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bill-swift - June 30, 2012
Anyone care to guess who went No. 1 in the 2012 NBA Draft Thursday night? I'll give you three guesses, but if you need more than one hang your head in shame (hint--he's got some fierce facial hair and I don't mean a goatee).
As expected, Kentucky's Anthony Davis was taken No. 1 by the New Orleans Hornets (shocker). The real question was who the Charlotte Bobcats would take with the No. 2 pick. Word earlier in the day Thursday was that the 'Cats had as many as five trade offers to entertain. With a draft deep in talented players and a lot of needs, it certainly would not be a bad idea for Michael Jordan to trade down.
Charlotte ended up holding onto the No. 2 pick and took Michael Kidd-Gilchrist from Kentucky, making it the first time that the first two picks in the draft came from the same school. Head coach John Calipari had this to say:
Somebody told me they are going to call it the Blue Room instead of the Green Room.
The duo started off a string of picks where the teams really couldn't screw it up too much with all the talent available. The only teams to have their picks rated a 'C/C-' by USA Today were the Cleveland Cavaliers (No. 4 Syracuse guard Dion Waiters; C-), New Orleans Hornets (No. 10 Duke guard Austin Rivers), and the Milwaukee Bucks (No. 14 North Carolina forward John Henson). The following were the top 15 picks:
Unlike last season's draft that saw three international players go within the first seven picks, the only first round international pick this year did not come till the Denver Nuggets took French forward
Evan Fournier
. Nine went in the second, eight of them in the last 12 picks of the round. Kentucky set a record with a total of six players getting drafted in the first two rounds, four in the first and two in the second. North Carolina also had four go in the first, all within the first 17 picks.
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