Credos for the NBA Draft

For the die-hard NBA Draft fanatics, you are likely to have a gist of many of the credos being mentioned. For the casual NBA Draft follower, these credos are a guiding light while you walk aimlessly through the muck of overdone coverage in the week leading up to the draft.

When something goes awry on draft night and makes no sense to the point of going beyond the counter-intuitive, look no further than the credos.

1. Upside, Upside, Upside. NBA teams do not draft on performance. They draft on potential. See Michael Olowakandi. See the entire Kwame Brown draft.

2. If at all possible, the Seattle Supersonics will draft a "project" center. Just ask Robert Swift, Johan Petro, and Saer Sene. We won't talk about the contracts doled out to the likes of Chris Wilcox, Danny Fortson, and Nick Collison. Come 2008, they will be itching to get their hands on the 7'3" project that is Hasheem Thabeet.

3. NBA teams reach for size. Three years from now, at least one big man will be selected in the first round of this year's draft, and someone will say, how did [insert team] pass up [insert player, likely a guard taken in the early- to mid-second round]? Even in this year's strong draft class, teams will reach and miss badly like the Hawks and Knicks did in the past with blunders such as Priest Lauderdale and Frederic Weis.

3a. The Franchise Big Man Corollary. A corollary to this credo posits that if you have a choice of taking a franchise-caliber center or a franchise-caliber player at any other position, you must select the center. Since Jordan, what is the commonality among almost all NBA championship teams? A dominating center. This is why we feel that Greg Oden is a no-brainer #1 selection over Kevin Durant.

4. The second round of the draft is all about the international players, many of whom are 23 and older, and thus, automatically eligible for the NBA Draft. In the 2006 draft, 10 international players were selected in the 2nd round.

5. The Tiago Splitter Effect. This is when international players who are 1st-round talents will take their name out of the draft when they fail to receive a promise from a team drafting among the top ten picks. By rule, international players can flirt with the draft until age 23 when they become automatically eligible.