10 Things the Media Doesn't Get About the NBA Draft Process

This slideshow could alternatively be entitled: "10 Things Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless Don't Grasp and Will Never Grasp About the NBA Draft."

There's plenty to be said that will make for delightfully witty one-liners, and it's all too easy to pander to short-attention spans with hyperbolic nonsense. These are the talents developed over the years in print journalism and honed to perfect in television.

The NBA Draft is as good as any opportunity to bust out the misconceptions, generalizations and presumptions that characterize sports media.

Here are 10 things that need to be cleared up.

NCAA Careers Only Count for so Much

You wouldn't think a sixth man who averaged 12.6 points per game in his sophomore season would be generating a lot of buzz, but that's exactly what Syracuse's Dion Waiters has done, potentially even securing a team's promise to be drafted in the lottery.

Baylor's Perry Jones III finds himself in a similar situation.

His play for the Bears was uneven in his two years with the program, and he's yet to live up to the potential his talent and physical tools suggest him to have.

Ordinarily, those are the kind of concerns that could hurt a guy's stock.

But, according to ESPN's Marc Stein, his exceptional workout with the Detroit Pistons may still have salvaged his lottery hopes:

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Perry Jones III's camp has been worried he could fall out of Top 15, but sources say he had a "very, very good" workout with DET on Monday.

— Marc J. Spears (@SpearsNBAYahoo) June 26, 2012"

Ultimately, teams want to know what a guy can do in the NBA and what he'll look like a few years from now. That's not an exact science, but it beats looking at collegiate performance alone.

Team Workouts Won't Make or Break a Guy Either

There's a reason you didn't hear too much about Kentucky's Michael Kidd-Gilchrist hurting his back during his workout for the Charlotte Bobcats.

Even if it had impacted his performance during the brief trial, it's only a small part of the broader picture. The Detroit Free Press' Vince Ellis explains:

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NBA representative have spent countless hours flying around the country to scout players for several years so it is unlikely a decision will be based on how a prospect looks for a few hours.

Team personnel will interview the prospects and see their relative fitness level, which could be an indicator of work ethic. The workouts offer a glimpse into a prospect's competiveness.

"

In other words, sure, workouts matter. They can certainly work in a player's favor.

But, they're not a deciding factor in and of themselves.

Size Isn't Everything

The fact that Monta Ellis was too 'undersized' to play the two-guard position at the NBA level helped him to slip all the way to the second round.

He may never turn into a consistent superstar, but he's a heck of a lot better than the average second-round pick. 

The same kind of narratives plague current prospects as well, from shooters like Austin Rivers to big men like Jared Sullinger. There's something to these concerns to be sure, but not as much as you might think.

After all, there are plenty of guys with no shortage of height and athleticism who don't make it in this game. Whatever the size, the ultimate question is: Can a guy actually play with the physical tools he's been given?

The Second Round Still Matters

With all the attention paid to first-round picks, it's easy to forget the second round can yield some pretty astounding talent–including the likes of the San Antonio Spurs' Manu Ginobili, who was selected near the very end of that round.

The Spurs got another steal 10 years later when DeJuan Blair slid on account of his non-existent ACLs.

The second round may tend to feature less-known commodities, but that doesn't mean they won't turn into something special. 

Guys can slip down the draft board for any number of reasons, from health concerns to the fact that international players are less-accustomed to the NBA style of play. A lot of those concerns are ultimately surmountable, though.

With scouts increasingly equipped to discover gems late in the draft, it's time the media started catching up and paying more attention.

Money Matters

It might sound crazy that a team like the Oklahoma City Thunder would trade away their first-round pick for next to nothing.

As good as OKC's core is, surely this team could still use a little help.

But the reality of organizational finances is that even a relatively small contract can cause big problems, especially for a team looking for a way to hold on to guys like James Harden and Serge Ibaka over the long term.

They're both soon due sizable raises, so the Thunder are looking for ways to offer those raises without going too deeply into luxury tax territory.

That just might mean essentially forfeiting a draft pick.

Mistakes Are Inevitable

Marvin Williams was selected by the Atlanta Hawks with the second-overall pick in the 2005 draft. Though he's nowhere near the bust that Kwame Brown became, nor has he lived up to the potential you might expect from a second-round pick.

That doesn't mean the Hawks didn't do their homework.

The 26 year old was a promising freshman at UNC with the kind of frame teams drool over. But he's proven to be a little less athletic than we might have liked, and he's only now starting to shoot the ball with any degree of consistency.

Derrick Williams–a similar hybrid-forward–could fall into the same trap, at least in the early going.

Maybe these guys are mistakes; maybe they'll just bloom a little later than the rest.

Either way, that's par for the course. Until you see a guy in a season's worth of NBA action, there's really no telling what you have on your hands.

There May Be a Reason for the Rumors

The notion that the Houston Rockests might send Kyle Lowry and a couple of mid-first-round picks to the Sacramento Kings for Tyreke Evans and the fifth-overall pick sounds like pure lunacy.

That doesn't mean the premise was entirely made up, though.

The Rockets could be attempting to create leverage in other potential Lowry deals, signaling to other organizations that any deals involving the point guard (or the first-round picks) won't be on the table forever.

If, for example, Houston was looking to include those assets in a deal to a team like the Orlando Magic or Los Angeles Lakers, negotiations could theoretically benefit from a sense of increased urgency–especially if the Rockets had reasons to get those deals done before the draft.

Take everything with a grain of salt.

Interest in Specific Prospects May Be a Ruse

All the major purveyors of your favorite mock drafts are "hearing" about interest teams have in particular prospects.

Of course, there's nothing illegitimate about the reports themselves–you just have to wonder if there aren't ulterior motives behind the information being leaked from teams' various front offices. Why would a team want anyone else to know its actual intentions?

Unless there are short-sighted guys in the know, chances are any information coming from a team's decision-makers is designed to impact another organization's thought process. If Team A supposedly "likes" a guy Team B really wants, maybe Team B will trade up in order to secure a player Team A never had any intention of drafting.

If Team A is the benefactor from that trade, Team B just got robbed.

Sure, this isn't the case all of the time. Just don't be surprised if rival franchises don't put as much stock in these reports as you and I do.

Hype Is Overhyped

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is going to be good. Let's just leave it at that.

How good he becomes depends on a number of variables we can't possibly predict. He's not a good shooter now, but he's a hard worker with a good chance of figuring it out. Will he?

Who knows?

To hear popular opinion rise and fall on this guy, you'd think he had multiple personalities. UNC's Harrison Barnes has been through much of the same turmoil.

From the perspectives of actual teams though, these guys aren't darting up and down their draft boards. Mock drafts fluctuate largely because they overreact to even the slightest hint of inside information.

If word emerges that some had good workout or surprising combine results, everything changes.

You can rest assured the teams making these picks aren't quite so fickle.

The NBA Level Isn't Another Dimension

You might hear the occasional remark that while a guy like Thomas Robinson excelled in the college ranks, he won't be nearly as dominant "at the NBA level."

Sure, there's some truth to these kinds of cautions. 

NBA players are on average obviously much better than their younger and far more numerous counterparts. They're bigger, faster, more talented and clearly more experienced. This is no secret.

At times, though, the disparity is amplified so much that you'd think college stars were readying themselves to play against gods on Mt. Olympus.

Sometimes players just stagnate or get worse. When a guy doesn't improve enough to succeed in the NBA, that doesn't necessarily mean the two levels of competition were too drastically different. After all, we see players who succeed in the NBA only to completely disappear.

We also see guys play mediocre ball for years only to eventually have breakout years.

In other words, it may be that the player is growing–or failing to do so. It's not just the difference in leagues.