[BothTeamsPlayedHardParticipant]

I love how this guy started his column the day after Sene was drafted.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nba/2003092775_kell29.html

In 2011, when the Sonics may or may not still be in Seattle, we might look back at this pick as sheer genius.

We may consider it the most ambitious and successful project since John F. Kennedy started this country on the path to putting a man on the moon.

By then, 7-foot Mouhamed Saer Sene could be the next Bill Russell, or at least the next Dikembe Mutombo, a shot-blocker extraordinaire, a unique talent who can change the game with his intimidating length.

By then, Sene could have improved his footwork, honed his 15-foot jumper and learned how to play the complicated game of basketball.

But this is the summer of 2006. And the only response to the Sonics wasting their 10th pick in the first round on a 20-year-old center who averaged a whopping 3.1 points and 4.1 rebounds in Belgium’s not-exactly-taxing Division I League, is — huh?

"We had the luxury of not having a special need," Sonics general manager Rick Sund said early Wednesday evening after the pick had been announced.

Huh?

The Sonics are coming off their worst season in 30 years. There is nothing very luxurious about that.

They squandered this 10th pick, the highest pick they’ve had since choosing Gary Payton in 1990, on a shot-blocker, who blocked a mere 18 shots in 19 games in Belgium this season.

Huh?

There were too many players remaining with too much potential and much more experience to throw away the pick on a guy who not too long ago was going to school to become a mechanic.

A good friend of mine once said that general managers who made creative picks like Sene suffered from "a Vasco de Gama complex," in honor of the 15th century Portuguese explorer who founded a trade route from Portugal to the east.

My friend believed some general managers kept looking for secret treasures when the next-best thing was right in front of them.

Sene is such a secret, but the Sonics needed more.

There were too many good names left to chose from for the Sonics to be chasing the next Dream, as in Hakeem Olajuwon.

Why didn’t they use the pick to draft Marcus Williams, who just might develop into a better point guard than Luke Ridnour? If they wanted a center, why didn’t they take Hilton Armstrong, who played 33 games last season against the best college competition in the country?

Why didn’t they choose point-forward Ronnie Brewer, or Rodney Carney, who could become the next Shawn Marion, or the dead-eye shooter J.J. Redick?

"He [Sene] is a better shot-blocker than J.J. Redick is a shooter," Seattle coach Bob Hill said.

It is obvious Hill fell in love with the big man with the wingspan of a space shuttle the first time he set eyes on Sene. The Sonics were working out guards Randy Foye and Redick and Sene was blocking so many shots he was disrupting all of the drills.

But Sene is raw as sushi. And despite the Sonics’ late-season rush that began after the pressure of making the playoffs was off, this is a team that needs experience and toughness, not naked, youthful exuberance.

Even Hill, at the end of the season, listed a veteran center as one of his team’s most pressing needs.

But Tuesday night he said, "We put all of the names of the big men on a board and it [the list] wasn’t very pretty."

Neither is the Sonics’ history with centers.

From Jim McIlvaine to Vladimir Stepania, from Rich King to Calvin Booth, the Sonics fall in love with length and the love is unrequited.

For the third draft in a row, Seattle has used its first-round draft pick to choose a post-man project. First Robert Swift, then Johan Petro and now Sene.

If the Sonics needed another center they should have spent money on a free agent. San Antonio’s Nazr Mohammed is available. For a team that says it can win now, doesn’t Mohammed make better sense than Mouhamed?

Yes, the Sonics need a center, but not someone who played a mere 19 games in Belgium last season.

This was a chance to create some good will, to get the city talking basketball in the midst of the Mariners’ revival. It was a chance for the Sonics to grab some positive headlines before the start of Seahawks camp.

But they blew it.

Someday maybe we’ll look at this pick as genius. Maybe someday Sund and Hill and the Sonics staff will be hailed as visionaries, latter-day de Gamas.

But today, chucking their 10th pick on a project from Senegal looks purely wasteful.

It’s enough to make you ask … huh?

http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?158319-New-Saer-Sene-profile-on-draft-express
(originally ESPN insider)

3. Mouhamed Saer Sene, 7-0, Pepinster (Belgium), Senegal, 1986
Sene is still as raw as sushi and, while he is not one of my international favorites this year, he has an NBA body and athleticism right now. If his skill level catches up, he could be an Olajuwan-type.

Two years ago at the Reebok Euro Camp, Sene struggled to make a lay-up off the correct foot. However, he did possess a 7-foot-7 wingspan and ran like the wind. Twenty-one months later, Sene dominated a talented USA team at the Nike Hoop Summit in Memphis by blocking nine shots — some say 11 — versus some of the United States’ best high school players. That performance caused a huge buzz among NBA personnel.

Sene saw little playing time early this season but that changed when he returned from his confidence-building trip to the United States. He still has no post moves and he needs to get stronger, but his length, athleticism and tremendous defensive instincts and enormous potential will get him selected in the first 20 picks.

The bottom line is that he is a gamble because he is so raw and inexperienced. At worst, he will be a game-changer on the defensive end. However, don’t look for him to help a team for at least a couple of seasons.

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/Saer-Sene%97All-the-Rage-Amongst-NBA-Scouts-1263/dleague.php

An International NBA scout we spoke with who has been following him for some time now has very little doubt about how interesting Sene is. “Everyone is very intrigued by him. We’re talking about a guy that will be the longest player in the NBA right off the bat. Magloire has a 7-7 wingspan and so does Mutombo I believe, but Saer also combines that wingspan with a very intriguing knack for timing and anticipating that has been improving all the time. His instincts are better for example than DeSagana Diop, and we see what he’s doing right now for the Mavericks. His feel for the game isn’t great right now, but it’s getting better every time we see him. He definitely has a great upside. He really surprised me by scoring 15 points in the Hoop Summit, we know that he already has two NBA ready skills that are both very rare and always in demand—shot-blocking and rebounding. I could easily see him going in the top 20 of this draft since you know exactly what you are going to get, he is more than just upside since it’s obvious that he will be a helluva shot-blocker right off the bat, and especially as he continues to grow into his body.” Another African basketball expert (who is not an NBA scout) says he is “just as good as DJ Mbenga right now, but he’s 5 years younger than him. I like his upside because he’s got a great personality on and off the court. He’s a great kid, very quiet, but on the floor he is an animal. You can tell that he loves to play basketball and has a hunger to continue to improve.”

As with all African prospects, the first question that is brought up surrounds what his true age is. His agent Bouna N’Diaye says that this is to be expected since there are no birth certificates in Africa the way there are in the States, and that ages are approximated since official records are rarely kept. “I can’t say with any certainty that he is exactly 19 years old, but there is no way he’s older than 20 or 21 at the very most, although I do believe he is 19. His progress over the past few years has been astonishing.” The NBA scout we spoke with shared a similar sentiment: “of course he is 19. Just look at the way he has improved lately.”

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/2006-Nike-Hoop-Summit-Game-Recap-1260/

International Players

Mouhamed Saer Sene, 7-0, 230 lbs, Center, Senegal, 5/12/86
15 points, 6-8 FG, 3-4 FT, 9 blocks, 6 rebounds

Sene put on an awesome display, tying Kevin Garnett’s Hoop Summit record of 9 blocks in the game. Though the official stat sheet said 9 blocks, I counted 11, and various other people we talked also counted more than 9. Three of them came on one possession, and he had a few on athletic wing Gerald Henderson. Considering that he’s only played basketball for a couple years, it is really hard to believe how good Sene’s anticipation skills are. On offense, he is quite raw, though he does have the ability to step outside and hit a 15 footer when left unguarded. Sene made one in the flow of the game, and also knocked down 3 of his 4 free throw attempts. Despite this, he lacks footwork in the post, and when trying to make a move, he just turns and puts up a hook on a prayer that it will go in. He did have one sequence where he did a drop step and ended up with a dunk, but this was the only time all week where he created for himself out of the post. Sene has good hands when catching the ball down low, and usually waits until the time is right before he goes up to dunk a ball. When rebounding, his hands didn’t seem as good, and he will have to work on using his body to get position, and anticipating the ball to catch it at the highest point in his jump.

Sene has everything physically that you could ask for in a center prospect. He stands a legit 7 feet tall, and his 230 pounds are well distributed throughout his frame. His combination of length and explosive leaping ability is jaw dropping. Sene was the talk of all of the NBA scouts in attendance during the practices, and he was even more impressive during the game, though the U.S. team didn’t have any player who could match his combination of size and athleticism. Centers with the tools he has to work with are rare, and though he is raw at this point, he is young enough as to where he can develop a respectable offensive game. Sene doesn’t receive a whole lot of minutes with is team in Belgium right now, but his game is much more suited to the NBA style of play. He told DraftExpress after the game that he is considering entering the NBA draft this year, so it will be interesting to see if he does, and where he goes if he decides to declare. It’s hard to imagine him not getting some serious looks throughout the first round. European scouts we spoke with throughout the week claim his true age is a bit of a question mark, though, as it often is with many African prospects.

 

[kanyedabestParticipant]

lmaoo you didnt need a crystal ball to predict how this pick would turn out

[TallmanNYCParticipant]

Sene might not have worked out, but the options that the author throws out there instead of Sene don’t exactly go on to have great careers either. I guess JJ goes on to be the best player that gets mentioned as an alternative.

I wonder why Sene failed so badly? He really is plenty tall and athletic.

[BothTeamsPlayedHardParticipant]

"I wonder why Sene failed so badly? He really is plenty tall and athletic."

There is more to defense than blocked shots. People get enamored by it, but if you go through recent draft you will find that the success rate for big men who get tags like "at worst, he will be a game-changer on the defensive end" is as bad as any player type, especially when those blocked shots come with high rates of fouls. NBA defense isn’t college defense and isn’t FIBA defense, it is far more complex and requires big men to not park themselves in the paint. To judge a player’s NBA potential as a defensive ace based off how they do in a game with different rules is like judging a quarterback’s potential in the NFL based off running a read-option offense in college. There is really no correlation to whether someone finds success.

[cward23Participant]

I was thinkign the same thing@tallman. The other names he threw out haven’t exactly been that good out side of J.J but none as bad as sene

[butidonthavemoney]

I’ll be the first to admit, I was really excited about Sene. Granted, I was only 15 at the time. The talk around draft time was that he could touch the top of the backboard; that is a very intriguing amount of potential.

Still, there’s no way you could justify taking him in the top-10.

[Too coolParticipant]

 Where is Saer Sene now?

[JimmeredYaWabafetParticipant]

http://www.eurobasket.com/team.asp?Cntry=fra&Team=341

[OhCanada-Participant]

Please dont draft him Embrey, or BC, or Gherardini or whoevers in charge. Just dont do it. I know they wanna draft Biyambo, theyare just the perfect level of low IQ to do it. Just dont guys…plz. Forget about workouts, the Hoop Summit, etc. Please dont do it.

[Da1potParticipant]

 Dominating the best high school players in the country means absolutely nothing. And, All of the players within ten picks after Sene are all either busts or role players. Yeah, it would have been nice if they drafted Rondo obviously who went 21st, but he simply was not seen as a lotto pick.

[BKKnicksfanParticipant]

This is the reason why people are scared of Biyombo. Ibaka is the reason why people are excited about Biyombo.

 

[Author]

Posts