NBA Draft 2011: What positions should the San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors, Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards hunt for?
Team: San Antonio Spurs
Draft Pick: 29th Pick
Recommended Position: Small Forward
It’s a strange one isn’t it? In the regular season the San Antonio Spurs were magnificent and were hailed as the wily old boys who were on top of their game. A first round elimination at the hands of the 8th seeded Memphis
Grizzlies followed and now they are perceived as a team of washed up have-beens.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle. The fact is that the Memphis Grizzlies are an underrated team and losing out to them is not the doomsday scenario, as it has been made out to be. Although the Spurs still rely on their old
guard boasting icons like Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, they do have other options.
George Hill and Gary Neal are good young options in the backcourt, while DeJuan Blair and Tiago Splitter are learning the game from Tim Duncan and that can only be a good thing. The problem area for San Antonio is small forward.
Richard Jefferson is not a good enough starter and the Spurs don’t have a replacement readily available either.
They should be looking to address that issue on June 23.
Team: Toronto Raptors
Draft Pick: 5th Pick
Recommended Position: Point Guard
Andrea Bargnani is definitely one of the better centres in the league. They Raptors have good options at the wings, with guards DeMar DeRozan and Leandro Barbosa around. Linas Kleiza does a good job at small forward and although
he has a tendency to spend a lot of time on the injury table, the likes of James Johnson, Sonny Weems and Julian Wright can cover for him.
The most obvious place for the Raptors to improve upon is the point guard. A good conductor will really help this young team get better. With their high pick and the number of good point guards available in this year’s draft, Toronto
should be able to get what they need.
Team: Utah Jazz
Draft Pick: 3rd and 12th Pick
Recommended Position: Multiple positions
The good news for Utah Jazz is that they have two draft picks and both are pretty high. The bad news though is that they need more. Devon Harris at point guard is pretty good and although Andrei Kirilenko is going off the boil,
Paul Millsap is a better player in many ways already. Centre is also fine with Al Jefferson. But that’s the thing about Utah, they are just fine. There’s probably not a single player worthy of leading a deep playoff run. They will be looking to add as many
best players as they can get to their roster.
Team: Washington Wizards
Draft Pick: 6th and 18th Picks
Recommended Position: Small Forward
The Washington Wizards are young and full of potential. Any team having six rookies in its roster certainly will be. They have John Wall, Nick Young and Jordan Crawford in the backcourt; all three are expected to have bright careers.
Similarly, up front the likes of Andray Blatche, Yi Jianlian, Trevor Booker and JaVale McGee are all good prospects and in the draft, they will only get more good prospects.
The position which needs to be focused the most is the small forward. Rashard Lewis is the starter there. He is not only the oldest player in the roster, but is also way past his prime. Add to that his multiple injury issues and
taking a small forward on draft night sounds quite logical.
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