I already tried to untangle my aversion to Lonzo Ball, but it's more of a bad vibe than anything else. First of all, I almost always love big guards who can pass. Penny Hardaway in his prime is one of my top 3 favorite players ever and I've chased after every pseudo-Penny ever since hoping they're the second coming. None have been so far. Ball is a very impressive prospect in almost every way though. For a guy his size he can really fly up the court with the ball in his hands and his passing is so instinctual and on the money. He's the rare lead guard who is obviously the best player on his team and yet prefers to use his ability to attack and collapse the defense to facilitate everyone else's scoring. His jumpshot looks like a hail mary every time he throws it up and yet it almost always goes in. Athleticism and defensive ability aren't elite but they're both positives. On the court in pure basketball terms he's a top 8 guy at least, probably top 5 and if you're not a crazy defense-obsessed psycho like me almost certainly top 3.
But off the court it's a perfect storm of bad juju. The Ball family storyline really bothers me. He's from affluent Chino Hills, deep in Lakers territory. His family picked UCLA and got scholarship offers for his two younger sons out of it which, if you live in So Cal and aren't alumni UCLA basketball is a team for front runners. They're one of the darlings of Division I basketball and they get tons of media coverage no matter how bad they are and their players always get overhyped because of it. His dad (who is already selling Big Baller Brand clothes online) has put it out there that his son belongs in a Lakers jersey. All of the reasons that I want to root for a guy like Ben McLemore --poor family, single mom, tough upbringing, countless obstacles he had to overcome just to get where he is -- it's the exact opposite for Ball. He seems almost innately talented and he never looks like he's working very hard at all. His dad has groomed him for professional basketball since he was 2 years old. He was anointed as the next big thing before he played a single game in college. I'm sure Ball will continue to be a very successful basketball player somewhere but I don't really want to root for him. There's something about him that irks me. A smugness in how he carries himself. A smugness I've come to associate with Lakers fandom. And if he gets drafted by Sacramento I expect his agent/dad will get to work planning his exit to a major market (preferably the LA Lakers) as soon as his name is called. Basically I think he might already be "too big for Sacramento" and as a Nor Cal transplant residing in So Cal myself the whole idiotic idea that anyone can be "too big for Sacramento" still pisses me off.
So... just to recap: My primary problem with Monk is that he seems like a re-tread of every other dead end we've followed in the post-Adelman era to one last place finish after another. Fair to him? Not really, but that's my reaction. Good prospect, I'd just prefer that he went somewhere else. With Ball I feel like he'll either fail to live up to the impossibly high expectations everyone has placed on him or if he is the next Jason Kidd he'll leave Sacramento at the first opportunity. That's a lose-lose situation in Kings land. Do I know this? Of course not. But that's what my gut tells me. There's no magic formula for predicting success so I just have to go with my gut here. Picking either of these guys would feel like stepping onto a rollercoaster already knowing it's going to crash before it returns to the station. Who would willingly sign up for that? Nobody would. So that's where I'm coming from. I'd have to keep my distance for awhile at least until the coast seems clear.
I don't root for Kings players to fail but I have watched quite a few through gritted teeth with my hands covering my face. I'd just prefer that we went with someone else here. Like you said, it's very unlikely we'll even be in a position to draft Ball at least so it's not really worth worrying about.
Enough about Lonzo Ball, I will fully agree with you about Fox though. He was my favorite player in this draft until Josh Jackson progressed from a good prospect into a great one. I'm actually really happy his shot isn't dropping this year because one season of poor shooting is easy to dismiss and/or overcome and it means he'll probably slip down further in the draft than he ought to, hopefully to a position where we might possibly get him. And I've got a similar feeling about Dennis Smith Jr. too -- of the top guys he's the one I'm least excited about from a pure basketball ability point of view. If we can come out of this draft with some combination of Isaac/Tatum and Fox/Ntilikina I'll be thrilled right along with you. If we can find a way to get Josh Jackson I'd be over-the-moon excited about watching him compete in a Kings uniform. Robert Williams and Miles Bridges intrigue me as fallback options if our pick is a little lower than expected and/or we have a second pick in the 10-15 range from New Orleans.
(Sidenote: How crazy is it that the first 15 picks of the draft this year are projected to be 14 freshmen and a 19 year old international prospect? Has this ever happened before?)
(Sidenote 2: In 15 years only once have I seen a player at UCLA and thought "holy poopoo, this kid is going to be a star in the NBA". That kid was Russell Westbrook who was not highly ranked coming out of high school and after 2 years at UCLA he was projected as a late lottery prospect but started to move up the board during workouts and eventually Seattle/OKC surprised a lot of people by picking him 4th overall. I was pissed, but it was unlikely we were going to get him at #12 anyway. Putting all that off-the-court Lakersfan/psycho-dad/Big Baller brand stuff aside, Lonzo Ball the player just doesn't blow me away like Russ did. His numbers are way better but the eye test says he's a borderline All-Star in the NBA to me. Borderline only because All-Star spots are usually given to leading scorers and he'll most likely be a 15pt/10ast per game type of guard playing in an era of scoring guards calling themselves point guards.)
But off the court it's a perfect storm of bad juju. The Ball family storyline really bothers me. He's from affluent Chino Hills, deep in Lakers territory. His family picked UCLA and got scholarship offers for his two younger sons out of it which, if you live in So Cal and aren't alumni UCLA basketball is a team for front runners. They're one of the darlings of Division I basketball and they get tons of media coverage no matter how bad they are and their players always get overhyped because of it. His dad (who is already selling Big Baller Brand clothes online) has put it out there that his son belongs in a Lakers jersey. All of the reasons that I want to root for a guy like Ben McLemore --poor family, single mom, tough upbringing, countless obstacles he had to overcome just to get where he is -- it's the exact opposite for Ball. He seems almost innately talented and he never looks like he's working very hard at all. His dad has groomed him for professional basketball since he was 2 years old. He was anointed as the next big thing before he played a single game in college. I'm sure Ball will continue to be a very successful basketball player somewhere but I don't really want to root for him. There's something about him that irks me. A smugness in how he carries himself. A smugness I've come to associate with Lakers fandom. And if he gets drafted by Sacramento I expect his agent/dad will get to work planning his exit to a major market (preferably the LA Lakers) as soon as his name is called. Basically I think he might already be "too big for Sacramento" and as a Nor Cal transplant residing in So Cal myself the whole idiotic idea that anyone can be "too big for Sacramento" still pisses me off.
So... just to recap: My primary problem with Monk is that he seems like a re-tread of every other dead end we've followed in the post-Adelman era to one last place finish after another. Fair to him? Not really, but that's my reaction. Good prospect, I'd just prefer that he went somewhere else. With Ball I feel like he'll either fail to live up to the impossibly high expectations everyone has placed on him or if he is the next Jason Kidd he'll leave Sacramento at the first opportunity. That's a lose-lose situation in Kings land. Do I know this? Of course not. But that's what my gut tells me. There's no magic formula for predicting success so I just have to go with my gut here. Picking either of these guys would feel like stepping onto a rollercoaster already knowing it's going to crash before it returns to the station. Who would willingly sign up for that? Nobody would. So that's where I'm coming from. I'd have to keep my distance for awhile at least until the coast seems clear.
I don't root for Kings players to fail but I have watched quite a few through gritted teeth with my hands covering my face. I'd just prefer that we went with someone else here. Like you said, it's very unlikely we'll even be in a position to draft Ball at least so it's not really worth worrying about.Enough about Lonzo Ball, I will fully agree with you about Fox though. He was my favorite player in this draft until Josh Jackson progressed from a good prospect into a great one. I'm actually really happy his shot isn't dropping this year because one season of poor shooting is easy to dismiss and/or overcome and it means he'll probably slip down further in the draft than he ought to, hopefully to a position where we might possibly get him. And I've got a similar feeling about Dennis Smith Jr. too -- of the top guys he's the one I'm least excited about from a pure basketball ability point of view. If we can come out of this draft with some combination of Isaac/Tatum and Fox/Ntilikina I'll be thrilled right along with you. If we can find a way to get Josh Jackson I'd be over-the-moon excited about watching him compete in a Kings uniform. Robert Williams and Miles Bridges intrigue me as fallback options if our pick is a little lower than expected and/or we have a second pick in the 10-15 range from New Orleans.
(Sidenote: How crazy is it that the first 15 picks of the draft this year are projected to be 14 freshmen and a 19 year old international prospect? Has this ever happened before?)
(Sidenote 2: In 15 years only once have I seen a player at UCLA and thought "holy poopoo, this kid is going to be a star in the NBA". That kid was Russell Westbrook who was not highly ranked coming out of high school and after 2 years at UCLA he was projected as a late lottery prospect but started to move up the board during workouts and eventually Seattle/OKC surprised a lot of people by picking him 4th overall. I was pissed, but it was unlikely we were going to get him at #12 anyway. Putting all that off-the-court Lakersfan/psycho-dad/Big Baller brand stuff aside, Lonzo Ball the player just doesn't blow me away like Russ did. His numbers are way better but the eye test says he's a borderline All-Star in the NBA to me. Borderline only because All-Star spots are usually given to leading scorers and he'll most likely be a 15pt/10ast per game type of guard playing in an era of scoring guards calling themselves point guards.)
Regarding Josh Jackson, I really like him too, and I don't think it is totally unrealistic to hope that he is available when we pick.
Just because every mock has him at #3 doesnt mean he is going to get drafted there. I could see guys like Monk, Smith Jr. and Tatum (and Fultz/Ball for that matter) rise a bit during workouts, especially because Jackson's (and Fox's) shooting problems will stand out in shooting drills.As of right now, it loks like we have a good chance of getting the #6 and #7 pick with Phoenix, Orlando and Philly picking right before us. I could see Philly falling in love with Monk and Orlando's Hennigan trying to save his job with the more sexy pick in Smith Jr. than Jackson. That would leave Phoenix / maybe LA in the running for Jackson.
So yeah, I could definitely see him falling to #6. Imagine that! We could come out of the draft with Jackson and Fox. And we'd also have an early second rounder to draft a defensive combo guard like Josh Hart / De'Anthony Melton.
This would give us a core of Fox-Hield-Jackson-Skal-WCS with additional talent in Richardson, Hart/Melton and PapaG. Talk about rebuilding on the fly!
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