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The NBA College Basketball Draft

Let’s talk about the NBA draft, since they recently popped the ping pong balls and are about a month away from draft day. I suppose my question for debate here is how much would one rookie truly alter your college basketball betting strategies as they’d pertain to a specific team. And how often do these rookies come along that really draw you to a team in the first place? And (I know, a lot of questions) how many years before you put your trust in that rookie as a star?

I’ll answer all three of these questions in one fell swoop. Quite a bit, once every few years, and at least a year. And I’ll cite examples.

This year any rookie that’s going to change the outlook of a team from a gambler’s perspective is Griffin, agreed? Even though I hate him because he’s from a rival Big 12 team (go Mizzou) there’s obviously no denying the guy’s talent. Will he make me more likely to bet the Clippers in the future? Yes, he probably will. Will it be this coming year? No, he’s not Lebron.

Not even Kobe was racking up double-doubles his rookie year. In fact, the only two rookies in the last 10 years I’d bet the payroll on their freshman campaign was Duncan and LeBron. This year’s rookie of the year, Derrick Rose, certainly showed some greatness, but look how erratic his team was – a direct result (in part) to his inexperience. You just can’t blindly bet routinely on a team led by a rookie who’ll drop 40 points and 12 assists one game and have 9 turnovers the next. Next year, though, Rose will be settled and experienced more, and after 15-20 games you’ll know what to expect from him. Then you make your bets accordingly.

Which brings me back to this year’s draft, and whether Griffin is one of those special players.

And he’s not. Better than Hasheem Thabeet and James Harden? No question. But so was Greg Oden and Andrew Bogut…and Joe Smith. See what I mean? You have to wait it out, you can’t get caught up in the excitement and hype of a No. 1 pick and just throw money at the team, assuming they’ll beat those lines at home and hit the over every game because the dude put up 25 in college like it was cheating on a math test.