It’s okay to admit that you forgot the NBA Draft is Thursday night, or maybe didn’t know at all. This is what happens when you win 60 games and don’t have a first-round pick. If things stay the course right now the Celtics pick 58th. About the only interesting story there would be if Tyrese Rice were on the board. Not exactly gripping television.
(Sure, there is still that chance that Danny Ainge has decided to give up on a 23-year-old point guard who just averaged 16.9 points, 9.7 boards. 9.8 assists and 2.5 steals during the playoffs because he has to get his hands on Rodney Stuckey and Rip Hamilton. I’ll say this: if Rondo is traded the Celtics did a pretty good job all season of keeping this attitude problem of his off the radar. I mean, there cannot be another reason why they would move him. Won’t get anything close to equal value.)
Unless you are a legitimate draftnik (front of the line if you've seen Sergii Gladyr or Jonas Jerebko play) you need your team to have a first-round pick to have any incentive to watch. Then you can at least read the mocks and pretend to have an idea about what is going on.
With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to take a look back at the 10 best and worst draft picks in Celtics history (and what fun it was—I laughed and laughed).
The Worst:
10. Jerome Moiso (2000, First Round, 11th pick)
Tough to go crazy with this one, if only because the 2000 draft was “Joe Buck Live” brutal. The best player from that draft is Michael Redd, and there have only been two other guys that made an All-Star team (Kenyon Martin and Jamaal Magloire.) But here’s why Moiso made the cut: he was a terrible basketball player at UCLA. But he was highly athletic for his size (6-10) and that was enough for Rick Pitino to pull the trigger. And probably Moiso would’ve been a nice fit for Pitino’s teams at Kentucky. But if your best (and only, really) skill for the NBA is heading a full-court press, it’s not going to be a 20-year career. How about just 24 games for the Celtics, with game highs of five points and five rebounds. Just a complete miss, and while the draft was not a great one, solid career role players such as Desmond Mason (17th) and Morris Peterson (21st) could have helped.
(Can I weigh in quickly on the Joe Buck affair from last week? I watched a replay of it on Tuesday night. They bleeped out most of Artie Lange’s stuff, which made it seem even worse. I guess here’s my beef with the whole thing: I have about ten HBO channels on my cable service, and at the same exact time I was watching Buck melt down “Cathouse” was on HBO2 and “Alien Sex Files 3: Aliens Gone Wild” was on HBO Zone (boy, HBO has come a long way from the days me taping “Dream On” in hopes of a pause-worthy thrill). So it’s tough for me to hear HBO spin moral outrage at the whole thing. I’m pretty sure they knew that they weren’t booking Willie Tyler and Lester when they went after Artie for the first show.)
9. Kedrick Brown (2001, First Round, 11th pick)
In his defense, I’m pretty sure he’s only player in the history of the Shaw’s Summer League to have his number retired.
8. Darren Tillis (1982, First Round, 23rd pick)
Granted, they were almost always picking last or second-to-last, but this run of first-round picks from 1981-85 (was tempted to add 1986 to the list, but that’s a little unfair) goes a long way in explain why the Celtics had ZERO bench contribution in the late 80s.
1981: Charles Bradley
1982: Tills
1983: Greg Kite
1984: Michael Young (more on him later)
1985: Sam Vincent
I’ll give you an above-average bench for the sake of the argument, but if those guys were your starting five for a full season in 1985 how many games would they win? Maybe 15? When Greg Kite is by far the most productive first-round pick from five straight drafts (six, really) it’s not so hard to understand why Mark Acres, Dirk Minnifield and Artis Gilmore were logging real minutes off the bench at the end of the run in the 1980s.
7. Eric Montross (1994, First Round, 9th pick)
M.L. Carr proved that he had a keen eye for talent before the 1994 NBA Draft (his first as GM), claiming
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