Sandy GholstonI have to admit, I am a little skeptical of 6-foot-11 Austin Daye, of Gonzaga. He has a tremendous upside, but needs to get with Arnie Kander and put on some weight and add some strength. DaJuan Summers, out of Georgetown, could turn out to be a solid pick for Detroit. Both Daye and Summers come from programs where you figure they were well-coached players. Detroit also added a Swedish front-court player in Jonas Jerebko, who is 6-8 and about 230 pounds (that’s pretty good size). Time will tell if he pans out for the Pistons.
The Pistons later added Chase Budinger, of Arizona, with the 44th pick. Honestly, I was pretty excited when the Pistons picked up Budinger, who I felt was a steal to come up with so late in the draft. Budinger has good size, he is athletic, he can shoot and he played in the Pac-10 Conference. He has the physical tools and the skill set to be an NBA player for a lot of years. I think the Pistons might have missed the boat dealing him to Houston for pretty much nothing.
We will not know much about this draft for several years (as is sometimes the case for a lot of drafts).
I think Austin Daye is a feast-or-famine pick. In all likelihood, he will either develop the strength to play at the NBA level or he will be pushed around for a lot of years showing flashes of a high skills set, but without the physical tools to play at a consistent level.
Summers has the body and athleticism to be a factor for the Pistons at some point.
Jerebko is a player I don’t know a whole lot about outside of the video we all saw during ESPN’s draft-night coverage.
I am more interest to see what the Pistons are going to do with free agency now that ESPN’s Chris Broussard was on the air this morning speculating the Pistons (and team president Joe Dumars) are targeting Utah’s Carlos Boozer and Orlando’s Hedo Turkoglu.
