Pick 57: This second round has seen a few weird picks, not least among which have been Rautins, Fields, Sy and Evans. However, this is where it has its weirdest one of all. For reasons known only unto themselves, the Indiana Pacers - as we find out later, acting on behalf of the Oklahoma City Thunder - draft
Ryan Reid out of Florida State.
Reid is a "little things" player. He sets screens, he occasionally rebounds, he can score if you double off of him, and he'll push you back if you push him in the post. But that's it. And there is no point in being a little things player if you can't do the big things. Reid's nickname is "Big Ticket", but that ends the list of anything big about him. Despite Stu Scott calling him a freshman, Reid is a freshly graduated senior, and yet he just averaged 7/4 in 23 minutes per game in his senior season. He is a strong but undersized power forward with average athleticism, no NBA calibre offensive talents and a bad rebounding rate. He also manages to turn it over amazingly often for a man who should not be getting touches. Put simply, the drafting of Ryan Reid makes no sense. And it makes particularly no sense when you have other bigs such as Artsiom Parakhouski, Brian Zoubek, Stanley Robinson, Mac Koshwal, Omar Samhan and Samardo Samuels on board. Dammit, even
Wayne Chism would have sufficed here. Or
Deon Thompson. Or me.
Jay Bilas tries to complimentary about the Reid pick, congratulating on him on achieving the unexpected, but he can't mask his shock and notably states that he didn't have Reid in his "top 90". You could probably prefix that number with a 1 and it would still ring true. Ryan Reid's best case scenario is
Udonis Haslem, but Ryan Reid's worst case scenario is the Czech Republic second division. There's a hell of a lot of middle ground in between those two extremes, and somewhere within it, you will find Ryan Reid. I would not be surprised if Reid goes to the D-League next year and performs similarly to how
Raymond Sykes of Clemson did; however, I would also not be impressed.
What an amazingly strange pick. The strangest of the decade. Of the millennium. Stranger than Pape Sy, even.
Ryan Reid (57th pick, 2010)
