Lillard would be Petrie's kind of player. I don't think he has much of an eye for big guys who can't shoot and as it turns out, everything he heard about TRob may have been wrong.
I certainly wouldn't be concerned about him making the pick. Actually without the BM whispering in his ear, he might do OK. The problem for him as I understand it is that his staff has been gutted and his equipment is now 2nd rate. There are very few scouts. The Maloofs have been very good at cutting costs which of course is not good for the team.
As to his future, I'll bet he retires no matter what the owners want.
Geoff's draft history with the Kings:
1994 NBA Draft
#8 Brian Grant
#35 Michael Smith
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Eddie Jones & Jalen Rose
1995 NBA Draft:
#13 Corliss Williamson
#47 Tyus Edney
#51 Dejan Bodiroga (this pick could have been HUGE had Bodiroga come over)
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Michael Finley, Theo Ratliff & Brent Barry
1996 NBA Draft:
#14 Peja Stojakovic
#41 - Jason Sasser
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Steve Nash, Jermaine O'Neal (straight out of HS) and Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Word was that Petrie was poised to take Kobe before the Divac to the Hornets trade that let LA grab him.
1997 NBA Draft:
#11 - Tariq Abdul-Wahad
#40 - Anthony Johnson
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Pretty much just Stephen Jackson in the 2nd round. Maybe Derek Anderson if injuries hadn't derailed his career. Brevin Knight and Bobby Jackson also went in this draft.
1998 NBA Draft:
#7 - Jason Williams
#36 - Jerome James
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Paul Pierce & Dirk Nowitzki. Pierce had an inexplicable slide and shouldn't have lasted to the 10th pick. Dirk had big potential but he really struggled early on. I have zero issue with Petrie taking JWill as he was instrumental in the Kings becoming relevant.
1999 NBA Draft:
No first round pick
#45 - Ryan Robertson. Only player that would've been better is Manu Ginobili at 57, and pretty much every single team in the league passed on him (including San Antonio the first time, as they took Leon Smith with the 29th pick).
Players of note drafted after our 2nd round pick: Manu Ginobili. Considering 56 other players were taken before him, it's safe to say Petrie wasn't alone on missing on Manu.
2000 NBA Draft:
#16 - Hidayet Turkoglu
#45 - Jabari Smith
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Nobody really. Maybe you could say Michael Redd. Terrible draft year.
2001 NBA Draft:
#25 - Gerald Wallace
#55 - Maurice Jeffers
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Tony Parker, Samuel Dalembert, Mehmet Okur and I guess you could say Agent Zero, Gilbert Arenas.
2002 NBA Draft:
#28 - Dan Dickau,
#57 - Corsley Edwards (though the Kings also traded for the rights to Darius Songaila)
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Carlos Boozer & Flip Murray.
2003 NBA Draft:
No picks due to the Nick Anderson/Tariq Abdul Wahad trade and the previous trade for Songaila. This was a top heavy draft with quite a few future stars, but the pick the Kings traded was 27th which turned into Kendrick Perkins. The next two picks were Barbosa and Josh Howard. Some decent roleplayers taken in the 2nd round (Korver, Kapono, Bonner, Pachulia, Mo Williams) but no difference makers.
2004 NBA Draft:
#26 - Kevin Martin
#48 - Ricky Minard
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Anderson Varejao, Trevor Ariza
2005 NBA Draft:
#23 - Francisco Garcia
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: David Lee, Monta Ellis, Marcin Gortat and I suppose you could say Andray Blatche
2006 NBA Draft:
#19 - Quincy Douby
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Rajon Rondo and Kyle Lowry. Ouch. Paul Millsap would have been a better pick as well.
2007 NBA Draft:
#10 - Spencer Hawes Word was that Petrie really wanted Noah. Too bad Geoff never seems to trade up. Still, not an awful pick. Hawes was inconsistent but flashed potential. Too bad he never developed any consistency or realized that potential.
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Marc Gasol (late 2nd round), Carl Landry, Thadeus Young, Tiago Splitter
2008 NBA Draft:
#12 - Jason Thompson
#42 - Sean Singletary
#43 - Patrick Ewing, Jr.
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Roy Hibbert, Serge Ibaka, Robin Lopez, Nic Batum and several serviceable bigs like DeAndre Jordan, Omer Asik, JaVale McGee etc
2009 NBA Draft:
#4 - Tyreke Evans
#23 - Omri Casspi
#38 - Jon Brockman
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Steph Curry, Ricky Rubio, Brandon Jennings, and our own Marcus Thornton
Curry has ascended to be a star, but I still don't find fault with this pick.
2010 NBA Draft
#5 DeMarcus Cousins
#33 Hassan Whiteside
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Paul George, Greg Monroe
2011 NBA Draft
#10 Jimmer Freddette (actually took Bismack Biyombo as part of the trade)
#35 Tyler Honeycutt
#60 Isiah Thomas
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Kawhi Leonard, Klay Thompson, Kenneth Faried, Marshon Brooks, Alec Burks, Chandler Parsons
2012 NBA Draft
#5 Thomas Robinson
Players of note drafted after our 1st round pick: Damien Lillard, Andre Drummond, Harrison Barnes, John Henson, Terrence Jones, Draymond Green, Festus Ezeli, and probably any number of other players that will have a better career than Robinson. Fournier? Leonard? Harkless? Sullinger? Time will tell.
The last two draft days have been unmitigated disasters. Are they signs that Geoff has lost his touch completely, that the Maloofs penny pinching and meddling have had deleterious results or both? I have no idea. But for all the flack that Petrie gets for the Douby pick I can at least give him a pass on that one. Sure Rondo was there, but Rondo was also a non-shooting headache which he remains to this day. It's the last two drafts that make me wary of Petrie's finger on the button this time around.
That and the fact that he is the LEAST aggressive draft day GM the league has ever seen. Sure, I'll take patient and solid over aggressive and erroneous, but obviously the ideal is a guy who knows exactly how he wants to build his team and goes out and gets the right guys as the Spurs did with Leonard a couple years ago.
I don't know if Petrie will do the drafting this year, but looking through the full list I can say that (1) Petrie was right a lot more than he was wrong, showing a good eye for talent and (2) he drafted a lot more than finesse shooters. It will be interesting to see what happens.