Disagree. Leonard has upside and Okafor will only decompose in the coming years. Plus Okafor is owed a lot of money and Leonard would be cheap for the 1st 5 years.

There’s absolutely no need to “hope” that he’s there at 9. He WILL be there at 9.

Young teams like the Pistons don’t pick up high priced immobile veterans. Throughout this off season I will be consistently advocating the Pistons not sign anyone. We’re not going to have much more than the MLE even if CV and Max are gone. Next year is the year to sign players not this one.

Agree. That BG trade is insane…

Agreed. Leonard sounds like another gym rat, tireless worker, committed to getting better every day. That kind of character and work ethic tells me he’d fit in perfect with Knight and Monroe off the court. And I think his game would compliment them great on the court as well.

Monroe’s weaknesses

- Struggles defending huge, strong Centers in the post
- Lacks a consistent mid range jumper
- Lacks athleticism
- Lacks ability to be a rim protector, shot-blocker, and anchor on D

Leonard has the ability to cover for him in all 4 of those areas. There isn’t another big at 9 that I can say that for.

Dude ur crazy to think Houston will take BG in any deal… Plus Leonard will be more than a bench player with his size and skllset and if he can stay out of trouble ” Hense he will ” then theres noway to to think he cant go to mutiple all-stars….

Nope, that’s one sided too. They might listen to Brandon Knight and our first of two 2nd round picks for 14 & 16, and that might still be a stretch.

Too Risky. Milwaukee picks at 12, and having just traded Andrew Bogut I can’t see them passing on a big. I’d even say that there would be at least a slim chance New Orleans would take him with the 10th pick to pair with Davis. I would hate to trade down to get a player and then have him get taken after your original pick. If you really want him it’s better to take him at 9 than to risk someone else stealing him.

Very good points Rick. The main difference here is that we’re not picking him at #2 over commodities like Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh.  We’d be taking him at #9.  I don’t think the Knicks would have been unhappy with Darko over Michael Sweetney or the Wizards over Jarvis Hayes.  Maybe the Warriors would have issue with losing out on Pietrus, or the SuperSonics on Collison.  The only players picked after 9 that made a major impact on the league were David West, Kendrick Perkins, Leandro Barbosa, Josh Howard and Mo Williams and West wasn’t picked until 18, Perkins 27, Barbosa 28, Howard 29, and Williams nor until the second round.

The more apt comparison to the Darko situation would be taking Drummond second over Robinson or MKG.  So I do believe GMs have learned, since there is considerable talk of him dropping to  .  At the same time, if Drummond falls to 9 I would gladly snap him up too.  I think Leonard is probably worth the risk at 9, Henson is a safer bet but that’s like taking Collison over Darko and I’m going to go with upside on that one.

I keep defending Leonard… Strange. Anyways, another difference is easy to explain. Leonard has shown signs of development from last year. As a freshman he barely played and wasn’t very effective. While far from a star player, this year he got play time and had huge jumps in productivity. Those jumps came not only in totals, but in per minute stats as well, which suggests that he actually did get better. I know per minute stats for the 8 minutes a game he played as a freshman don’t really say anything conclusive, but when coupled with the fact that he earned the minutes this year it becomes reasonably safe to say Leonard is showing signs of improvement. That is an important thing to know about a project guy, that he is in fact making positive strides. Darko, meanwhile, was still consistently being buried on the bench in Europe. We had very few opportunities to see him. It was impossible to determine if he was actually good, none the less if he was improving. I do think that makes Leonard a better risk than Darko. That’s especially true when you consider, as has already been pointed out, the relative strength of the draft at 9 this year and at 2 that year.
 
I should also acknowledge that your point about foreigners is mostly spot on. I do trust them less because I’ve not had an opportunity to judge them for myself. What’s more, Euro league doesn’t use rotations like we do in the states. They often spread their minutes out way more than we do. I also have no ability to know how good the strength of any given league is in Europe, I just don’t pay enough attention to them. As a result, I can’t even come to opinions from their stats.  I don’t know what Euro Leonard would look like as a prospect because you also have to account for all the different leagues. He probably wouldn’t have been at a top notch league in what was his freshman year, so I’d look for him to make the jump up to a better club in year 2. He’d also have done more against worse competition in that weaker league, so I’d be looking for him to remain mostly consistent while transitioning to higher level talent. Anyways, the end result is that Euro Meyers Leonard has a very different profile than American Meyers Leonard. I don’t know exactly what the Euro version of him would look like, but I’d definitely have less faith in him since it would require I lean more on scouting reports and less on my own opinion of him. I think that’s a natural reaction though.  All of that said, I don’t dismiss every Euro. I loved Valanciunas and Biyombo last year. I still like those guys much more than Leonard this year too. I suspect that I’d see him more or less the same way, a huge gamble that I can understand the team taking.

The Okafor trade is a mega long shot. You seriously underestimate Ben Gordon’s negative value. And apparently how much more valuable the number 10 pick is than 2nd rounders.

You also apparently undervalue Stuckey since you even consider throwing yet another 1st rounder in there.

And BG is not a backup plan for EG. Eric Gordon is staying in NO if hey want him. And nobody wants BG. Listen, you’d have to additionally incentivize someone to take BG for nothing.

Monroe wasn’t a great rebounder in college either, so I wouldn’t hold that against Leonard. Once he gets to the pros I think he’ll rebound better.