This Year’s Rookies Proving the Experts Wrong

Remember the Class of 2007? It was supposed to shock the league like no incoming draft crop since that 2003 gang. Greg Oden and Kevin Durant were David Robinson and Kevin Garnett, or something, and the whole first round was chock full of high-pedigree, low-risk prospects. Lots of them even had NCAA championship rings. Wow. ↵↵So how did that turn out? Well, you know about Durant and Oden. Al Horford and Jeff Green have turned into real pro’s pros, skilled second fiddles that any team would be glad to have. Rodney Stuckey and Thaddeus Young are potential stars still coming into focus. Other than that, it’s a scrapheap of wishful thinking and, now, diminished expectations. The league was not saved.↵

↵↵Okay, now let’s take a brisk trip back to last summer. The 2009 NBA draft was supposed to be one big downer. Everyone was buzzing about Ricky Rubio, but he wasn’t even working out for teams. Blake Griffin was the consensus top pick; so drab was this talent pool, though, that people forgot how dynamic and dominant Griffin had been in college, and figured some sorry squad was just landing a poor man’s Elton Brand. There was a glut of point guards, many of whom might not really be point guards, and a bizarre fixation on media darling Stephen Curry that most scouts should’ve been able to see past. The Rubio soap opera was the biggest story going. ↵

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