What exactly happened with Wroten? Does he have potential to get better? Everyone knew he came out too early. What does he suck the most at?
Tony Jr. (which is what we've been calling him because
Tony Allen is our team leader, and well, he is actually Tony Wroten,
Jr.) has a ridiculously high ceiling, but he's not NBA ready yet, and that's really the biggest problem I had with his selection. Three years from now, I could be looking back at the selection as a great pick, but realistically, we already had a similar project in Selby, and he flamed out for similar reasons that Tony Jr. could. It's hard to develop a point guard with his weaknesses (mainly decision making) when they don't get playing time, and when they do, it's in the NBDL where they're allowed to jack up as many shots as they want to.
We've been a contender for a few years, and in the late first round, drafting a player that could actually contribute, make smart plays, play defense, and rebound would have been ideal. We worked out Draymond twice (I think), yet we still passed over him for yet another project. It's hard to develop a project when they're splitting time on the end of the bench and in the D-League. I essentially saw passing on Draymond as the management saying, "we're not quite there yet," even though Draymond would have instantly shored up our bench, as a multi-positional, high bball-IQ, defensive minded, rebounding role player.
As far as Tony Jr.'s actual game, he's really developed a lot more than I would have expected, but he's still not a good decision maker. That's his biggest problem out of all of his flaws, and that's probably the last thing you want in your backup point guard. To his credit though, he has actually become a pretty decent FT shooter this season, was a pretty good on-ball defender, but also forced the issue too much every time he was in important games and kept getting lost on rotations. He still has too much of a scorer's mentality, which would be fine if he played in Charlotte or Orlando, but playing for a contender, Tony Jr. showed poor court awareness in crucial moments this season.
It's pretty telling when management doesn't have enough faith to play their first round pick to the point that they actually have to un-retire a coach (Dooling) to play back-up minutes for them in the playoffs.