When it comes to college basketball and scouting very few people can match expertise with Jonathan Givony, President of DraftExpress.com. So if there ever was an interview where I was out of my league, this was it and I did the smart thing by just letting him talk. We chatted some Raptors basketball and he shed light on potential Raptor picks in the 2009 draft. I also got his take on the Granger/Graham thing and the Bargnani/Roy debate. There’s a great chance that after you listen to this podcast you’ll have a good understanding of who to keep an eye out when looking for that wing or PG in this year’s draft. We also covered other topics such as Mario Chalmers, the best drafting organization, Kevin Love for O.J Mayo, Nathan Jawai, Roko Ukic, Canadian content and more.
You can listen to the interview by clicking on the play button below or directly in iTunes. If you’re on a mobile device you can just download the file.
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Once again, thanks to Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com, the premiere NBA draft and scouting site. Checkout their latest profile of the Toronto Raptors (updated today).
Here’s a complete summary:
-Givony starts by questions why Raps fans have given up hope on the making playoffs when were just 4 games out of the playoffs. He thinks we have a pretty good core of talented, high character players.
-Thinks that high character guys with a scappy mentality do exist (Battier, D.Howard).
-He doesn’t think this is a great draft, but said it is a good draft for PG’s and PF’s. He mentions that the 8-15 range is a tricky part of the draft. He mentioned a number of players the Raps could look at: Gerald Henderson (SG), Kyle Singlar (SF/PF), Willy Warren (SG), Patrick Patterson (PF), Dejuan Blair (PF/C).
-Thinks Jrue Holiday (PG/SG) could be the best player available and a great fit for the Raps and could be available at the #8 spot.
-Says Jeff Teagues, Brandon Jennings and Ty Lawson are probably the top-3 PG prospects right now.
-Thinks Brandon Jennings decision to go to Europe as opposed to the NCAA will teach him alot about basketball, will mature him quickly and should not affect his draft potential. The fact he’s getting some playing time in a league dominated by veterens speaks highly about his abilities.
-He wasn’t crazy about Roko Ukic in 2005 and thinks he needs more time to develop.
-Said Danny Granger was a much better prospect than Joey Graham, but Granger was “red-flagged” because of a knee injury (torn miniscus) before the draft, which was a serious concern for alot of teams who chose to pass on him.
-Explained why Granger’s teammantes call him “Dr. Granger”: He had a hangnail on his big toe prior to a workout with the Clippers, and after “working on it” himself, his toe got infected forcing him to miss the workout.
-When asked about Bill Walker (who was chosen after Jawai), he said he looks much more athletic now than he did in college.
-Thinks Nathan Jawai has some upside and could develop into a rotation player 2-3 years from now.
-With regards to the 2006 draft, he confirmed that there was a lot of debate over who was the #1 prospect. He thought Aldridge was the best player available, others thought Tyrus Thomas was the best player in the draft. But with Bargnani’s recent play, the pick is looking really good.
-He stated that people need to wait at least 4-5 years to fairly evaluate a draft class.
-He explained why the TWolves traded Brandon Roy for Randy Foye. He shared a story about how he was the Summer League in 2006 when Rex Chapman (TWolves front office) told him how he/the team thought Roy had a lot of knee problems and that Roy’s knee would not hold up.
-Identified the Portland Trail Blazers as having the best draft record over the past few years and are the #1 organization in the league right now.
-When asked who was the Canadian player outside the NBA, he raved a about Torontonian Tristan Thompson (17 yrs old, high school junior) being a really good prospect with huge potential. He said he got to interview Thompson recently at a tournament and thinks he’s a great person who should become the centerpiece of the Canadian national team. He went on to say that everything about Thompson “screams star”.
-The most surprising draft-day moves in his opinion were Russell Westbrook being chosen #4 last year becuase he didn’t think he was going to go that high, but Westbrook is proving to be a really good pick and could compete for Rookie of the Year.
-The Roy/Foye trade really surprised him. Thought the Love/Mayo trade was good for the TWolves since he is a big fan of Kevin Love.
-When asked about the Raps decision to trade the #17 pick last year, he said he wasn’t a big fan of the trade at the time, but thinks the Raptors weren’t really enamoured with anyone on the board.
-Isn’t surprised by the play of Mario Chalmers because he is in a really good situation in Miami. He’s getting alot of minutes and is playing next to Dwayne Wade.
37 Raps
Arsenalist,
FYI …
Based on what I know about the industry, DraftExpress.com should not be considered as having actual expertise when it comes to evaluating NBA prospects with a high degree of accuracy.
Givony is the primary draft analyst for NBATV.
Don’t just dismiss that site. NBA teams use draftexpress.com as a resource, this I know as a fact. For both pre-draft and free-agent workouts.
Not the sole, resource, obviously, but if it’s good enough for an actual NBA team to peruse, then it’s a perfectly valid website and opinion for basketball fans to munch on.
Sorry dude, I’ll try to get Andy Katz, Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale next time. Seriously though, Draft Express’s scouting reports and in-depth coverage is amazing and also well-respected across the league.
uh, why bother with those guys when you have khandor at your disposal?
Arsenalist,
I was not looking for an apology of any sort; just giving you my opinion on the degree of accuracy associated with an outfit like DraftExpress.com, which may have a high profile but is far from being accurate, IMO.
Accuracy and having a high profile in a specific field are not always associated with one another … especially when it comes to evaluating a player’s actual ability in a specific sport.
Over the years, I’d suggest that DraftExpress.com has had more “misses” than “hits” when it comes to evaluating NBA prospects correctly, in advance.
Caveat Emptor
Have you even looked on the Draft Express website?
This report card is pretty darn accurate.
http://www.draftexpress.com/article/2007-NBA-Draft-Report-Card-2156/
yertu,
Part of being wise is knowing what you do not know. : )
oh khan, is there anything you don’t know?
he doesn’t know the ability to not know
I liked that podcast and hope you can reconnect with Givony closer to the draft. If you do, ask him about Printezis.
It was also funny to hear him wonder aloud about the negativity from Raptors fans. That negativity is justified but he may be right that the team is a few pieces away from making a leap. I understand the lack of faith in management and the fact that it’s not just talent but chemistry that needs fixing but it helps to hear a little from outside the bubble.
Not according to you, yertu. Not according to you. : )
Arse, you need to scrap all your pod-cast guests and land Khan-troller as a guest for each. He is the only true expert analyst on every subject pertaining to basketball…and possibly all sports.
In all seriousness, I would suggest giving Khan a weekly pod-cast (video?) spot where you interview Khan and one other regular commenter’s on RR and allow them to argue their points on the hot basketball topics of the week (PTI style). The event could be hosted by Filthy’s on Friday nights with Khan and guest sitting in a cage (octagon perhaps) for the likely bloodbath that might occur. If Khan can’t commit to a live appearance you can have a small black and white tv set-up (ala Saw) for a live video feed. Andiamo (or possibly Scott Carefoot) should be the first combatant, uh, I mean participant. Heck this could be a pay-per-view event. I’ll gladly wave any royalties, just make it happen!!! : )
YES. WE. CAN!
Sam,
re: DraftExpress.com & Printezsis
http://www.draftexpress.com/profile/Giorgos-Printezis-1295/
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=d_EbKSKy1SY
Arse – great podcast again. I thought John wasn’t going to stop after that first question. Interesting he doesn’t feel too bad about us giving up #17 but he’s discounting the possibility of moving up and picking as you said Rush who would fill the role of AP.
The reason BC included the #17 pick is two-fold:
1- It evened out the salaries to make the trade work. That’s why we had to pretend that we had chosen Hibbert until 2-3 weeks after the draft. (There wasn’t another player making that amount of money on our team that could have been subsituted.)
2- Keeping the pick (and the guarenteed $1.5M salary) would have put us over the luxury tax. This is why BC had to scrape the bottom of the barral to find 3 players (to bring our roster to the minimum 13 players by the start of the season) who were willing to sign for the league minimum ($750K): Solomon, Adams, Jawai.
Givony understandably didn’t readily know this specific info.
Excellent Podcast Arsenalist.
Whether Givony has expertise comparable to someone working in the industry doesn’t really matter. It would if the Raptors were considering him for a job, no doubt. In the context of an interview on a fanblog, what matters is his draft knowledge relative to a fellow blogger. I don’t see people in the industry willing to make themselves accessible to JonQRaptor fan. Draftexpress beats the very sad mock drafts that were churned out by major sports sections/sports magazines each june. Two sentences per player just doesn’t cut it for most of us. In addition, his mock drafts help highlight the premier players in college, which is useful to me as a casual March Madness fan when deciding on games to watch.
I wouldn’t give Khandor too hard a time about his comments. He was reacting more to the intro to the podcast.
“When it comes to college basketball and scouting very few people can match expertise with Jonathan Givony”
“DraftExpress.com, the premiere NBA draft and scouting site.”(now that’s a title they win hands down)
Three team trade:
To Raptors: Shawn Marion, Jason Terry and Michael Beasley
To Dallas: Bosh, Anthony Parker and Marcus Banks
To Miami: O’Neal and Josh Howard
I think this might be a win/win trade for everyone involved. Can you image the starting five for the Raptors:
Calderon(PG), Terry(SG), Marion(SF), Beasley (PF) and Bargnani(C)
http://games.espn.go.com/nba/features/traderesult?players=2006~841~1977~615~635~2165~3418~510&teams=14~28~6~14~6~6~28~28&te=&cash=
That is a blockbuster trade but believe it or not it makes a lot of sense, except I’d still like to acquire a couple first round picks in any trade that might involve Bosh. If Marion bolts then we’d basically have traded Bosh for Beasley and a Terry going on 32 years of age.
Acquiring talent is great but our impetus should be to build through the draft.
I agree that Draft picks should be included in any Bosh trade. But even if Marion was to leave after the season that opens up salary room for us to sign a possible free agent in 2009 (Boozer anyone?)
The trade also puts Miami in a good place to go deep in the playoffs this year and sign a top free agent in 2010 (Proves to Wade they are serious about winning now).
For Dallas their window is closing and if they get Bosh, that makes them one of the top teams in the West and will allow them to make a serious run for the title.
The problem I have with trading Bosh for top-picks so that with could rebuild through the draft is that we’ve never been able to retain any of the franchise players whom we’ve drafted.
In this scenario, history will have repeated itself enough times for the US media to begin referring to us the NBA (D-League) Toronto “Expos”.
(OMG, I really hope I this isn’t a premonition.)
^^Just thinking abt this scared me so bad that I made more typing errors than lies reported by Screamin’ Anus this week. ;)
great podcast arse.ive been reading draft express since its inception and jon g’s insight since his posting days on hoopsworlds forums…..
censorship?why was half my post deleted?…i didnt curse,i stated the obvious…this site has gone soft.fuck all yall.faggots.
What the hell are you talking about? Repost what you wrote.
No one censored you but c’mon man, do you really need to say that?
p.s. There’s nothing “gay” about censorship. It’s a very hetero, alpha male thing to do.
Yes, this site is soft and we’re all gay here, so you might as well spend your free time hanging out on very tough sites that are not gay.
I hate when the Raptors tease me like this. They cut the lead to 7 and then went back to jump shooting. LBJ’s block on Bosh was a turning point but AP’s miss right after we had cut the lead was big. That guy chokes on every opportunity he gets, can’t wait till he’s traded.
We got lucky and LBJ cooled off after the first but the damage was done. Can’t dig yourself a hole like that, horrible D and lack of effort in the first quarter. 37pts?? C’mon man, how do you explain the difference in effort between the first and third quarter?? Unacceptable.
BTW, I don’t get the joke, why is this site gay?
Endo,
Tease is the right word to describe what happened when the Raptors cut the deficit to 7 pts in the 2nd half of tonight’s game.
At +10/-101 it looked for a minute or two like that proposition might actually have some legs. Then reality hit … and, sadly, the team that originally fell behind by 22 pts in the 1st quarter re-appeared.
———————–
No accounting sometimes for certain in-game decisions which the Raptors make:
* Starting the game with Bargnani, O’Neal and Bosh on the floor together playing Zone D, which the Cavs promptly lit up like a Christmas Tree
* Beginning the 2nd half with the same 5-Man Unit that began the game, except playing Man-2-Man this time
* Using Jason Kapono as an OG/Wing off the bench instead of Jamario Moon
* Riding Calderon & Bosh when they are each playing at less than 100% healthy
Those are some very good points man. Couldn’t understand Triano’s insane decision to try Bargnani at the SF again, was JO starting that much of a necessity? LBJ had something like 17 first quarter points because a) we were playing zone and not communicating and 2) AB was asked to guard him and he was caught helping on Mo Will.
I suppose its a good sign that Bargs managed to pull down some boards against a tough rebounding team… even if he was jerked around from his position. What message does this send to Bargs and O’Kneel? Is he going back to the A-team? Is bargs our SF now? Good to see Graham get lots of time tonight.
Bargnani at SF was a desperation move to try to get something going. I think it has officially failed.
I only hope that he isn’t trying this because O’Neal needs to start again, either to keep him happy. I wouldn’t be so displeased if it was to prove that he can be a starter in the NBA for trade purposes.
Our focusses revolving around Bargnani and O”Neal needs to be to get O’Neal traded without acquiring Banks-type contracts and Bargnani’s development. I hope that these are not at odds.
Hey, at least we got rid of Smitch, right? And these guys don’t communicate because they like playing with each other so much, they don’t need to do it verbally. They are like Xavier and the X Men out there.
Simon,
Out of curiosity, which NBA teams use DraftExpress.com, as a resource, when they make their selections in the annual NBA Draft, according to you? The Celtics, Lakers, Spurs, Hornets, Cavaliers, Magic, Blazers, Pistons, Mavericks, or Suns?
I presume that’s your list of teams with a good draft record?
How much weight teams put behind the reports is a completely different story. All I said was that the website is read by GM’s and scouts, not ignored like a random blog or message board post opinion. Whether they take to heart what they read, I haven’t a clue.
Just to let everyone know, i met Barg. just the other day and he said he has confidence that this will be his best, break out year. Look forward to some big things!