Indiana Pacers April Fools’ Day: 5 NBA Draft blunders we wish were jokes

Missing out on John Collins (pick 19) and OG Anunoby (pick 23)

Pacers pick at 18: T.J. Leaf

Any T.J. Leaf truthers out there? Anyone? Anyone…?

Look, maybe he can turn into something down the line, but so far we just haven’t seen it. This was the wrong pick, flat-out. Leaf has struggled to establish himself in the NBA and put up anything of note, yet to average more than 3.9 points per game.

Available to the Pacers instead of Leaf were both John Collins and OG Anunoby.

Collins has established himself as an uber-athletic rim-runner with a semblance of a 3-point shot that challenges defense on a nightly basis to figure out how to guard him.

Paired with Trae Young, this Atlanta Hawks duo is one of the best young pairs in the NBA at the moment. Collins paired with the likes of T.J. McConnell in the second unit could be a really deadly force, but one that might be limited by McConnell’s lack of a 3-point shot and spacing.

The fit is a major question. Collins is a legitimate starting-caliber four, and there’s no way he gets those starts in Indiana with Sabonis and Turner.

So, let’s look at a more versatile player they could have picked up this year instead of Leaf — OG Anunoby.

Anunoby is a quiet, often overlooked player that builds his game on all-around fundamentals. He is a legitimate defensive force that can guard most players 1-through-4. He has a serviceable shot (38.1 percent beyond the arc on 3.4 attempts per game) and parallels the game and manner of Raptors legend (can we call him that?) Kawhi Leonard.

The aforementioned shooting has improved considerably over the years and took a jump this year (+5.4 percent from the field, +4.9 percent from beyond the arc compared to last year). Though one could attribute his per-game increases to more minutes and opportunity, his per-36 averages have all taken jumps up as well.

It’s tough to say how well Anunoby might have fared outside of Toronto. The Raptors have an extremely strong developmental program and have churned out really chiseled sculptures from raw marble slabs over the last several seasons. We’ll touch on another example of that on the following slide.

Kyle Kuzma was selected later on in this draft, too, but while some might say he would have been worth it at 18, that’s a hard pass from me. Kuzma gains a lot of undue credibility just from donning the same jersey as LeBron James and has not shown the ability to create his own shot or be a consistent decision-maker when not directly set up by one of the game’s greatest facilitators.