Here we go again. The brilliant Jonathan Givony at DraftExpress has reported that the New Jersey Nets are looking to select Wes Johnson with the third pick in Thursday night’s draft, a move which would take the rug out from under the Minnesota Timberwolves, who hold pick #4 and by most accounts, were planning to use it on SU fans’ favorite transfer.

It’s been widely accepted that John Wall and Evan Turner will go 1-2, and nothing has happened to change that, but while the players connected with the three next best players (Johnson, Derrick Favors and DeMarcus Cousins) also appear firmly set, the destinations aren’t quite as clear-cut.

This is the first time that the Nets have been connected to Johnson, as scouts have held that Favors and Cousins, a pair of high-ceiling big men with exceptional-but-unpolished talent, were the next best players available. What Johnson provides over Cousins and Favors is a more mature and developed background (three years of college experience versus one) at a different position. The Nets had been pursuing the two bigs for their youth as well as to fill a positional need, but now they’re indicating that they’re willing to go with Wes and roll the dice on a big man in free agency.

It’s very possible that new owner Mikhail Prokhorov wants the Nets to be competitive as soon as possible after posting a historically awful 12-70 performance in 2009-10. Such a direction would not involve waiting to see how and if Favors and Cousins will come around. In addition to being unpolished, there are said to be major red flags surrounding Cousins’ makeup and his ability to stay in shape. Anyone who watched a Kentucky game last season saw the tantrums that he threw whenever he was whistled for a call or sent to the bench with foul trouble.

Perhaps the Nets aren’t willing to risk another PR nightmare after the season they just went through, and don’t want the hassle of worrying about what kind of messes the short-fused Cousins might get himself into, in addition to not knowing whether and how long it will take for him to develop on the court. And I can’t say I blame them.

Derrick Favors, highly-regarded after spending a year in the ACC is another tremendous talent. For a team with more patience than the Nets seem to have right now, he could be a terrific contributor in the future.

We learned how mature and NBA-ready Wes Johnson looks to be; I don’t need to go into the specifics, but his draft stock has been rising since the day he declared. At the end of the day, the NBA draft is a crapshoot after the first two picks. High picks take time to develop, sometimes they don’t at all, sometimes you get key contributers at lower picks (Paul Millsap) or even out of rookie free agency (Wesley Matthews).  Here’s hoping that the GM who calls Wesley’s name, whoever it may be, knows not only where he wants his team to be, but also how he plans to get it there.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 2:39 pm by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.