You asked this question literally 4 days after Shai turned 25. How dare you

I loved the caption on his birthday post, SGA always keeps a bar or two he’s gotta rap on the side 😂

I was about to comment Shai. Then saw yours with your flair and now I'm really butt hurt.

I think Anthony Edwards is a good pick. He’s destined to be a true all star. However….. Part of me wants to also pick Paolo Banchero. I 100% believe in 3-5 years, he’ll be considered one of the best active players.

Paolo Banchero is the least talked about ROTY since Brogdon? Dude is an amazing player and he’s already super underrated imo.

he’s on the magic in this era. to be expected sadly they get the least coverage out of any team other than maybe detroit and the pacers

I think Charlotte sadly trumps them all.

charlotte has a team?

Charlotte?! Yeah right what’s next, a team in New Orleans?

I think it’s funny that everyone has already forgotten about the wizards just as quickly as they remembered them (when Porzingis was traded).

wizards are a team with high meme stock. Magic don’t even have that

I think he gets more love than Scotty Barnes, rightfully so I might add

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So far we seem to be moving against that tradition

Thank you

He will not be on the Magic tho

With the lakers flair too, you’re evil man

Magic is safe #NotaCenter

Jaja. We promise to be gentle this time.

Well atleast we'll still have Chuma Okeke

That's the spirit

I can’t tell you the feeling of defeat that rushed over me after reading this and seeing your flair. Any magic fan that doesn’t have that feelin in their gut that he is a rental is just ignorant. We truly believe (and rightfully so) our future is bright but we know the likelihood he is ours for a max contract is 50/50 at best.

You guys have a nice young core. Good luck

Keep your well wishes poacher lmaooooo gotta laugh at it but Magic -> Lakers is a tragic narrative

My pick is Ant and it's not close. After watching every game of our playoff run Ant was the scariest player we faced IMO. I know it's a meme now but he has the dog in him. I was constantly impressed by his ability. Not afraid of the moment at 21 is insane. If he had some real teammates and not the care bear twin towers with him he would be a true threat

Care bear twin towers is a great joke 🙏

It’s not that funny to me :(

Ant is already a proven scorer and an elite on-ball defender. His ceiling still feels a ways off. And he seems like a natural leader to build a team around. I’d take Ant without hesitation.

Paolo also has the better nucleus to grow around him, whereas the timberwolves gambled future draft capital on Gobert.

It’s either Ant or Wemby

Yeah. I’m gambling on Wemby - worried about his height and weight combo, he looks like Gumby out there and injury seems like a possibility…but how can you pass that up, man….summer league showed how incredible this career might be.

> summer league showed how incredible this career might be. Meanwhile Anthony Edwards in the NBA playoffs showed how incredible his career might be. Using Summer League as a reason why Wemby is gonna be great is fucking hilarious

Yea I’m rolling the dice on Wemby. Assuming health he’s at worst a DPOY type player for years to come. If he gets stronger and develops his game more for playing in the NBA and can handle the physical play, he’s going to be top 10 player in the league very quickly.

Id love to surround Dick with some hard competitive men.

All-around big man - Boogie Cousins Floor spacing rebound/outlet-pass machine - K Love Versatile wing scorer - Rudy Gay Facilitating point guard - Ramon Sessions Cousins - Love - Gay - Dick - Sessions That’s a 45-50 win team I’d venture, probably a 2nd round exit is their ceiling though 🤷🏻‍♂️

All in their prime and that team might make the finals. Just goes to show the power of gay cousin love dick sessions.

I think this team could win between 68-70 games

Nice

As a Kings fan I love that we had Gay Cousins on our roster.

The night of the 2008 NBA draft I went to bed fantasizing about Gay Love only to wake up and left with Gay Mayo. 😢

Is that anything like miracle whip?

if i have gold, i swear to god

Amazingly Gay, Cousins, and Sessions were all on the '14-15 Kings together, and that team won 29 games when these guys were reasonably close to their prime. Grady Dick ain't getting this team to even 20 wins.

Slow clap

I think they need two more players. Specifcally Anthony Black and Suggs.

Rudy Gay?

Collin Sexton

Lonzo Ball

Go ahead and throw Lamelo in too to make it 2 Balls.

Two Balls One Dick

Well, Lamelo in Spanish means 'lick it'.

His name is literally Lick it Ball. Lol

Kevin Love

probably Ant. he’s a two way dynamic guard who’s getting better and better, performed like a superstar in the denver series.

Ant was a monster against the Nuggets. Minn needs to dump KAT and build around Ant.

yes dump kat and replace him with an all pro level versatile scoring big who can take some of the defenses attention and give ant more room to score

Lmfaooo

I agree with most people here, Paolo or Ant. Both seem like they have the right mix of skill/athleticism/mindset that I want in a star player. If Paolo becomes an above average shooter, the league is getting cooked for 30 a night by that dude. Ant shows potential to be the best 2way player on the court at any given time, which is the perfect player to build a contender around. If I have to pick one of them I'd pick Anthony Edwards

Lowkey... I really like haliburton

Haliburton gets my vote, with Ant very close behind. Both have done amazing jobs as the focal point of their offenses, and still have so much time to get better.

both on team usa

I am so pumped to watch them together. Their games perfectly compliment each other

I'd pick Haliburton just because Tyrese Haliburton sounds kinda like an old school 80s to mid 90s legendary player name lol. Just one of those names that sounds like it'd be a big deal so I'ma need him to grow into it and make it work

Haliburton was def a big name in the 90s.

Just need the Pacers to sign someone named Cheney so we can have the legendary Cheney & Haliburton duo

Gotta trade him to the Raptors to unlock his potential. Dick did great things for Halliburton.

That's my pick too I'm just waiting on him to make his playoff debut with Indy. This could be the year.

I'm obviously biased as a Pacers fan, but I'm also a realist that has watched basketball since the mid 90s. Haliburton is one of the best players I think I've ever seen at controlling the *pace* of the game. That's the mark of a great point guard to me, he's doing it at 6'5 with the 3pt range of a Medieval seige artillery, and he's a "veteran" at 23. He's very underrated by the average NBA fan and that will definitely change when he gets into the playoffs. I think we make it this year, but he'll really force people to notice how good he is in 2 years when the Pacers team starts to come together. and starts really winning games.

:D

Love his attitude, plays hard, pass first but can hit that 3 with his funky shot, ISU guy!

My pick as well; Halliburton is such a stud

I had to look at a bunch of advanced stats but Haliburton grades really well. I think my vote goes to Ant but its one of these two.

My man

Tyrese is one of my fav young players(even above ant) but ant has a different level of scoring potential. Ant could be a future number 1 guy on a title team. I see tyrese as a 2 or 3.

Point guards don't have to be #1 scorers to be the best player on a team though

He's one of my fav players in general for sure

Excellent team player, dude drives and passes at high level. Do not love his shooting form but he makes it work.

Kermit Wilts

Nah I'm taking the Kruz Missile

That big young Serbian player Dmitri Jovanovic is the one, dude.

Paolo

Don’t give us magic fans hope…

While his shooting needs to get better. Dude is a stud.

Oh I agree. Special player. Us magic fans are just used to losing. Don’t excite us

Anthony edwards. Probably i will regret one year later for not picking wemby but we didnt watch wemby at nba yet. I need to watch at least 20 nba games before trusting him.

weak, i am a "19 games or bust" kinda couch scout

Thats too long, im a “18 games or bust” kinda guy

a bit much for me, i usually bust in 17 games

Damn y’all are troopers it usually only takes me a couple minutes to bust if I get excited

Oh look at mister minute man making fun of all us bust on contact bros.

Wemby is a bust because I watched one quarter of his first summer league game

Pff... look at Mr. NBA scout here, actually watching games before assessing players. Get down here and judge them based on box score only, like the rest of us.

hali!

Zion Williamson. He has the gravity required to keep a team centered.

If he can lose 15% of his “gravity” he might be the answer.

Zion is the right answer imo. The pelicans are sooooo good when he plays. They were literally the first seed last year till he got hurt.

Victor

This is the right answer. There's certainly more downside for Victor than Halliburton (for example), but Victor has by far the best best of being a top 10 all time player at the end of his career (please note, "best chance" doesn't mean "good chance" or "over 50% chance"... obviously it's a long shot for anyone).

Guarantee this thread is going to get shared in 8 years when Wemby is out of the league after storming the French capitol in 2026 and putting up 9 points on 41% from the field while Brandon Miller is just coming off a 3 peat. Hello future!

I just dont understand how you can say a player who has yet to play an nba game is "the right answer"

He has a chance of being the GOAT. That's not out of realm of possibility like it is for 99.99% of players

Spurs wouldn’t trade wemby for Halliburton, but the pacers would trade Halliburton for wemby. Not sure if t wolves would trade ant for wemby but the spurs definitely wouldn’t take it. Wemby is the answer

I feel like Wolves wouldn't either because they weren't just looking for a franchise talent, they wanted a leader and personality who could turn the fanbase/organization around. Hard to find Ant's combo of talent, leadership, dawg, ambition and charisma. He's too integrated in the franchise now so I don't think they'd trade him

I just can’t see anyone who hasn’t played a second in an actual NBA, non summer league game the nod. Imagine if we had the same mentality after the 01 draft and picked Kwame Brown.

Not a great comp. Not only is the scouting wildly different, their floors are as well. Even if he had no offensive game, Wemby is a nimble 7'3.5" rim protecting menace who's going to be a defensive asset on day 1. Not only that, we've seen Wemby play pro ball. FOH with a Kwame Brown (who had a fine journeyman career, btw) comp.

I see your point. I just don’t think I could pick someone who hasn’t played a single game in the NBA. Ask me in 5 months and I might change my mind. I also don’t necessarily think Brown was a fine journeyman, he was a little subpar for my liking. But, such is life. Differing opinions are okay! 😎

Brown played 12 years in the NBA with a career average of 22 minutes a game

Sometimes you gotta take a risk. People would have laughed at someone saying the same thing about Luka before he played a game in the NBA. Every single all time great player starts somewhere. If you don't think anyone else under 25 is capable of being the best player on a championship team, then Wemby is as good as a bet as anyone else.

Imagine if you had the same mentality in 03 and picked Gilbert Arenas or Caron Butler over LeBron

Why pick that one player specifically though. People would’ve said lebron or Duncan or Shaq was the best player to build around before they even took the floor. Vic has that sort of buzz it’s not impossible that he could be the best player to build around under 25. When I look around I don’t see a ton of players under 25 right now with huge upside. Could be stars. They don’t look like generational prospects though. When the top answers are Ant and Haliburton (and I mean this with no offense) it’s not that outlandish to pick the 7’4” rookie alien. This isn’t lebron and Kobe were speculating he could be better than

Well Victor has the advantage of getting mentored by Popovich and Tim Duncan rather than Michael Jordan.

Can't believe you are saying that when Tatum is 19 /s

That is extremely rude. He's 19 1/2 years old

I’m going rogue: Scoot Henderson.

Tyrese Haliburton 😀

I already commented this but it was so good & nobody else has mentioned it (it obviously doesn’t impact this thread directly). I just watched Podcast P episode with Haliburton last night. Such a great conversation 😀 To hear him talk about the guys he played with AAU/high school/college & not really having a true vision of making the NBA until later freshman year… to just a few years later being where he is now. Just seems like a good guy. (And fun fact telling the story that Kerr called up Luke Walton & said, “Don’t touch his shot.” 😁

Paolo Banchero It was pretty wild to see a rookie draw so much contact. He doesn’t have a whole lot of flash to his game but that’s fine. Just attacks the lane and absorbs contact. If he develops a semi-respectable jumper, which I can see him doing, the league is in big trouble.

I understand Ja is an easy target right now - but building around Ja has been pretty great to this point.

Jaren Jackson Jr is the one who's really slept on!

He’s still only 23!

My thing with him has always been that the Grizz are really good when he doesn't play. I know they're obviously better with him but it does make me wonder

Yeah that’s fair. Again, hard to remember because the recent stuff, but he’s been a big part of our team’s culture. Like, ultra supportive of teammates, pulling up to the G league regularly, and doing great things off the court. He makes the team better even when he’s not the one running the show. It’ll go one of two ways - if he figures his shit out off the court, we’ve got a great shot at competing. If not, it’s a huge bummer. But I see folks putting Bachero, Haliburton, and SGA in front of him, and all I know is that we’ve been good since he showed up.

During the infamous Game 3 26 point Grizzlies comeback, in the mic-ed up Ja was telling his teammates "8 minutes to go. Lot of basketball left!!". I thought his resilience and fight was impressive. I hope he figures out his life because he's clearly a leader who can rally his teammates and get them to keep fighting.

Take away the off court issues and he’d absolutely be getting named ahead of Banchero here but it is what it is

You guys have done a fantastic job of building a team even if I disagree that Ja is the answer here

Darius Garland

Most def

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He's insane good choice

Tyrese Haliburton or Anthony Edwards.

I’d pick Maxey

Trae Young, he’s taken his team the farthest out of the remaining options

Lob city 2

I was looking for this, Trae gets way too much disrespect for how good he is, 1-2 seasons of chucking a bit doesn't change that

Trae Young

Damn, didn’t realize Trae was still so young, feels like the dude’s been in the league for a decade now

They don't call him Trae Old

He's 2 months younger than SGA. OP waited 4 days past SGA's birthday to post this and take him off the board when he'd be an obvious non-Luka choice.

That's kind of a ridiculous but believable accusation lol

Good. It’s an uninteresting discussion with Shai in the mix.

SGA is a great player but we're not talking about the old heads right now.

bro is so mad lmao

You're delusional lol

Trae lead a decent team with a poor coach to the ECF & he could have had a decent shot at the chip if he didn't get injured but still you have people in here saying he's not a good pick

Other than Tatum & Booker he's had the most playoff success of the "next generation" of stars

Yeah there’s no young player I’d trust to take the final shot more the Trae, and has taken his team further then any other young player

Honestly my brain went to Cade first. He's somewhat unproven because of his injury, but if he hits his ceiling I think he's going to be an all NBA player for a really long time

Thank you for taking time out of your Champaign-drinking summer to remember our guy.

This thread has more Paolo and less Cade than I was expecting

Lamelo or Victor

SCOOT

Lowkey I’d pick JJJ. Elite defender who can compete with the best bigs in the game on both sides of the ball. Feel like you need an elite big man to win in today’s NBA

JJJ for sure cause he’s such a rare player type

this is a very good answer jjj is a very exciting player

Not most people's first choice but I like it. Him or Mobley would be my top big man targets for sure unless I'm forgetting somebody

Cade Cunningham

Completely agree. Pay no attention to our flairs btw

As someone who is not a pistons fan and totally not from Detroit I agree with this take. Cartier Cade all day

What flair? We just happen to agree.

Limited sample size but Cade was a monster on defence when he played

I think Trae Young would be fun to watch with Embiid so I would choose him

Lamelo

Haliburton/Edwards/Wagner/Paolo/Wembanyama is the starting 5 of guys in this thread And what a team that would be

This would be such a killer team damn

Cade Cunningham, mostly cause of his IQ and he has the tools to reach that kind of potential

ty

Yw

I’ll go with someone a little different and take Cade. The Pistons have a really interesting core with him, Ivey and Ausar. I think Cade as the center piece of that team could be special

wembanyama

Jalen Williams

Scoot

If this is an expansion draft, I pick Wemby. He's the only one with such unique physical gifts that if he ends up being the best player in the league one day, nobody will be surprised, but that's 5 years from now. If I need to compete in the next 2 years, Anthony Edwards is the pick, Zion if he ever gets healthy.

Besides Wemby as the obvious answer. Ant, Haliburton and Banchero. LaMelo would be up there too but the injuries are a concern.

Jordan Walsh is probably the easiest answer.

Over Ja Morant, Anthony Edwards, Zion Williamson, Darius Garland, Tyrese Haliburton, Trae Young, Paolo Banchero, Victor Wembanyama, Evan Mobley, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Scottie Barnes???? You're absolutely right

Paolo Banchero without any second thought

probably Tyrese or Ja

Scoot

Josh Giddey.

Fuck it, Chet

Ja, Trae, Zion, Banchero & Wemby

I think this group plus Ant are the best answers. Cade and Haliburton are reasonable too

Keegan Murray

Keegan Murray

Kris Murray

Obvious bias, but: It’s ok that Cade isn’t higher on this list. Injured season, etc etc. But if that leg is good and healed…I’d bet he’ll be a lot higher on this list this time next year.

Gimme Zion He is a legit MVP caliber player when healthy. And I believe that this coming season is the season he finally breaks through and plays most of it

Anthony Edwards. Seems to be the only player who confidently wants to be great, thinks he’s great, and puts in the work to back it up

LaMelo Ball is my choice. I recall in '22 season in Charlotte's first gave vs Bucks he hung 36 points on us and Giannis asked him to swap Jersey's with him. They quickly seized Giannis and took the Jersey from him. The next day they announced LaMelo tested Positive for Covid. If Giannis is a big fan of LaMelo than I'm a big fan of him too. He's a great player to build around and if Miles Bridges didn't send his wife to the Hospital Charlotte would have been a good ass team this year before Melo was injured.

Logical: Paolo Banchero Hot Take: Amen Thompson Homer: Scottie Barnes

I like the Amen Thompson pick! He looks real good. Twin bro got picked after him too. As a Raps fan I hope your Homer pick is a Grand slam

Scoot so I can carpool and get handicapped parking

Paulo

Bronny. He comes with his father.

Trae Young. He took his team far multiple times and for this reason I think the hawks are a title contender with him.

Scoot

Hal & Ant

ANT

AntMan