He can rebound and take up space and was a great college rebounder. What is he going to do against NBA athletes that can also rebound? Will he be able to rebound a ball when Tyrus Thomas jumps over him?

We will see but I will be surprised if he is better than Reggie Evans.

Players ahead of Blair on my list (in no particular order): Thabeet, Hansbrough, James Johnson, Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson, Jeff Teague, Eric Maynor, Darren Collison, Omri Casspi, Taj Gibson, Rod Beaubois, Wayne Ellington, Toney Douglas, and DaJuan Summers.

Dude’s got a long ways to go.

Thanks for reading guys!

Twitter.com/shmattshmanaya

You do realize that he rebounded better than any player in the past EIGHT years of the NCAA, right?

http://www.fannation.com/si_blogs/tourney/posts/56721-the-power-of-dejuan-blair

More in this article. Educate yourself, Matt. The ONLY reason Blair fell out of the top 10 is because he’s expected to have a career of 6-7 years, maximum.

If he puts up 20 and 10 per game, he shouldn’t make your list, he should (easily) be Rookie of the Year. What was the 10th best rookie player last year averaging? The rookie of the year last year (Rose) didn’t even score 20 PPG!

If Blair puts up 14 and 8 or 10 and 10, he will be in the top 3 or 4 in RotY voting. I think he’ll put up somewhere around 10 and 8 or even 8 and 8 this year (in limited minutes), which would still easily qualify him for any RotY ranking in basically every NBA season.

“Wow, OK DeJuan Blair is a second rounder and nowhere near a top rookie.”

So you basically just took the top 14 picks in a draft oft-quoted to be only 14 players deep, removed the likes of Thabeet, Rubio, DeRozan and Hansborough (hard work, considering only 3 of those players will be in the league, and both Thabeet and Hansborough have been heavily criticized), jiggled the order around a tad, and stamped your approval. Is that close enough to the truth?

Are you simply not all that familiar with the 2009 draftees, or did you not put enough time shaping your opinion from the glut of mock draft boards available, because someone who is more than just a bandwagon fan would have answered that query about Dejuan Blair with something more like “I expect him to flounder quite a bit due to injuries” rather than, and I paraphrase, OMGosh, he’s a 2nd rounder so how could he possibly be a top rookie?

DeMar DeRozan is the man and should be a great player but without looking it up I can confidently say almost all 19 year old kids do not contribute right away. I can think of two that contributed right away, Rose and Durant and that’s about it, and both of them are going to the HOF ;).

DeRozan might start but so did Nicolas Batum last season.

BTW, I wanted the Wolves to draft DeRozan but they thought Corey Brewer is sufficient. Ouch, David Kahn is an idiot.

I hope DeRozan cracks the list. I love the kid but he is too young for me and I think the Raptors will be a playoff team and it wont be because of DeRozan.

It is safe to say DeJuan Blair will not make this list all season long. If he does what ya’ll think he will (20 ppg and 10 rpg LOL) I will put him up there but c’mon. I will be surprised if he averages over 7 rpg and expect him to average 4 ppg and 4 rpg.

Thanks for reading!

PS Did you notice I left out the #2 pick in the draft? LOL, I thought I would get hate from Memphis.

Yeah, because being one of the most prolific rebounders in the history of the NCAA and a projected top 10 draft pick isn’t the kind of qualifications that make up a potential top rookie.

But using the “he won’t start but he can defend almost anyone” rationale is really projecting something that almost no rookie could ever live up to.

Really any rookie not expected to start will have a very hard time getting any consideration over rookies who do start. They just won’t get enough minutes.

There will be some really good rookies this season, you probably have most of them on your list – But for sure you missed some.

Oh, the Coach and GM of the Raptors have both said DeMar is the likely starter at SG. Doesn’t mean he’s a better player right now – just expect him to start.

Cheers

I’m also a big Griffin fan but I’m not sure him winning ROY is a given. He still doesn’t have much of a perimeter game and he’s not big enough to dominate down low every night. Plus Harden’s really good. But I think you got the top 2 right, for sure.