Draft prospect Markelle Fultz poses poses with draft caps for portraits prior to the 2017 NBA Draft Lottery at the NBA Headquarters in New York, New York.
Makelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball went 1-2, as expected in Thursday night. If the talent we saw during his one year stay at Washington was any indication, Fultz's arrival could signify the culminating point for years of intentional asset accumulation.
The Los Angeles Lakers used the second pick to choose University of California Los Angeles point guard Lonzo Ball. Nine of the first 10 selections played just one season of college ball. "He's got that kind of size and length and he's really incredible in transition.to say that he's an elite passer I believe is an understatement". "I play basketball every day".
With the seventh pick, the Minnesota Timberwolves selected Lauri Markkanen and will reportedly send him to the Chicago Bulls in a proposed trade for Jimmy Butler.
Experts said this draft had the most depth of talent in years - a good thing for the 29 teams who are not the Warriors, who have built a superteam that's won two of the past three championships, and is poised for more in the coming years.
Fultz averaged 23.2 points and 5.9 assists in his lone season for the Huskies, who went 9-21 and fell far short of the NCAA tournament despite Fultz's dazzling performance. He walked across the stage at Barclays Center wearing red sneakers made of basketballs.
And yet when the 2017 NBA Draft begins at 4 p.m. Thursday in Brooklyn, the Huskies will nearly certainly have produced the No. 1 overall pick, an achievement never before accomplished by a UW men's basketball player.
Josh Jackson says he would 'love' to play for Celtics
DraftExpress.com now has the Celtics taking Tatum at No. 3, while ESPN's Chad Ford has him going to the Phoenix Suns at No. 4. Maybe sending the first overall pick to Philadelphia earlier this week was a way for Ainge to sniff around the trade market.
Even before being drafted, Fultz said that he was looking forward to the opportunity to play with the Sixers. And if the Lakers do draft Ball, what does that mean for the player who is the team's current "point guard of the future", D'Angelo Russell?
LaVar Ball then declared Lonzo would take the Lakers to the playoffs as a rookie. Obviously, this post wasn't supposed to go live before Fultz - or whoever was handling his social media feed for the night - plugged in "Philadelphia" and "76ers".
Jackson was available to the Suns because the Boston Celtics, picking third, chose another small forward, Jayson Tatum of Duke. "I think our games could help each other out a lot". At the outset of the NBA Finals, Commissioner Adam Silver said both the league and the NBA Players Association wanted to change the age-limit rule, which creates the possibility of the one-and-done.
INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE: A year after almost half the draft - a record 27 of the 60 picks - were international players, French guard Frank Ntilikina and Finnish forward Lauri Markkanen, who played a year at Arizona, are two of the top international players.
Over the past 10 seasons, only two other freshmen had a better scoring average in college: Kevin Durant for Texas in 2006-07 and Michael Beasley for Kansas State in 2007-08.
That trend stayed very much on track during Thursday night's National Basketball Association draft.
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