Draft night (or nights, now) is not usually where an NBA champion goes to find immediate help. The night is typically reserved for the worst teams in the NBA trying to reverse their fortunes by snagging the best young talent in the world.
But for Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics, there is hope to prospect the prospects and hopefully strike some gold deep into the selection process.
This year they landed on two older players, Baylor Scheierman and Anton Watson, both of whom turn 24 before the season begins. In a draft full of kids hoping to grow into difference-makers, Boston is hoping two grown men can find a way to be immediate contributors.
“I think at these picks and when you're not picking in the top five of the draft, you're probably not weighing that stuff quite as strongly,” Stevens said about drafting older players. “You're looking for best fit, best player, who can come in and accentuate your team and who can grow within your group. And they're both young enough, they can do that too.”
What they're really hoping to do is thread a needle between an unproven draft pick and NBA contributor on a team returning all of a championship core. That's not an easy thing to do. The Celtics are hoping at least one of Sheierman, Watson, and last year’s second-round pick, Jordan Walsh, will separate themselves somehow.
In that trio, Boston has found themselves flawed players with one NBA-level skill. For Sheierman, it’s shooting. For Watson and Walsh, it’s defense. The singular elite skill isn’t enough to keep these guys in the league, but accentuating those skills will. These guys are now in a race to see who can do that first and carve out a role.
"I'm a hard worker. I like to work and I like to compete,” Scheierman said in his first interview with Boston media. “I like to just impact the game in any way I can. I like to impact winning, whether that's diving on the floor, making 3s or blocking shots. Whatever that might be."
Sheierman’s shooting is a coveted skill, but his lack of athleticism and his defensive shortcomings helped drop him to 30. Watson has the opposite problem.
“Anton’s strength and ability to move his feet laterally give him a chance to be one of these big strong hybrid forwards that can switch and guard a lot of people,” Stevens said. “I want him to come in here with the mindset he's gonna let it fly like he's never let it fly before because I think he's a better shooter than he sometimes thinks he is.”
The same can be said for Walsh, who has the advantage of having gone through a championship season with the Celtics. But he’s much younger. He has to go through some of the stuff Scheierman and Watson have already worked through at the collegiate level, but he’s doing it with a ticking clock of NBA expectations. Scheierman and Watson played five years of college ball, and Scheierman already went through the pre-draft process a couple of years ago.
“I actually worked out for Boston and then I also worked out for them this year going through the process,” Scheierman said. “Two years ago, obviously, I’m two years younger and at the time, coming out of South Dakota State, it’s kind of a different level than what I was at these past two years at Creighton. And I think it kind of just opened my eyes, the first time working out, kind of just what I needed to improve on and what the NBA game is all about.”
Stevens noticed the difference.
“I think he's done a good job with his body. He has done a good job in the weight room,” Stevens said. “He's always been, like, super-skilled, super-smart, and super-tough. He’s a basketball player now. … The way that that's translated into his performances in the Big East is not a surprise.”
By going with older players in this year’s draft, Stevens and the Celtics are hoping to cash in on experience gained at the college level being a teacher.
“I think that those guys both are winning players,” Stevens said. “They've played in a lot of big moments and a lot of big games and big environments, they know how to play on both ends of the floor, they’ve been really well coached.”
Everyone is full of promise at this point in the process. We see the potential much more clearly than the warts, and people are looking for a reason that one of these late-round guys will prove to be a steal. The odds are stacked against any of them panning out in a meaningful way, but each of them has an NBA-level skill to build on. From there, it’s finding a way to showcase their best while working on improving the weaknesses that could derail their dreams.
“I think that both of those guys have shown good growth throughout their careers and so you would anticipate they would continue to grow,” Stevens said of Scheierman and Watson. “And then I think you're kind of looking at the best of both worlds.”
