmers without noting the difference. “Is CDR a better bet than Lionel Chalmers, Daniel Ewing, or Jared Jordan”—or Guillermo Diaz, I would add. Is CDR a better bet than Mario Chalmers? Perhaps. Kind of a good question.

And while I’m at it, CS has “it’s” and “their” flubs in the original post, which I only point out because the J-school admissions folks might be watching! Hi there, admissions folks! I bet you would have been smart enough to draft Stuckey last year! But I know you’ll be smart enough to draft Clipper Steve!