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The plot thickens Keeping up with the NBA Draft's storylines
Sports Illustrated's Seth Davis chatted with CNNSI.com on the eve of the NBA Draft for one last overview of the top stories: CNNSI.com: The big story in the draft is the high schoolers, six of them in all. Who's going where? Seth Davis: I think three of them are going to be in the top six and any one of these three -- Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry or Tyson Chandler -- could be the No. 1 pick. Sagana Diop is another 7-footer; he's ranked a little bit below those three, but I think he'll still be a lottery pick. Ousmane Cisse really made a mistake in entering the draft and I think he's a victim of this ridiculous NCAA rule that does not allow high schoolers to change their minds about going to college after they've already declared for the draft. And the sixth guy, Tony Key, a big man out of Compton, Calif., really entered the draft for reasons that have nothing to do with basketball. I'd be shocked if he were drafted at all. CNNSI.com: Which players really helped themselves at all the camps and workouts since the season ended? Davis: The guy who really has shot up the charts since the end of the college basketball season is Rodney White, the power forward out of Charlotte. In individual workouts especially, he displayed a lot of perimeter skills that he didn't have the chance to display during the regular season. And also Steven Hunter, a 7-footer out of DePaul -- a lot of people wondered what he was thinking even entering the draft -- he played extremely well in Chicago earlier this month and very well in workouts. Given how well Hunter has performed recently and how unproductive he was in college, I'm not hearing a lot of good things about the way Pat Kennedy coached him at DePaul. CNNSI.com: Let's cut to the chase -- who are your potential sleepers and busts out of this year's draft class? Davis: This is only one man's opinion, of course. I know the NBA loves big men, but both Arizona's Loren Woods and North Carolina's Brendan Haywood are going to be picked in the first round, but I don't think either of them are going to be an effective NBA center. One guy I really like that nobody else seems to like as much is Trenton Hassell, a 6-5 guard out of Austin Peay. He didn't shoot the ball well in Chicago, and that really hurt his stock. I've seen a couple of mock drafts that don't even have him going in the first round. If Hassell goes in the second round, he will be the steal of this draft. Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers the college basketball beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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