Steve Smith told me so.

Blair will probaby prove to be the biggest draft steal since Arenas.

1) Thorpe mentions this earlier in a previous chat but most teams passed on him cause they were frightened he wouldn’t last long in the league so it’s not fair to judge just yet.

2) Which brings me to this question. Why is it when Blair goes off for 16 & 19, the world goes nuts and doesn’t mention the “It’s only preseason” thing? But when Taj looks great in his opener, it’s all you hear.

3) Lastly, did anyone actually see this game? I’m wondering if maybe a lot of those boards were on one of those freak possessions where the dude misses all of his shots and gains like 4 boards in a span of 15 seconds.

I watched his highlights and he is pretty short.

as was argued on this blog at the time. I think most people here, myself included, were big Blair fans. Worrying about his effectiveness 3 or 4 years down the line was and is missing the point. The success rate of guys picked outside of the lottery is pretty bad, and it gets worse the higher the pick goes. If you have picks 20-30, how can you pass on a guy with lottery talent? By any metric, Blair was a stud in college and the only thing that caused him to fall was his knees.

As a team with a late first round pick, given the success rate of late first round picks, you have to take a chance on a guy with lottery talent with bad knees. The chance that the late round pick sucks is probably the same chance as Blair knees giving out.

And like I said, worrying about 3-4 years down the line is silly. Its only a 2 year guaranteed contract. If you can get 2 years of lottery type production out of Blair he will be well worth the cost. The real decision for the Spurs will be whether to resign him and for how much if he makes it through to his next contract healthy. But that is a decision 4 years down the line.

Luckily for the Bulls, they seemed to get a player at #26. A number of other teams like the Knicks, Cleveland, Minnesota, Washington, Portland, Denver and Detroit will be in even more pain because their late picks won’t perform nearly as well.

All of these arguments are being had because of one preseason game?!! Can we at least give it until the first week of the regular season before we declare that there was a huge mistake made on draft day? It could very well be the case that Blair was the pick, but it’s way too early to know anything.

I wanted the Bulls to pick Blair, but I think we will be fine with Taj. Almost everyone is flattering Blair performance and there is no question that his 19 reb are awesome comparing to Gibson 9 (Indiana) or 5 (Utah). But did anyone notice how Blair got his 16 points in 22 minutes. Blair ended with 6-15 from the field (40%). Meanwhile, Taj ended with 6-12 (50%) against the Pacers and 4-8 (50%) and against the Jazz. And he blocked some nice shots in both games too. So, we may have lost in some aspects of the game, but we may also have won in others. I think Taj could be a really nice pick and maybe a better one than Blair. The time will tell…

Here’s what I know: DeJuan Blair lost nothing in translation. His NCAA game is his NBA game. DeJuan Blair is Carl Landry is Paul Millsap. Rebound rates transfer. It’s a crudely simple equation that, thankfully for the Spurs, adds up

YahooSportsNBA: More than 1 NBA exec. texted me curse tonight for team doctors refusal to draft DeJuan Blair with bad knees. Spur had 19 boards for Rockets