Tough to really know about draft picks

John Wall is set to be the surefire No. 1 overall pick any minute now, which means he’s on his way to a superstar career. Right?

Right?

Well, maybe.

The people making picks in the NBA draft study basketball for a living. They live, eat and breathe it. They know it, know it in their bones. They could probably tell you the number of dimples on each official NBA ball.

And yet, each year there are misses. Blunders. Busts. Head scratchers, knee slappers, breath catchers. World spinners. Some, immediate. Most reveal themselves over time.

You’ve seen it. The 15th pick becomes an all-timer. Guys in the top five just fade away. Their exact spot in the order depends on the year, depends on the draft. But it happens. And it’ll happen again this year. It always does.

Ryan Blake, assistant director of scouting for Marty Blake & Associates, says, looking back, there’s still no doubt Darko (as in Milicic, the most recent all-time biggest bust) should have gone No. 2.

Now, maybe he shouldn’t have gone No. 2 to the Detroit Pistons as coached by Larry Brown.

And so, in retrospect, picking Darko ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in 2003 looks kind of bad.

(While the rest of his draft classmates have been looking forward to this summer for becoming unrestricted free agents, he, um, did not have to wait as long.)

But you get Blake’s drift. The guy had the tools. Had the talent.

Maybe still does.

He was a 7-footer with skills, who could do anything you wanted on the basketball court.

NBA DRAFT

John Wall was the first pick of the NBA draft. Then what happened?

• Draft Tracker: Check out every pick
• Goodman: Draft winners, losers
• NBADraft.net: Grading each team
• Wizards take Wall with No. 1 pick
• NBADraft.net: Pick-by-pick analysis
• Goodman: Kentucky road to NBA
• Photos: What did players wear?
• Video: Goodman's draft dish
• Draft Day trade roundup
• Photos: Draft fashion disasters
• Goodman: 2011 mock draft
• NBA Draft Central

But the rest of it?

“You’re not going to know,” Blake says. “You don’t know.”

Maybe with him it was that he was from Serbia, coming to America. And a teenager. Going to a contending team, with no time for rookies. With a coach who had no patience for them, anyway. And then he didn’t play and didn’t develop and stopped caring. And his confidence was crushed.

And here we are.

You’re not going to know. You don’t know.

Today, we all agree Kobe Bryant is the best player in the game. He was picked 13th. Then traded for Vlade Divac. Divac was a good player who breathed life into two franchises (and who doesn’t like the Yakov Smirnoff look?), but still. Vlade Divac.

You’re not going to know. You don’t know.

Even Jordan. He was supposed to be the next Dr. J, but they were wrong. He was a high flyer, sure. But we would eventually find out that more than that, he was a killer. He’d pull the plug on you – as Elaine Benes once put it, he’d yank it like he was starting a mower. He had that instinct, that will, that need. He was compelled to take you out. He was serial.

He was a killer.

And that’s what Kobe was, too. A killer. A killer in the perfect situation, with the right franchise, with the greatest coach.

And that was the biggest revelation in Andre Agassi’s memoir. No, not the hairpieces or the drug use. It was the insight that there’s a razor’s edge between greatness and going back to your hometown to be a country-club pro. It was the description of all the little things that could come between success and failure, and at times did. It was the picture he painted of how hard it really is to win at that level.

How many things had to go right.

So much goes into a life. So much goes into a career. So much goes into a young man getting to the point where he steps onto a stage wearing a new suit and a baseball cap.

And so much goes into everything that comes after it.

On Tuesday, I was watching NBA TV. It was replaying the 1985 draft. Keith Lee was taken at No. 11 overall, by the Bulls. He was an All-American, had taken Memphis State to the Final Four. He talked about playing with Michael Jordan.

The graphic on the screen said he played three years with two teams.

Everyone who is drafted high can play. Sometimes, it comes down to everything else.

At least we know one thing. John Wall will be the first pick.

“Am I going to be shocked if Evan Turner goes No. 1?” Blake said. “Things can change. Those two guys. It’s miniscule. They’re different players.”

They’re all different players, first-round picks. It’s miniscule. But they’ll be more and more different as the years go on.