KSL draft prospect watch: bigs

SALT LAKE CITY — With draft day only one days away, KSL Sportsbeat brought on Jazz VP of Player Personnel Walt Perrin to break down the biggest prospects in this year's draft. After posting the wings and guards yesterday, today, we'll post our impressions of the bigs that are slated to go in the range of #12. Perrin's opinions, along with those of Jeremiah Jensen and Rod Zundel are above in the video, Andy Larsen writes a breakdown of the players below. We used DraftExpress' mock draft to order the players, their current slot in that mock is in the table above each player.

Frank the Tank showed off everything he can do in an impressive way at Wisconsin during his 4-year NBA career. He's a terrific shooter and distributor, with enough height to defend well at the collegiate level. I think he'll be pretty good, but he doesn't have a tremendous upside, being already 22 years old, and furthermore, some of the wear and tear on his body from playing so much in college worries some teams. I think he'll be about the same as Kelly Olynyk at the pro level. Is that good enough for you at #12? For me, it is, unless someone from higher up drops further.

I might consider Myles Turner to be the Jazz's most likely pick right now: he's probably the player most highly regarded amongst the players likely to be available. Turner showed off his shot blocking and shooting prowess at Texas, but never really got rolling in the way a lot of other prospects did. While his statistical indicators are strong, there are also positional questions with Turner: is he big and strong enough to be a center in the NBA? If not, I'm not sure he's quick enough to stay with the league's quick power forwards.

Trey Lyles is a smart player who reminds me of Carlos Boozer in a lot of ways. He's a good passer with some skill off the dribble and a decent mid-range jump shot, but is pretty poor defensively and ultimately not terribly athletic. Lyles doesn't have Boozer's love of the rebound, nor his ambidextrousness, so ultimately I don't think Lyles will be as impactful as Boozer was in his early career. So, where would you take a poor man's Boozer? The Knicks are rumored to like him at #4, which would be a wild overdraft.

Bobby Portis is one of my favorite players in the draft, simply due to his all-out hustle and incredible faces that he put out on the floor in Arkansas. He's the classic hustle power forward, but unlike most of them, he isn't undersized, which ultimately raises his defensive potential. He doesn't, though, have a tremendous amount of upside: most observers think Portis will have a 10 year NBA career, but probably won't ever be a starter.

Kevon Looney is a talented player who tailed off near the end of the season at UCLA, but still impressed overall, taking on a large amount of the load for Steve Alford. He showed ability as a perimeter defender at UCLA, and with his long frame, he's also able to get offensive rebounds with his good hustle. But there are questions about his fatiguing near the end of games, and he suffered a hip injury at the beginning of the year that may have hampered him somewhat. You can look at that positively or negatively: either he'll break out once it heals, or it may be a recurring issue that will keep him sidelined moving forward.

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