[HitsterParticipant]

Duke’s Dereck Lively has decided to declare for this year’s draft after an up and down freshman year in the NCAA. His offensive game is still a work in progress but he has shown flashes of being an elite shotblocker and has the insane length to be a good NBA defensive anchor.

Where he figures in the draft especially if team mate Kyle filipowski who is a much more offence based and shooting big man declares to remains to be seen. Kyle I have down as a mid to late first rounder who could easily go in the top 20. I think Derek will get taken in the first round too with several teams owning multiple picks in the 20 to 30 range.

Nets and Pacers could be decent landing spots for him looking at their current rosters and possible players moving on. If he did fall out of the first round the Knicks at 31 would make a lot of sense given Thibs love of defence.

[NorrinRaddParticipant]

Dereck Lively was the #1 prospect out of HS and then played atrocious. He gradually got better over the season and eventually regained his traction enough to be a first round pick. Hard to go back when you’re going in the first. I think he’ll be a 5 that splits time with someone else in the league. I don’t think he’s a solid starter, although he might start… if that makes sense. His shot is coming around and he blocks shots well. Useful at the next level.

[HitsterParticipant]

I see guys like Mark Williams and Walker Kessler having good first NBA seasons and Dereck is probably a better athlete than either of them. The issue with a lot of lottery teams owning the late first rounders is they already have a lot of young prospects so Dereck could be in the mix with a lot of similar players there. Ideally a play off team could have taken him and developed him slowly, he could be NBA ready defensively so they could use him as a bench option to play some minutes as his game develops with no real worry about his scoring as the rest of the team looks after that.

[zolaParticipant]

Teams like Golden State, Miami, Houston, Portland, Sacramento could use back up C like him, so I suppose someone in that range (18-24) will pick him.

He showed improvment during the season which is always a good sign.

[HitsterParticipant]

GSW is a pretty good call they traded Wiseman and if they could get Dereck on a reasonable rookie deal they have a defensive anchor option and he’d be on a good team, Miami likewise. Houston have a lot of bigs so I might discount them, Sac-Town have a fairly deep roster too. Portland is another decent landing point too as apart from Nurkic they maybe lack frontcourt height and taking Dereck with the 2nd first rounder means he won’t be their main draft signing.

[Author]

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