now that the dust has settled a bit from the draft, a few things are clearer: one is that taking Little at 25 was a no-brainer. The reason he had been rated so highly was because of his athleticism and his showing in competition against other high school talent. The odds were stacked against Portland finding anybody who would help much next season or the season after. In fact, there's only about a 35% chance that a player taken at 25 will even average more than 10 total points+rebounds+assists
http://www.82games.com/nbadraftpicks.htm
Portland had an opportunity to swing for the fences and they took it. That's as good a use of #25 as any, and better that most
but the reasons Little fell to 25 are legitimate. There are major questions about his shooting, and that's an NBA red flag for a perimeter player. He doesn't have good handles and he averaged twice as many turnovers as assists. He's a project and while that's always been acceptable and can work for a young big man, project wings fail a lot more than they succeed.
The comparison to Gerald Wallace, in college, seems close. They were both bench players who averaged 9.8 points. Wallace averaged more rebounds, but he shot a lot worse from three and the FT line. But Wallace had an incredible motor and there are apparently some questions about Little's motor. I'm not really buying that and maybe it was just his situation at NC, but we just don't know at this point.
The good news is that Little has a much higher ceiling than most players taken that late in the draft. The bad news is that as a hyper-athletic project wing, history suggests Little might be more likely to end up like a poor man's Jerome Kersey than a Gerald Wallace.