NBA Draft 2011 Questions Of Consequence: Who Will End Up As The Best Player Of The Draft?

A recap for the uninitiated:

So, with the those two picks, the Wolves restock their guard cupboards, taking two point guards: 18-year-old Spaniard Ricky Rubio, who had refused to work out for or visit Minnesota and who had a sticky buy-out that made every team above the Wolves skeptical he’d enter the NBA any sooner than 2011, and Syracuse product Jonny Flynn. Neither can shoot very well. Neither is considered a strong defensive prospect. There is virtually no hope of playing them together.

Bismack Biyombo is a stunning 2011 NBA Draft prospect, both in his special attributes -- outrageous athleticism and length -- and his story. ESPN’s Chad Ford did yeoman’s work filling out the entire Biyombo narrative, how the Congolese big man left his family alone at 16 to play pro ball in Yemen (where he knew no one), how he rose from Spain’s third division to the top league in just months, how we went from not-remotely-on-the-radar to potential top-5 pick in a matter of weeks. (DraftExpress’ Jonathan Givony did a similar excellent story back in early April, right after the Nike Hoop Summit, where Biyombo became as much of a household name as any 18-year-old Congolese basketball player can.)

But there are question marks all over the place. Perhaps the most serious one is about his age. From Ford’s story:

But plenty of mid-major kids score in bunches; you haven’t ever heard of Marshon Fever, have you? What made Fredette stand out as an especially bright bauble amid the collection? His every-man stature? His boyish charm in interviews? His skin tone? His religion? No, no, no, no. It’s all in the name. Jimmer. Jimmer Fredette. Jimmermania. The Jimmer, if you please.

As an exercise in assessing the impact of this nickname on Fredette’s 2011 NBA Draft status, as well as kicking off our NBA Draft 2011 Questions of Consequence series -- we’ll feature a question a day, leading up to the June 23 draft -- we shall ask ourselves this: what if Jimmer had a different nickname? Let’s find out.