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Okay Jazzeroos, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that by this time next week we'll have no more NBA Draft stories to do. The bad news is that it's not next week yet. The worse news is that this off-season we're going to try to do a little bit of introspection. And I think it is fair to say that there is a possibility that the Utah Jazz may draft a guy from 'parts unknown' with the #47 pick. There's probably a better chance that we draft a good old NCAA kid from the good 'ol USA as well. Which is probably a better thing to do because negotiating the buyout of an NCAA contract is easier than one for a European player. (Insert your own USC joke here)
Right now the Jazz have the rights to a number of guys who were either drafted by us (and summarily stashed away in Europe), or guys who were drafted by other teams for a similar purpose. In one case we actually have the rights to an American dude playing in Europe. And sorry Goran Suton fans, this post isn't about him.
| Draft | ||||||||||||
| Player | Rd | Pk | Yr | Ht | Wt | Age | Pos | College | From | Profile Update | ||
| Peter Fehse | 2 | 40 | 2002 | . | 7'0 | 205 | 29 | F | Germany | Oklahoma City Thunder (Maynor trade) | I still have uncovered zero evidence that this guy is a real basketball pro | |
| Mario Austin | 2 | 37 | 2003 | . | 6'10 | 260 | 30 | F | Mississippi St | Jr | Chicago Bulls (Boozer trade) | Avg 7.9 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 1.1 apg for BC Kyiv (Ukraine) |
| Ante Tomic | 2 | 44 | 2008 | . | 7'1 | 225 | 25 | C | Croatia | Euroleague (Jazz pick) | Avg 7.5 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 55.5 fg% for Real Madrid (Spain) | |
| Tadija Dragicevic | 2 | 53 | 2008 | . | 6'9 | 235 | 26 | F | Serbia | Euroleague (Jazz pick) | Avg 10.3 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 34.9 3pt% for Angelico Biella (Italy) | |
I'm obviously going to go into more detail later on this summer about Tomic and Tadi-Dadi later. (I've been researching both for 2 years now . . . ) I'm kind of insane, so I actually think that Dragicevic could be a good (hopefully cheap) bench guy who can hit threes and generally bring our swarthy rating back up to pre-Giricek levels. So, if you are a fan of learning more about Tomic and Dragicevic then there is good news for you in the near future.
The legit idea is that at some stage we'll have Tomic here, even if it takes a while . . . (and thanks to @My_Lo on twitter, there may be some evidence to support that theory).