Yeah, I understand. I was just more ready to agree with the scouting paragraph than the health paragraph, because I was still kind of wrestling with whether Simmons saying that a guy "looks totally fine" is enough to convince me that his back won't be an issue. But, I do expect the Cavs to get his medical records and feel comfortable enough to take him, so I guess I am assuming health. LeBron, Durant, Davis, CP3, Griffin, maybe Rose and that's it for me. I think I'd lean yes on Rose.
Howard's best days are behind him, Cousins is a head case and Parker is up there in age, in hindsight Parker should probably be taken off the list because he is up there. That said, I'm just not a big gambler. Embiid has enough potential to be better than both Howard and Cousins but those guys have shown what they can do and the back issue is really a concern for me. If it were determined that his back is 100% and that he shouldn't have problems with it, I'd take both of them off the list in a heartbeat.
I thought about this too. I just have seen Embiid described as a more agile Jordan, and he's younger and better at FTs, so I'd take him instead. I am a gambler though. If I'm trading this pick, it's for someone I think can be a franchise-changing superstar. Otherwise I'm keeping it because Embiid has the potential to be that guy, and if he busts, then I have more top-5 picks coming my way. I'd rather be a contender or be horrible than get a Love type and languish in 8-seed purgatory.
I was going to counter by saying that Griffin relies on explosiveness just as much as Rose does, and is just fine after major knee surgery of his own, but his injury was a broken kneecap--not a torn ACL as I had previously thought. I still have hope for Rose, though. I think it's all about the ACL; I don't think the more recent torn meniscus will be that big a deal. Hopefully he can pull some Adrian Peterson ish.
I'm not sure if it makes more sense to do this player by player or year by year. I'll try year by year, and then player by player. 2003-4 & 2004-5: Both KG and Duncan. One could make an argument for Nowitzki. One could also make an argument for Tracy Mcgrady, but Mcgrady's best years were past him at that point. Mcgrady, though, was def better than Kobe the two years prior. 2005-6 & 2006-7: Dwayne Wade. Which means Kobe wasn't even the best shooting guard in the league IN HIS PRIME. And the case for Wade here is really compelling, especially in 2006-7, which was the year after the first Heat championship. Wade was just better by pretty much any offensive metric other than pure scoring, which of course isn't a great metric in that it overlooks the volume of shots. And this was in the period when Kobe was putting up gaudy scoring numbers on bad laker teams, and people were fellating him as a result, but his efficiency was terrible. Maybe if he would have shot less his teams would have won more games than they lost. Also, Tim Duncan and KG are still really good during this period, but have both dropped off a bit from peak numbers. Dirk Nowitzki is still getting better and a very strong argument can be made for him as well. And now we get to Lebron James. Most people will freely acknowledge that Lebron James has been the best basketball player on the planet from the 2007-8 season until the present. But I think Lebron Jaames has been better than Kobe Bryant in every season he's been in the NBA except his very first. So that's 2004-2005 and on. And if you trust PER even a little bit, then Kobe has DEFINITELY never been the best player in the league. In only one year (2005-2006) did he ever even crack the top 3 in PER (he was third in PER that year behind Dirk and Lebron). http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/per_top_10.html
Do you think Wiggins is the best player in the draft? It just seems like Embiid's presence had a bigger impact on the quality of the Kansas team.
Yes. Wiggins will be an elite NBA defender from day 1. I think Embiid will be very good, but Wiggins will be a Hall of Fame caliber player.
Here is another hypothetical - today Cowherd was talking about LeBron has passed Bird as the greatest small forward ever. His argument was LeBron does all Bird did plus he can run the point. This got me thinking LeBron is a more Magic type guy than Bird even though Magic and LeBron play different positions. Do the question is which two do you pick - LeBron, Magic or Bird if assembling a team? For arguments sake assume Jordan is your two guard, Russell is your center and Duncan the pf.
