In the days leading up to the NBA draft, Joe Kotoch provided Sheridan Hoops with six mock drafts.
Not one, not two, not three … six.
His final mock for our site arrived Thursday morning and was entirely posted – picks 1 through 60 – about six hours before the first boos rained down on Commissioner David Stern at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.
How did Joe do? Pretty damn good, if you ask us.
Despite the surprise selection of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist at No. 2 (virtually no one had him going that high and practically everyone had Charlotte trading the pick) and the seemingly unstoppable ascension of Dion Waiters to No. 4, Kotoch correctly tabbed five of the top 11 picks.
He had Anthony Davis at No. 1, Bradley Beal at No. 3, Damian Lillard at No. 6, Andre Drummond at No. 9 and Meyers Leonard at No. 11.
Within the lottery picks, Kotoch correctly tabbed 12 of the 14 players selected. His misses were Tyler Zeller going 12th (he fell to 17th) and Terrence Jones going 14th (he dropped to 18th).
Overall, Kotoch nailed seven picks in the first round. He also had Jared Sullinger going 22nd to Boston and Tony Wroten Jr. going 25th to Memphis. (Sullinger officially went 21st, but the Celtics had consecutive picks.)
By comparison, ESPN’s final mock draft correctly slotted five players and DraftExpress slotted four. That’s nine correct picks by two of the most respected draft sites – or the same total correctly picked by Joe in the final mock draft on his site, probasketballdraft.com.
For our site, Kotoch also correctly tabbed 26 of the 30 players chosen in the first round. His picks of Draymond Green (26), Jeff Taylor (28), Will Barton (29) and Quincy Miller (30) each dropped to the second round, none lower than 40th.
Overall, a very nice job by Kotoch, who has lots more stuff at probasketballdraft.com.