David Thorpe know his basketball. He’s much better than most of the flapping heads (sorry, no offense intended to Canadians) over at ESPN. He knows how to work out, train, and scout real players, and also understands the international game better than anyone else they have over there. I think his biggest reason for slotting Batum so high is because he did so well at such a young age in the Euroleague. The European game is much less open to playing youngsters or “potential” players. European coaches will almost always play an older, sometimes even less talented veteran over an unproven young athlete like Batum. They also will not adjust their coaching style or tactics for young players. The mere fact that as a 19 year old Batum got serious run and put up decent to good numbers in the Euroleague means something.

I think Thorpe may be riding the Blazers’ jock a little too much with the collective high ranking all our rooks got, but I’d trust him over anyone else at ESPN. Hollinger does a really good job of evaluating and comparing older players, once he’s got a few years of NBA data to work with, but it’s only useful for snapshot comparisons at that moment. He can’t predict worth crap, and his algorithms should never be used for forecasting.

Batum slipped because of a report about him having heart problems. The doctors cleared him but that report was not distributed around the league. There is a rumor that it was only given to the Spurs in hopes that he would slip to them.

All of the OKC rookies are still listed as playing for “SEA”