7th Pick, Portland Trail Blazers | 2024 Mock Draft
welcome back everyone into the Grand City media mock draft for this year’s 2024 NBA draft joining me to represent the Portland Trailblazers in the first of two lottery picks is Sean hiken and I’m so excited to have you here because there is a lot of like shock and redoing who you think people are going to choose when I send them who’s already off the board but Sean uhuh he comes with confidence today knowing that his player is still on the board um let me just paint the picture for everyone watching who maybe wasn’t so involved in Portland Trailblazers this year uh last year the Blazers officially kind of kicked off their rebuild with selecting scoot number three overall and then obviously dealing um Damen Lillard over to the Bucks they also a 14 this year so like I said there’s two lottery picks and my thought process Sean was that they have invested so much into their back court doing this rebuild you know with Anthony Simons and Jaden sharp and Scoot Henderson um with that four pick I’m like do they look to invest and like do reload that front court or do they just look for like the highest upside in app player to add talent to a young team and so I think those are like your two options there so before I put you on the clock I want to ask you which direction you think the Portland tralers go I don’t think they’re taking another guard like like I’m pretty like at you know to to your point yeah they have you know scoot Henderson who they just took third overall last year and you know he had kind of an up and down rookie season it was rough in a lot of places but I think they’re very encouraged by the way that his season ended and they are you know very comfortable that he’s going to be one of the guys they build around going forward so when you look at uh whether it be you know what either one of the two Kentucky guys Reed Shepard or Rod Dillingham who are kind of the two guys in that mold like you know six3 guards or six2 guards whatever he measured out of the combine yeah I don’t think that’s something that they’re really gonna do I guess I mean I guess the other one like I’ve seen I’ve seen him and this was obviously before we found out yesterday that he has a torn ACL so he might Ball but Nico atopic is the other one that is you know as far as like the guards that are projected to go in that range that one I think you could talk yourself into a little bit just because he’s a bigger guard and so you can talk yourself into oh he can play in different lineups or he you know I but I didn’t think they were going to go that way any way but then him having this knee injury where he’s probably not going to play for all of next year that to me that even more solidifies that that’s not going to be who they would go with at seven yeah okay so eek should we put you on the clock should we just go di in let’s put you on the clock uh for the Portland Trailblazers number seven overall pick you got the spotlight so since the lottery day since they fell because they had the fourth odds they they were number four in odds and they fell back to seven because three teams jumped them in the lottery and since that day my I guess I guess we’ll call it an educated guess like obviously I don’t know what their draft board is but you know this this front office this is the third draft that they’ve uh they’ that they’ve run since uh Joe Cronin took over and brought in you know Mike schmidtz and the rest of his uh front office staff so I kind of have a pretty good idea of the types of swings they like to take and the types of prospects they go after and kind of what their type is and the one to me that checks all of those boxes is Cody Williams from Colorado o I like this one so he is 69 um like good in transition and I think his like one of his biggest upsides is the fact that he’s a good Defender does that fit is that fit a need for what Portland currently has absolutely yeah they were not a good defensive team last year uh now this this this front office the the uh the type of guy that they like to go after they you know they like long athletic Wings basically like they have they have a type like like it’s kind of a it’s kind of a running joke that like you know you just they just want like they could build a whole team of that if they wanted to yeah like I I know that I don’t know what they would have done if they had the number two pick last year for example but I do know that I I think they were very high on Brandon Miller I’ll just say that so like they have a type they have a type they they have a type and you know you look at some of their other like Ryan ruper their second round pick last year who’s French he’s also one of these like super raw High upside you know long Wings who has actually grown since the draft last year but uh that this is just the type of thing they like to do and especially you know whether you know you you you look at a team in a position like Portland like it’s a little bit of a different situation than a team like Memphis for example where the Grizzlies were bad last year because like johnar missed most of the year and all all their guys all their guys were out they weren’t bad because they were in a rebuild they were bad because all their guys were hurt and so if you’re a team like that or a team like I guess you know San Antonio where you’re trying to accelerate stuff around wemi because he’s so good right away you maybe are more targeting or Houston who had somebody else’s pick and that’s why they had the Third pick but they were actually closer to the playin than they were to you know the worst record in the league yeah you maybe want to use the pick to get somebody where you can say this is like a plug and play ready to contribute right now and you know you can put him on a team that’s expected to compete for the playoffs type of situation the Blazers are very much in the beginning stages of their rebuild I know that at the minimum next year they’re planning on being in the lottery again and trying to go after Cooper flag but so somebody like Cody Williams kind of going back to the the dra dra uh portion of this uh like to your point lot of upside a lot of athleticism you know good Defender you know long-term great finisher too from what little I’ve seen of him in college and the Blazers also have some history with the Colorado program Jabari Walker is going into his third year that’s somebody they like a lot and he he and Cody Williams know each other and then also obviously chony Bops is you know a Colorado Legend So he has some ties to the program also so there some of that going on but there’s also like he just fits the type of guy that they would Target and also you know if he’s not ready yet they can play him in the G league for a lot of the year it’s not like they’re trying they’re going to be planning on trying to win a lot of games next year anyway so that would be where I would guess that they go it’s it’s just it’s just a guess though like I know I know they like they haven’t they haven’t brought in I I I I guess by the time this goes out they probably will have but as we’re recording this they haven’t brought in any of the top 10 projected guys from the lottery yet so I don’t know like who they’ve worked out or who they haven’t worked out or who they’re planning to work out and when because they haven’t done any of that yet the workouts that they’ve done so far have been a lot of like projected second rounders or mid to late first rounders or like maybe some guys that could potentially be in play with the 14th pick which is which you know we’ll get to later but uh that is kind of where I would if you if you forced me to pick today who I think they might go with at seven especially if the way that your mock draft is shaken out is the way it shakes out I think Cody Williams is probably the most logical guy for to go with there I like it I like the pick Cody Williams at seven Sean thank you so much for your time today it’s been a pleasure we are less than a month away from the actual NBA draft so not much longer to wait to see how it all shakes out
Kelcey Wright Johnson is joined by Sean Highkin for the seventh overall pick in the Grind City Media 2024 Mock Draft presented by Southland Casino.
The Portland Trail Blazers are on the clock! Who will they take?
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