2014 NBA Draft: Ben Howland's UCLA Recruits Go Three for Three in the First Round

Tell me again, how does a team with three first rounders, all Howland recruits, lose in the Sweet Sixteen?  Never mind, it's a rhetorical question.  Let's celebrate three young Bruins achieving their dream.

Zach LaVine was selected #13, a lottery pick, by the Minnesota.  Zach, ostensibly, joins former Bruins Kevin Love, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Shabazz Muhammad on the Timberwolves.  Love and Muhammad might not be on the floor, or bench, by the time Zach shows up.  The good news for Zach is that there shouldn't be much pressure in Minnesota.  The lowly Timberwolves are perennially in the lottery, and Zach will start camp behind point guards Ricky Rubio and Jose Barea and shooting guard Kevin Martin when camp opens.  The bad news:  well, it's Minnesota -- Love can't wait to get out of there.

In probably the second biggest shock of the draft, Jordan Adams was selected #22, before Rodney Hood and Shabazz Napier,  by Memphis.  Great news for Jordan!  Memphis is a nice team that plays with three guards:  PG Mike Conley and SG's Tony Allen and Courtney Lee.  They're regarded as a slow and rugged defensive team.  This might be a good situation for Jordan as Memphis needed to add scoring punch.

Kyle Anderson was selected #30 by the San Antonio Spurs.  Whew!  The bright side:  he joins the best organization on the planet right now.  He's a good fit in that Kyle is a "High IQ" guy in the Spurs mold, but he's just not a defender like the Spurs are used to playing.  If anyone can work his magic on Kyle, it would be Greg Popovich.

As I said yesterday, Zach and Kyle were thought to be locks for the first round -- we just wanted to know how early Zach would go based on glowing analyses like this one.  Though Kyle made us all nervous, the real question seemed to be whether Jordan would make it three for three.  We all, including yours truly, thought for sure Jordan was coming back to the Bruins for his Junior year.  His midnight change of heart was a shocker. I speculated on the reasons for the reversal, and apparently the hangers-on finally got to him. I went over why entering the draft early without being fairly certain you would be a first round selection was not a good idea, even though some said the second round wasn't so bad. In the end, Jordan was right, and he went before Kyle.

Oh.  In the other first round news:

-Cleveland made Andrew Wiggins from Kansas the overall number one pick. Jabari Parker, from Duke, was selected second by Milwaukee.  Check NBA.com 's draft board for all picks.

-Joel Embiid, once expected to be the number one selection, fell to #3.  Embiid already had back problems which kept him out of the NCAA tournament, and his stock fell further after he recently reported a stress fracture in his right foot. This slot was actually higher than many late mock drafts predicted.

-For LA fans, the Lakers used the seventh pick to select Julius Randle. The Clippers selected with C.J. Wilcox of Washington with the 28th pick.

-The first trade sent Doug McDermott (plus a current player), selected 11th by Denver, to Chicago for the 16th (center Jusuf Nurkic from Croatia) and 19thpicks (Gary Harris from Michigan State) and a 2015 second round pick.  Denver adds unexpected talent to go with Arron Afflalo, traded to the Nuggets from Orlando.  Chicago, what are you doing?  Toronto selected Bruno Caboclo from Brazil at #20, so they're even dumber.

-Trade number two saw the Philadelphia traded Elford Payton of Louisiana-Lafayettte, picked tenth, to the Orlando Magic for Dario Saricfrom Croatia (plus future first and second round selections), picked twelfth by them.  Saric signed a contract to in Turkey the next two years.

-Shabazz Napier, selected #24 by Charlotte, was traded to Miami for the 26th pick (P.J. Hairston -- D-League) plus Norris Cole in an effort to keep Lebron James.  Good move by the Heat.  Second best trade after Denver.