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Last week the Utah Jazz had a bumper crop from the NBA Draft, selecting Dante Exum at #5, Rodney Hood at #23, and Jarnell Stokes at #35, then trading him. I like what the team did at the draft but I will go on record that it's hard to a) put a final grade to them before we know what's going to happen with the Memphis Grizzlies pick, and b) it's hard to give them a perfect score because for me a perfect score would have been moving up to get a great player and doing other crazy things. I leave room for improvement with my score, which I put as a B, only because there was no option for an A-.
Anyway, how did the Utah Jazz do according to full time basketball writers on the internet? Well....
| Grades | |||||||||
| Overall | #5 | #23 | #35 (Traded) |
||||||
| Site | Author | Date | Grade | Dante Exum | Rodney Hood | Jarnell Stokes | |||
| 1 | Bleacher Report | Adam Fromal | June | 26 | A | ||||
| 2 | CBS Sports | Zach Harper | June | 27 | A+ | ||||
| 3 | Cincinnati .com | June | 27 | A- | A+ | B+ | |||
| 4 | Cleveland .com | Matt Walks | June | 27 | A | ||||
| 5 | Comcast Sportsnet | A. Sherrod Blakely | June | 27 | A- | ||||
| 6 | Comcast Sportsnet | Pason Passehl, Matt Catagnus | June | 27 | A- | ||||
| 7 | Detroit News | Josh Katzenstein | June | 26 | A | C | |||
| 8 | ESPN | Chad Ford | June | 28 | A | ||||
| 9 | Fox Sports | June | ? | B- | |||||
| 10 | Hoops Habit | Nathan Giese | June | 27 | B | B+ | B | ||
| 11 | NBA Draft . Net | Michael Visenberg | June | 27 | A | ||||
| 12 | NJ . Com | Matt Lombardo | June | 27 | A+ | ||||
| 13 | Philly .com | Michael Kaskey-Blomain | June | 28 | B+ | ||||
| 14 | Rant Sports | Michael LeDuc | June | 28 | B- | ||||
| 15 | Salt Lake Tribune | (staff picks) | June | 26 | A | B+ | |||
| 16 | SB Nation | (staff picks) | June | 26 | A / A / B+ | B / B / B | |||
| 17 | Sixth Man Journal | Frank Garsparetti | June | 27 | A- | ||||
| 18 | Sporting News | Sean Deveney | June | 29 | A | ||||
| 19 | Sports Illustrated | Chris Mannix | June | 27 | A | ||||
| 20 | The Times - Picayune | Matt Walks | June | 27 | A | ||||
| 21 | USA Today | Adi Joseph | June | 27 | A | ||||
| 22 | USA Today / AZ Central | Adi Joseph | June | 27 | A | ||||
| 23 | Walter Football .com | Paul Banks, David Kay | June | 26 | A- | A | A | ||
| 24 | Yahoo! Sports | Marc Spears, Jeff Eisenberg | June | 27 | B | A | |||
| 25 | Yahoo! Sports | Kelly Dwyer | June | 27 | A | ||||
As you can see there's a lot of love going around. The Jazz get mostly A marks, which is what I think most of the Jazz fans feel about parts of this draft, if not all of it overall. It's been a while since I had to use a GPA calculator, so someone else can figure that out for us. But I think our perception of how well the Jazz did is accurate if we go by the perceptions of these experts.
[Ed. I just did the math, and I think it comes out to an average grade of 91.6%, which is an A- according to Google, which is EXACTLY what I would have picked if we could pick +/- grades.]
Sure, the team didn't get something immediately from the #35 pick (I still feel like Glenn Robinson III would be awesome, he killed Hood at the combine), but we have to trust in the Jazz brain trust. Every time Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker does something cramazingly good it will hurt, knowing that perhaps the Jazz could have moved up. But time will also tell on that one too. Perhaps we shouldn't be too eager to break up our young core without first giving them a chance to play together?
This next season with Derrick Favors, Trey Burke, Alec Burks, Enes Kanter, Dante Exum, Rodney Hood, Rudy Gobert, and possibly also Gordon Hayward will be a season to watch.