Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2013 9:12:50 GMT -6
Welcome everyone to LakersNation.com. I want to first appologize to all of you for the pictures, I know this is 1990 and your 28k models probably can't load this at a very good rate, and for that i'm sorry. A piece of advice for all of you who haven't dealt with unusually slow internet service; Bring up the page, go to bed, wake up and hope everything's loaded. You'll thank me later.
Now on to the real event; This article. Which i've prepared for months before-hand by removing a couple of ribs to help with flexability.
Anyways, to explain my above comments, this where i get to self felash and explain my line of thinking behind each pick, and give the world updates (You care because we're the Lakers) on my progress of picking. So before we get started, let's get the obvious out of the way. We're starting this league because another one was "dead" without much explaination (surprise surprise) and we needed teams. So with this redraft I came into an open mind. Anyone who knew me in the PR league knew that my drive was to be competitive every single year and to have a shot to win the title every year. I achived that goal through our 7 seasons there making the playoffs every time with 2 finals apperances and 1 trophy.
With that, I decided I would come into this league with an open mind, rebuilding seemed fun and it was something I haden't taken the challenge of yet; so I took the task at having a young team (we'll see how long that last). Anyone who knows me, knows i pride myself on one thing in this game outside of inning, and that's building monster defenses. It's not really up to snuff with the "Showtime Lakers" of this era, but it's my personality. If i value anything it's hard nosed defense and rebounding. It's also important to note that the West So i'll go over my picks now and add some commentary below each pick to explain where I was when I made this decision.
Round 1 Pick #13:
Kevin Johnson Age: 24
(Yep that's Hakeem)
I was really torn with this pick. I had no clue how many good players would be dropping to me at the 13 spot, i mean hall of famers. I had the shot at
John Stockton and Carles Barkley, and went to bed with the mindset of selecting one of the two. When I woke up I looked again at the depth of the PG position and said charles Barkley was my pick. Except something happened, every time i made great and reasonable reasons why Stockton or Malone was the guy (Stockton all the leader in assist and steals, not a slouch in scoring, Barkkley being maybe the 3rd best PF of all time), one name kept creeping into the back of my head: Kevin Johnson. As much as i tried to fight it, i eventually gave in. I had him ranked above Payton (who went #2 overall) and i was in love with the idea of getting a 22-11 guy who was 24 years old. This pick would help shape the rest of my draft.
Round 2 Pick #17
Mookie Blaylock Age: 23
AKA D-Lock
Mookie was high on my radar from day one. he was the ultimate guy I wanted to rebuild around if i didn't take a point guard. Probalem was, I already took a point guard. As time went on through to my pick, i still loved Mookie. As you previously read, i love building great defenses and i had Mookie ranked at the #5 spot as a defender with a lot of room to grow as a point guard and a scorer. When selecting him my mentality was at worst he could be an ultra high level 6th man that could lock down opposing team's 1's and 2's. As i went through the west's rosters there was a disturbing trend I noticed. Out of the 14 teams that drafted before me through 2 rounds, 6 had taken a Point AND a SG in rounds 1 and 2. That let me know the West was loaded at the guard spots and if I couldn't defend both Guard spots, i'd be toast. Add that to the fact the the league's best 2 SGs were in the West (Jordan and Drexler) this made this pick immediately feel great to me, and I took it (with a lot of scrutiny) and haven't looked back sense
Round 3 Pick #17
Mantue Bol Age: 28
If you haven't already noticed by the last pick, I don't care what people think i should pick. I pick what I think is right. Manute wasn't a guy who initally called out to me, but with a lot of guys i liked gone, I had to research again. Now we already know what 6 of the west teams did in regards to being guard heavy, but what about the rest? Another alarm sounded in my head; Hakeem, Kemp and Malone were in my conference. If i couldn't give some sort of resistance to teams front lines, my effort to build a defensive team in the first team would be for nothing. So i started looking at Bol's stats and I began to fall in love with his game. Let's get things straight first. I know what he's not, which is a lot of things. He's not a scorer. He's not a passer. He's not really even a rebounder. But what he is, he's elite at, and that's shot blocking and defense. When i looked at Bol's last two years stats, i was astounded by his blocks. 3.2 and 4.3. then I scrolled over and realized that was in 17 and 22 MPG. that's a per 36 of 6.6 BPG and 7 BPG. I had to have him.
Fun little article on him:
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/the_bonus/07/07/bol.excerpt/index.html
Round 4 Pick #13
Cedric Ceballos
Potential Potential Potential is the name of the game with this pick. Cedric is going to need some time to come to blossom, but this may be a key contributor off the bench to start. Cedric give you what you see from guys later down the line like G Wallace and Marion in the fact that he has the potential to become an elite rebounder at his position and get a lot of offensive boards and finish at a good rate.