NBA Mock Draft 2019: The chaos of this draft is only beginning
Brandon Clarke. 11. player. 86. . F/C. Gonzaga
Just when it seemed the rumors connecting Minnesota to the inconsistent and startlingly mistake-prone Rui Hachimura, they came back like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. We, as you see above, far prefer Hachimura’s college teammate, Clarke, yet the Timberwolves just can’t help themselves.
From Jeremy Woo of Sports Illustrated:
"“Rival teams have come to believe that Hachimura recently secured a promise in the late lottery, with suspicion centering on the Timberwolves. Hachimura skipped the combine, but did participate in his agency’s pro day at the end of May, dispelling the notion of a hard commitment at that point. In recent days, league-wide speculation has ramped up with regard to Minnesota. Hachimura is thought to be in play for Washington at No. 9, but this spot may well be his floor. He fills a positional need for the Timberwolves, possesses strong physical tools and has significantly more room to grow as a scorer.”"
As we’ve said in this space several times now, it BOGGLES the mind to imagine Minny’s first pick under the creative and progressive Gersson Rosas to be a player who thinks the game poorly and lives in the midrange. We don’t want to pigeonhole Rosas too much into liking only the types of players his old boss, Daryl Morey, did in Houston, but Hachimura is about as opposite as it gets from someone like Trevor Ariza or Eric Gordon.
It’s one thing to avoid taking 3s, it’s another to turn the ball over, take your team out of rhythm on offense, and miss simple rotations on defense. Hachimura lost his team the game on a neutral court against Tennessee in December by failing to recover on a few pick-and-pop 3s in a row.
All the operating principles Rosas developed with the Rockets would go out the window if he drafted Hachimura with his first-ever pick as a head of basketball operations. Clarke, on the other hand, is a tremendous fit with Karl-Anthony Towns on both ends and would inject a level of creativity we would more readily expect of Rosas.