OK, so it’s J.J. Hickson.
Message boards and talk radio shows are loaded with folks crying “foul” over Danny Ferry’s decision to select the power forward out of North Carolina State. Everybody needs to calm down. It’s one player, and, no matter who the Cavs selected with the 19th pick, they weren’t going to get someone who would instantly elevate the team to championship caliber.There’s still work to be done. Seeing a scorer like a Michael Redd in a Cleveland uniform next season would be cause for excitement. But don’t give up hope, Cavs fans. A couple of moves that Ferry made later in the night may yet pay dividends. He sent a 2009 second round pick to Miami for the draft rights to Kansas forward Darnell Jackson, and then purchased the rights to Kansas center Sasha Kaun from Seattle. Both were second round picks.
Jackson is intriguing. He’s 6-8, 250, and averaged 11 points and almost seven rebounds a game (tops on the team) for the NCAA champion Jayhawks. More important, he put up those numbers on the national stage, and was part of the pressure-cooker that is the NCAA tournament, all the way through the Final Four and the title game.
Kaun (6-11, 250) averaged seven points and four rebounds as a reserve center. He’s apparently headed to Moscow to play, but could develop into a long-term project. Or, he could be trade bait. So could Jackson. So could Hickson.
Assuming Hickson stays with the Cavs, however, he’ll be expected to be a solid "rotational" player, as Ferry put it. And that may be why Cleveland passed on selecting GlenOak and Ohio State product Kosta Koufos, who later went to the Utah Jazz. Rather than have Koufos intern behind Zydrunas Ilgauskas for a few years, Ferry apparently felt a player like Hickson could establish himself in the rotation and make a contribution right away. Hickson led the Wolfpack in scoring (14.8 ppg), rebounding (8.5) and blocked shots (1.5) as a freshman, so I’m not sure what more fans would ask him to do at age 19. He's an athletic player with basketball skills and strength who the Cavs had rated very highly.
Regardless of who was drafted, it’s not likely that Ferry’s offseason activities are finished.
