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Oh mannnnnnn. I can’t believe how good this is
2025 NBA Draft Thread
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by addict4sneakers,
- Start date
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Scoot the goods. Definitely delivered. Victor got that dawg in him. Definitely from a different part of France than the rest of those guys.
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How the **** they create a KD/Gobert hybrid? How is this possible?
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Howwwwwwe
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Cancel game 2. Invite OTE
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Looks like the transition from NBA to FIBA rules have impact Victor a bit on defense.
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Lol
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HOU$TON
formerly convertibleburt
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Really good game and definitely lived up to the hype. Either one will look great in a rockets jersey
elpablo21
Supporter
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7-11 from 3 and last attempt was some bs anyways 
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Scoot speaking like this. He cannot be 18
Lmao. Dude sounding like he been a pro for years
Lmao. Dude sounding like he been a pro for years
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Definitely been here before. Not as ‘polished’ as Cade but you can tell that ignite program got him right. Win for ignite for sure
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Game was excellent and fun to watch
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Last edited:
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Vic da gawd
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That **** delivered. Both these kids are the goods.
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Soon as I get to my seat Vic hits a pull ul 3. Scoot definitely took this matchup personally and in the first half he was looking like the better prospect. I was thinking Vic needs to get Americanized because he aint got that dawg in him like Scoot. Felt like when I went to see Lonzo against USCAye how was it in person? Obviously incredible!!! What a legendary matchup
.2nd half Vic shut all that down. Got whatever he wanted in the 3rd and showed why he's generational. He's slim but he has a solid frame. Doesn't look like he'll have any trouble putting on weight at all. Definitely more KG than KD as far as build. Only slowed down after resting too long to start the 4th. He kinda falls in love with the jumper but can't even blame him when he's feeling it. The crossover into the stepback for 3 free throws...mans legit looked like Steph
. Doesn't make any sense how fluid he is. I used to say KD doesn't get enough recognition for being a freak athlete but Vic is the evolution of that. I might be drunk off the hype from last night but I could see him averaging 30 out the gate. He's not a human being
Last edited:
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Why Mike Schmitz left ESPN to join Trail Blazers’ front office: ‘I was missing that journey’
Mike Schmitz was sitting outside one morning this summer, barely shvitzing in the Las Vegas morning heat, recounting the moment he knew he made the right decision to leave the well-known confines of ESPN for the Portland Trail Blazers front office. It had come just a few days into the job and he was talking to his fiancé. It was not just that he felt he found his calling — “I was meant to do this,” he remembered telling her — but that he had found a new life and colleagues he loved too.
The Blazers hired Schmitz to be their assistant general manager, a sometimes anonymous job for a very public candidate. Schmitz was ESPN’s draft guru until this spring, and a contributor to the DraftExpress scouting service. He built up a Twitter account with more than 100,000 followers — more than twice as many as Blazers guard Anfernee Simons, who just signed a $100 million deal — and had reached what was the pinnacle of a fast-rising media career.
But Schmitz, near the mountaintop in that job, missed the climb.
“It’s all about the journey, and I was missing that journey,” he said. “So when you start to go through that journey, in the pre-draft and the workouts, in the war room, you get to know your colleagues. I love that s—. Like that’s what I live for. Being around everybody, and growing and having debate.”
The changeover marks what is an unexpected path to the NBA and makes Schmitz the most well-known first-year executive in the league. He is also among a bevy of new faces in a refurbished front office in Portland, which has undergone a makeover since Joe Cronin officially took over last season.
He is among the three assistant general managers the franchise added this year — Andrae Patterson and Sergi Oliva were also hired. The Blazers continued to expand their front office this offseason, adding members to the analytics staff, hiring a new director of player development, and three new scouts — including two international scouts and WNBA legend Tina Thompson domestically.
Cronin said he was impressed by Schmitz’s skill for player evaluations. On television and on the ESPN website, Schmitz brought granularity to what can be a broad strokes exercise. He traveled relentlessly. His film breakdowns alongside draft prospects became a valuable tool for viewers every year.
“Always liked his eye for talent,” Cronin said. “His motor was always super impressive. Just at every game all across the world, just constantly in the gym. And that’s so important to have that love and passion for the game. Scouting can be really difficult sometimes. It’s a ton of travel, it’s long days, and he just had this energy that I thought was really intriguing.”
While the NBA Draft was his purview at ESPN, Schmitz will take on a larger portfolio with the Trail Blazers. Cronin intends for him to be a “big part” of the process when the Blazers design their roster. He feels Schmitz is already on his way to becoming “a holistic NBA executive,” which includes getting involved in deal-making, learning the salary cap, getting well-suited in analytics and more.
Schmitz, 32, came to Portland after a recruiting process that began when Cronin shed the interim tag as general manager. Schmitz said there was mutual interest on both sides. He knew the Blazers were looking to build out their front office, and Cronin knew Schmitz was looking to make a jump to the team side. Talks accelerated during the draft combine in Chicago in May.
That made for a hectic week for Schmitz. He juggled his duties with ESPN while also looking into this next opportunity. He was asked about the Blazers’ draft pick on an ESPN podcast the day after the lottery. His response? Take Shaedon Sharpe if he was still on the board. A month later, Portland did just that at No. 7.
When he got hired, that clip went viral. But Schmitz said that at that point the talks with the Blazers were not yet really involved.
“If I was I would be a little more uncomfortable … not insanely uncomfortable,” he said. “You know, my whole job had been uncomfortable in certain spots for a while.”
Still, Schmitz continued to write for the website and share his opinions. On May 25, he tweeted he had spent time with Jabari Walker; the Blazers took him in the second round a month later. When ESPN reported on May 27 the Blazers were hiring Schmitz, it finally came out into the open.
That also made for some awkward appearances. Originally, the Blazers said he would remain in his public-facing role at ESPN and wouldn’t officially join the organization until after the draft. But the conflict of interests with having a future member of a team’s front office talking publicly about the draft became too obvious and difficult to ignore. The NBA got involved to resolve the situation, according to league sources. Schmitz ultimately joined the Blazers ahead of the draft, and ESPN pivoted.
It was an abrupt stop to his media career and time with a company toward which he still has warm feelings.
“I’m really thankful to ESPN,” Schmitz said. “I wouldn’t be here without all the opportunity. They gave me the freedom to travel the depths of the earth to watch players and figure out who’s good.”
The change also allowed Schmitz to be in the Blazers’ war room on draft night, which he called an “amazing” experience. It was a highlight for someone who enrolled at the University of Arizona just looking for a way to break into the sport before making an unconventional climb up through the industry over the last decade.
Schmitz was a four-year high school basketball player in Arizona but was just 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds as a senior. He said he grew six inches the summer before college, but by then it was too late to keep his career going.
He sensed a hole in the market for draft analysis, so he taught himself how to edit videos and started ripping video from torrent sites to make breakdowns of college prospects. He started writing for the Valley of the Suns, then a TrueHoop affiliate blog — just another marketing major with a love of basketball. Schmitz also reached out to Jonathan Givony, the founder of DraftExpress, and offered to break down first-round picks for free. His first video analyzed Perry Jones – Schmitz effusively praised the then-Baylor star and Givony ripped it apart, he said. Schmitz soon sent over another attempt, this one more palatable.
After working for one season as a video coordinator in the G League after college, Schmitz got pulled back into media by Givony. The two spent most of the next decade working together as DraftExpress grew from an independent site to one that partnered with Yahoo! and then ESPN.
That makes him the rare executive with a nearly decade-long public record of his opinions on players.
“I think it’s good,” he said. “It holds you accountable. I think a lot of times now in front offices you can have a guy really high or way too low or whatever it is and the people in your room will know that as that player is becoming an All-Star and a bunch of people in your office hated him or whatever it is. And no one will know. For me if I go out and bang the table for — I’m trying to think of some of my worst — Mario Hezonja, then people will remember that. But it holds you accountable and it’s important that you do the work. So you don’t just throw out some outlandish takes about some guy who can’t play being the number-one pick or whatever it is.”
“What it’s really done is it’s helped me build a relationship with all these players,” he said later. “Especially the film breakdowns I’ve done with all these guys.”
That work, Schmitz said, helped him build relationships with people across the sport. It may have helped him and the Blazers get eyes on a little-seen prospect ahead of the draft as well.
The night Cronin drafted Sharpe, he said they were beneficiaries of having new hires in places who had seen him. Schmitz had seen plenty of Sharpe through his work at ESPN and as an assistant coach for the Ugandan national team, which made him one of the few with a long track record evaluating a prospect who had not played for a year before he went in the lottery in June.
Schmitz said he first saw Sharpe when Sharpe was just a little-known 15-year-old in Canada and thought he was a high-major recruit with NBA potential. He continued to track Sharpe at Sunrise Christian Academy and then even more closely when he arrived at Dream City Christian School in Arizona, where Schmitz is from and where he was a teammate of current Ugandan national team player Arthur Kaluma. Schmitz would go to watch Kaluma and catch Sharpe’s ascent. When Sharpe led the EYBL in scoring at Nike’s Peach Jam, Schmitz was there. He also saw Sharpe play 5-on-5 during an open practice at Kentucky, where Schmitz said he “was incredible.”
“I’m glad I was able to provide some information, but to say I was like the driving force of why we drafted him would be inaccurate,” Schmitz said. “It was a collective deal from top to bottom.”
But Schmitz’s public praise for Sharpe was evident by draft night. In May, in a published post for ESPN, he named Sharpe as one of the players outside the top three prospects who could break through the draft’s top tier. It became one of the few times where other teams had a peek into the thinking of a franchise’s executives.
While Cronin admits it wasn’t ideal, he hired Schmitz thinking about a longer timeline.
“You knew it wouldn’t be perfectly seamless,” he said. “That there will be information out there, and because as teams we are always trying to hold the information as close to your best as you can. But I didn’t really care about that. I knew that him coming in this was a long-term play that to get here and be with us as soon as possible was great. To add him to our draft group was, you know, just an incredible add for us.”
This year, Schmitz will disappear. He’ll go back on the road, file reports and travel across the world. But this time, he’ll try do so in anonymity.
For him, it will be a welcome change. After a decade scouting players for public consumption, he has a much more limited audience. He has already felt some of the benefits.
That Twitter account, the one with 102,700-plus followers, hasn’t posted since late-May. It’s what Schmitz has loved the most.
“No burners,” he said. “It’s almost like a weight lifted. I really enjoyed the interaction and all that and being able to get your work out there. But it becomes a little bit of a burden in some ways. You always have to feel connected to this (picks up phone) and put something out, respond to these people, post this Instagram, take this video, put it up, then you’re getting a call from some guy that you know, ‘Why do you have this guy too high or too low?’ Or whatever.
“It’s really nice to be in the shadows a little bit more.”
Mike Schmitz was sitting outside one morning this summer, barely shvitzing in the Las Vegas morning heat, recounting the moment he knew he made the right decision to leave the well-known confines of ESPN for the Portland Trail Blazers front office. It had come just a few days into the job and he was talking to his fiancé. It was not just that he felt he found his calling — “I was meant to do this,” he remembered telling her — but that he had found a new life and colleagues he loved too.
The Blazers hired Schmitz to be their assistant general manager, a sometimes anonymous job for a very public candidate. Schmitz was ESPN’s draft guru until this spring, and a contributor to the DraftExpress scouting service. He built up a Twitter account with more than 100,000 followers — more than twice as many as Blazers guard Anfernee Simons, who just signed a $100 million deal — and had reached what was the pinnacle of a fast-rising media career.
But Schmitz, near the mountaintop in that job, missed the climb.
“It’s all about the journey, and I was missing that journey,” he said. “So when you start to go through that journey, in the pre-draft and the workouts, in the war room, you get to know your colleagues. I love that s—. Like that’s what I live for. Being around everybody, and growing and having debate.”
The changeover marks what is an unexpected path to the NBA and makes Schmitz the most well-known first-year executive in the league. He is also among a bevy of new faces in a refurbished front office in Portland, which has undergone a makeover since Joe Cronin officially took over last season.
He is among the three assistant general managers the franchise added this year — Andrae Patterson and Sergi Oliva were also hired. The Blazers continued to expand their front office this offseason, adding members to the analytics staff, hiring a new director of player development, and three new scouts — including two international scouts and WNBA legend Tina Thompson domestically.
Cronin said he was impressed by Schmitz’s skill for player evaluations. On television and on the ESPN website, Schmitz brought granularity to what can be a broad strokes exercise. He traveled relentlessly. His film breakdowns alongside draft prospects became a valuable tool for viewers every year.
“Always liked his eye for talent,” Cronin said. “His motor was always super impressive. Just at every game all across the world, just constantly in the gym. And that’s so important to have that love and passion for the game. Scouting can be really difficult sometimes. It’s a ton of travel, it’s long days, and he just had this energy that I thought was really intriguing.”
While the NBA Draft was his purview at ESPN, Schmitz will take on a larger portfolio with the Trail Blazers. Cronin intends for him to be a “big part” of the process when the Blazers design their roster. He feels Schmitz is already on his way to becoming “a holistic NBA executive,” which includes getting involved in deal-making, learning the salary cap, getting well-suited in analytics and more.
Schmitz, 32, came to Portland after a recruiting process that began when Cronin shed the interim tag as general manager. Schmitz said there was mutual interest on both sides. He knew the Blazers were looking to build out their front office, and Cronin knew Schmitz was looking to make a jump to the team side. Talks accelerated during the draft combine in Chicago in May.
That made for a hectic week for Schmitz. He juggled his duties with ESPN while also looking into this next opportunity. He was asked about the Blazers’ draft pick on an ESPN podcast the day after the lottery. His response? Take Shaedon Sharpe if he was still on the board. A month later, Portland did just that at No. 7.
When he got hired, that clip went viral. But Schmitz said that at that point the talks with the Blazers were not yet really involved.
“If I was I would be a little more uncomfortable … not insanely uncomfortable,” he said. “You know, my whole job had been uncomfortable in certain spots for a while.”
Still, Schmitz continued to write for the website and share his opinions. On May 25, he tweeted he had spent time with Jabari Walker; the Blazers took him in the second round a month later. When ESPN reported on May 27 the Blazers were hiring Schmitz, it finally came out into the open.
That also made for some awkward appearances. Originally, the Blazers said he would remain in his public-facing role at ESPN and wouldn’t officially join the organization until after the draft. But the conflict of interests with having a future member of a team’s front office talking publicly about the draft became too obvious and difficult to ignore. The NBA got involved to resolve the situation, according to league sources. Schmitz ultimately joined the Blazers ahead of the draft, and ESPN pivoted.
It was an abrupt stop to his media career and time with a company toward which he still has warm feelings.
“I’m really thankful to ESPN,” Schmitz said. “I wouldn’t be here without all the opportunity. They gave me the freedom to travel the depths of the earth to watch players and figure out who’s good.”
The change also allowed Schmitz to be in the Blazers’ war room on draft night, which he called an “amazing” experience. It was a highlight for someone who enrolled at the University of Arizona just looking for a way to break into the sport before making an unconventional climb up through the industry over the last decade.
Schmitz was a four-year high school basketball player in Arizona but was just 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds as a senior. He said he grew six inches the summer before college, but by then it was too late to keep his career going.
He sensed a hole in the market for draft analysis, so he taught himself how to edit videos and started ripping video from torrent sites to make breakdowns of college prospects. He started writing for the Valley of the Suns, then a TrueHoop affiliate blog — just another marketing major with a love of basketball. Schmitz also reached out to Jonathan Givony, the founder of DraftExpress, and offered to break down first-round picks for free. His first video analyzed Perry Jones – Schmitz effusively praised the then-Baylor star and Givony ripped it apart, he said. Schmitz soon sent over another attempt, this one more palatable.
After working for one season as a video coordinator in the G League after college, Schmitz got pulled back into media by Givony. The two spent most of the next decade working together as DraftExpress grew from an independent site to one that partnered with Yahoo! and then ESPN.
That makes him the rare executive with a nearly decade-long public record of his opinions on players.
“I think it’s good,” he said. “It holds you accountable. I think a lot of times now in front offices you can have a guy really high or way too low or whatever it is and the people in your room will know that as that player is becoming an All-Star and a bunch of people in your office hated him or whatever it is. And no one will know. For me if I go out and bang the table for — I’m trying to think of some of my worst — Mario Hezonja, then people will remember that. But it holds you accountable and it’s important that you do the work. So you don’t just throw out some outlandish takes about some guy who can’t play being the number-one pick or whatever it is.”
“What it’s really done is it’s helped me build a relationship with all these players,” he said later. “Especially the film breakdowns I’ve done with all these guys.”
That work, Schmitz said, helped him build relationships with people across the sport. It may have helped him and the Blazers get eyes on a little-seen prospect ahead of the draft as well.
The night Cronin drafted Sharpe, he said they were beneficiaries of having new hires in places who had seen him. Schmitz had seen plenty of Sharpe through his work at ESPN and as an assistant coach for the Ugandan national team, which made him one of the few with a long track record evaluating a prospect who had not played for a year before he went in the lottery in June.
Schmitz said he first saw Sharpe when Sharpe was just a little-known 15-year-old in Canada and thought he was a high-major recruit with NBA potential. He continued to track Sharpe at Sunrise Christian Academy and then even more closely when he arrived at Dream City Christian School in Arizona, where Schmitz is from and where he was a teammate of current Ugandan national team player Arthur Kaluma. Schmitz would go to watch Kaluma and catch Sharpe’s ascent. When Sharpe led the EYBL in scoring at Nike’s Peach Jam, Schmitz was there. He also saw Sharpe play 5-on-5 during an open practice at Kentucky, where Schmitz said he “was incredible.”
“I’m glad I was able to provide some information, but to say I was like the driving force of why we drafted him would be inaccurate,” Schmitz said. “It was a collective deal from top to bottom.”
But Schmitz’s public praise for Sharpe was evident by draft night. In May, in a published post for ESPN, he named Sharpe as one of the players outside the top three prospects who could break through the draft’s top tier. It became one of the few times where other teams had a peek into the thinking of a franchise’s executives.
While Cronin admits it wasn’t ideal, he hired Schmitz thinking about a longer timeline.
“You knew it wouldn’t be perfectly seamless,” he said. “That there will be information out there, and because as teams we are always trying to hold the information as close to your best as you can. But I didn’t really care about that. I knew that him coming in this was a long-term play that to get here and be with us as soon as possible was great. To add him to our draft group was, you know, just an incredible add for us.”
This year, Schmitz will disappear. He’ll go back on the road, file reports and travel across the world. But this time, he’ll try do so in anonymity.
For him, it will be a welcome change. After a decade scouting players for public consumption, he has a much more limited audience. He has already felt some of the benefits.
That Twitter account, the one with 102,700-plus followers, hasn’t posted since late-May. It’s what Schmitz has loved the most.
“No burners,” he said. “It’s almost like a weight lifted. I really enjoyed the interaction and all that and being able to get your work out there. But it becomes a little bit of a burden in some ways. You always have to feel connected to this (picks up phone) and put something out, respond to these people, post this Instagram, take this video, put it up, then you’re getting a call from some guy that you know, ‘Why do you have this guy too high or too low?’ Or whatever.
“It’s really nice to be in the shadows a little bit more.”
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Dunno remember if Schmitz used to post better quality vids but somebody get Givony some got damb suitable equipment
Givony be posting on IG and Twitter what appears to be him recording off his television with a flip phone. Bizarre
Givony be posting on IG and Twitter what appears to be him recording off his television with a flip phone. Bizarre
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Vic is going to be the best player ever
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