The Thunder Almost Drafted Brook Lopez Instead of Russ
Its funny, in hindsight, its pretty amazing Lopez fell as far as he did. I thought it was a joke at the time Alexander and Augustin got picked ahead of him. And in hindsight, he is probably better than any player picked ahead of him except Rose, Westbrook, and Love (Although Love was pretty darn bad when he played this year, and isn't exactly a "great teammate")
Gotta say, I love certain "if" scenarios and this is a good one. If they would have taken Brook, obviously trading for Perk never would have happened. That completely changes the Celtics. Do they still trade him? What happens to Jeff Green? Probably even more interesting would be where does Russell end up. He would be real dirty on that Knicks team.
well seattle had a PG in Earl Watson, and have a hole in the center spot, so by that time i was thinking that they really need a center and i thought brook would be it, i was shocked when they drafted westbrook, but it turned out okay, nice job OKC
They didnt draft Lopez because seattle had horrible luck drafting centers in the past 5 yrs up to that point. Saer sene Robert swift Johan petro then they had Chris Wilcox playing well at that point in his career. They just could afford to draft another center that wasn't the top overall pick.
It's hard to develop a center when u already have 3 that need developing
Very cool video with Ben Alamar, who was the former analytics consultant for the Thunder discussing how analytics played a big part in Russ being selected over Brook Lopez.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDqdEiQm2XU