Between now and the June 28 NBA Draft, SUPERSONICS.COM will break down one of the top 15 prospects in the draft per day, getting audio analysis from Sonics Director of Basketball Operations Dave Pendergraft and commentary from Sonics play-by-play broadcaster David Locke and SUPERSONICS.COM's Kevin Pelton. Today, Bradley center Patrick O'Bryant.
Pendergraft's take:
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Locke's take: Patrick O’Bryant is not a name familiar to a great many of us on the Pacific Northwest. However, he may be the most influential and interesting from a Sonics standpoint come draft day and beyond.
Specifically with regard to Draft day, this is a guy who you want to hear before the Sonics pick. He is a 7-footer with great potential, but he shouldn’t be ready to contribute for some time. Since the Sonics already have Robert Swift and Johan Petro they don’t have the floor time for O’Bryant to develop.
Therefore, look for his name to go before the Sonics at #10. If he does it guarantees that some of the athletes the Sonics have zeroed in on will be still on the board at #10.
O’Bryant also symbolizes what good picks the Sonics made in Swift and Petro. If Swift has gone to USC for two years there is no way he would be on the board for the Sonics at #10 and in this year’s draft, with another year of exposure, O’Bryant and Petro would have similar stock.
It will be worth watching O’Bryant in contrast to Petro and Swift in the years to come.
Pelton's take: O'Bryant first emerged on my radar when NCAA stat maven Ken Pomeroy wrote about the impact of O'Bryant's absence (he missed the first eight games of the season because he received improper benefits) for ESPN Insider. Because O'Bryant is an athletic 7-footer, however, he's been on scouts' radar screens for a while.
As recently as March, it didn't seem that O'Bryant, coming off of his sophomore season, would declare for the Draft. Then he had a statement game against Pitt and highly-touted big man Aaron Gray (who recently decided to return to Pitt for his senior season). O'Bryant had 28 points and seven rebounds in that game, while Gray was limited to 12 and four. Despite the fact that Bradley made a surprise run to the Sweet Sixteen, that was O'Bryant's only big offensive game; he combined for just 16 points on 6-for-15 shooting, though he did have 24 rebounds, in a win over Kansas and a loss to Memphis.
O'Bryant does very well on another aspect of the Locke three-part test, faring well in his second trip through the MVC, though he was less rusty by that point of the season because of the suspension.
What's working against O'Bryant is history. While Chris Kaman seems to perhaps be bucking the trend, big men selected in the mid to late lottery have historically been bad bets. This is especially true of guys who physically dominated smaller conferences, with BYU's Rafael Araujo as the most recent example (though Araujo and O'Bryant are very different in terms of skills).
