Invitation Omissions Could Point to Pistons' Pick

Posted Monday, June 22, 2009

Invitation omissions could point to Pistons’ pick
NBA teams are more than mildly interested in which players the league invites to New York to sit in the green room on draft night. It’s an inexact science, but league invitations amount to the best guesses, based on a composite of information gathered from agents and personnel departments, as to how the first half of the first round will go.

According to DraftExpress.com, the following players have been invited: Blake Griffin, James Harden, Hasheem Thabeet, Ricky Rubio, Jordan Hill, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, Jonny Flynn, Demar DeRozan, Jrue Holiday, Gerald Henderson, Brandon Jennings, Tyler Hansbrough, B.J. Mullens, James Johnson and Eric Maynor.

What’s really more telling about that list is who isn’t on it, and among the more prominent omissions are Earl Clark, Austin Daye and DeJuan Blair.

It’s a little surprising that Johnson, for one, is on the list over Clark, Daye and Blair. The Blair omission might be an indication that teams are expressing serious reservations about his knees – Blair had both ACLs repaired before arriving at Pitt – combined with his potential weight problem.

The biggest eyebrow-raiser for me is Clark’s omission. Each of the two mock drafts I find most credible, ESPN.com’s and DraftExpress.com’s, have the Pistons taking Clark with the 15th pick. That’s the way I’d lean at this time, too, though I think others – including Johnson, Daye and perhaps Hasbrough or Mullens – could be under consideration. The wild card is what happens if one of the top-rated point guards – Flynn, perhaps, or Holiday – were to fall to 15?

Both ESPN and DraftExpress updated their mock drafts over the weekend based on the most recent buzz from predraft workouts. That makes four straight weeks that ESPN.com’s Chad Ford has had Clark to the Pistons after initially going with Daye and then switching to Johnson.

Ford now has Gerald Henderson going to Phoenix, one spot ahead of the Pistons, but that could depend on what Charlotte does at 12. After being linked to Henderson for most of the last month, Ford is saying that Louisville’s Terrence Williams wowed Larry Brown in a weekend workout and might have moved ahead of Henderson. But Ford is saying Charlotte has succeeded in getting them both to come back for a head-to-head workout this week that should cement things. If Henderson wins out, Phoenix could go with Clark at 14. DraftExpress has Daye going to Phoenix at 14.


ESPN and DraftExpress project second-round picks, too, and while the sites differ completely on which players the Pistons will take with their picks at 35, 39 and 44, each three-man group is pretty intriguing.
ESPN has the Pistons going with Missouri’s DeMarre Carroll, North Carolina’s Danny Green and Spanish point guard Sergio Llull. (I included Carroll and Green in our Pistons.com look at second-round wing possibilities; Llull will be included in Wednesday’s look at second-round point and combo guards.) DraftExpress has them taking Georgetown’s DaJuan Summers, Florida State’s Toney Douglas and Xavier’s Derrick Brown. (All three of them are thought to be first-round bubble possibilities, so to get all three in the second round would represent tremendous value.)

Keep in mind that Joe Dumars told me last week the Pistons have again crossed some second-round possibilities off of their list if those players have indicated they would not be willing to play internationally for a season or two.


The Pistons are going to get a good look at the cream of the 2009 draft in Las Vegas. Of their five games, four of them – the first four – will come against teams with top-nine picks: Sacramento (No. 4), Toronto (9), Golden State (7) and New York (8). The Pistons’ last game comes against Cleveland, which has the 30th pick.