While Mike Conley (left) is widely regarded as the top point guard in the draft, Acie Law is a better bet to make a more immediate impact in the NBA. Bill Frakes/SI; AP

OVERRATED: Mike Conley Jr., PG, Ohio State ...
and UNDERRATED: Acie Law IV, PG, Texas A&M

Conley was a phenomenal floor general as a freshman, and as dominant as Oden was, Conley often was more responsible for the Buckeyes pulling out big-game victories. And so the issue here is not whether Conley is a lottery-worthy point guard -- he had a 2.77 assist-to-turnover ratio, after all -- but rather why there's universal agreement that he's going to be a better pro point guard than Law.

Conley is slotted fourth in the consensus mock. Law is 13th. The gap, in reality, is not that wide. One wonders if the Hawks, Grizzlies and Bucks -- all teams with top-six picks and immediate point-guard needs -- would really be better served by taking Conley instead of Law. Conley has more speed and more potential, but a glaring lack of long-distance shooting ability. Law, meanwhile, has a bigger body (he's 6-3½ and 185 pounds, compared to Conley's 6-0¾, 175), a better shot (45.8 percent on threes compared to 30.4 percent), ambidextrous scoring skills and a well-earned reputation for late-game heroics.

Once Conley develops NBA 3-point range, he could be a star -- but that may take three years. In the meantime, his penetration skills will be negated by sagging defenses. Law provides the full package right away, yet amazingly, there's a chance he could slip out of the lottery and fall behind Georgia Tech's Javaris Crittenton among point guards selected. If so, Law will become the steal of the draft.

OVERRATED: Sean Williams, C, Boston College

An excerpt of a John Lucas quote about Williams, from Monday's Boston Globe:

"Sean doesn't have any real-life issues. There are other guys I've had here [training in Houston] who have had real-life issues. He doesn't. His issue is, he just wants to smoke some weed sometime -- and you can't. We're learning how to handle life issues without smoking weed to medicate. I would venture to say, he hasn't smoked any more weed than a lot of the other guys who are going to get drafted. The difference is, he got caught."

The 6-10 Williams, who was twice suspended, and eventually booted, from Boston College last season, is what personnel folks call a risk-vs.-reward situation. And apparently those two lines are going to intersect somewhere in the second half of the first round, possibly as high as No. 17 to New Jersey. The reward is that a team gets a center who scored 19 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and blocked seven shots against Kansas in December. The risk still greatly outweighs this.

While Williams is hardly the first basketball player to be caught smoking dope, the real red flag is he consciously ruined his college career by being foolish enough to get caught repeatedly violating team rules. Those transgressions can be masked by a nice PR campaign before the draft -- but they're also a sign of a pattern of behavior that's likely to continue, and could possible ruin a team's investment in a guaranteed contract.