2nd Maybe his athleticism, or lack thereof, means he won't succeed at the next level. Maybe he'll end up taking a while to work on his game and develop like JJ Redick, who is really becoming a solid player for the Magic and earning more minutes than Agent 0. Hard to believe Knicks passed on him for Rautins.

"Fredette, coming off a terrific junior season in which he averaged 22 ppg and shot 44 percent from 3, declared for the 2010 draft but failed to get a first-round promise. Fredette was so interested in the NBA that he gave a late workout to the New York Knicks on the premise that they promise to take him with their second-round pick -- and the Knicks passed after the workout."

or the past few weeks, the most frequent question in my inbox goes something like this: "Why isn't BYU's Jimmer Fredette ranked higher on your Big Board?"

It's a good question. If you're a college basketball fan and don't know who Fredette is, you're missing something special. He's having a scintillating senior season, leading the NCAA in scoring with a 26. 1 ppg average while shooting 48 percent from the field and 41 percent from 3. He averages 4.4 assists per game, 3.4 rebounds and 1.3 steals.

Chad Ford's Top 100
Follow Chad's rankings from now until draft night. Top 100

On Tuesday, Fredette went nuts on Utah, scoring 47 points on 16-for-28 shooting. He dropped 39 points on UNLV in Vegas and 33 points against Arizona this season.

There's a growing consensus that Fredette, along with UConn's Kemba Walker and Duke's injured Kyrie Irving, is one of the three best guards in the country.

But while Irving and Walker are frequently mentioned as potential lottery picks in the 2011 NBA draft, NBA scouts get a bit squeamish when it comes to Fredette.

Fredette, coming off a terrific junior season in which he averaged 22 ppg and shot 44 percent from 3, declared for the 2010 draft but failed to get a first-round promise. Fredette was so interested in the NBA that he gave a late workout to the New York Knicks on the premise that they promise to take him with their second-round pick -- and the Knicks passed after the workout.

While NBA scouts all say they appreciate him as a player, they say all the wrong things when talking about his pro potential. They emphasize that he lacks the lateral quickness to guard his position. They claim he doesn't have the top-end speed of today's great point guards. They position him as a 6-foot-2 shooting guard trapped in a Euroleague player's body. Almost all of them assert he's one dimensional in an Eddie House sort of way.

Of course, scouts said virtually the same thing about a skinny kid from Davidson named Stephen Curry for two years before eventually getting on the Curry bandwagon.

Like Curry, Fredette's been one of the best deep-range shooters in the NCAA for two years running. He's been quick enough to get past his defender and to the free throw line 355 times in the past season and a half. He has a great basketball IQ and would average twice the assists if BYU didn't ask him to carry the offense every night. He's tough, super competitive and fearless.

After Fredette lit up Utah on Tuesday, I went back to a number of scouts and executives to push a little more. Is Fredette really just a mediocre draft prospect? Most of the scouts I spoke with still insisted that he's a second-round pick. A few had him as a late first-rounder.

But two of the sources I spoke with had him in the 15-20 range. Interestingly, the two sources that ranked him highest had brought him in for workouts last year before Fredette withdrew from the draft.

Fredette's coach, Dave Rose, isn't surprised. Rose helped guide Fredette through the draft process last year and said the feedback from the teams he worked out for was positive.

"The underlying theme from all the teams was that they were surprised by how good an athlete he is," Rose told ESPN.com. "He may look a step slow, or maybe he doesn't look the part, but when they got him in and tested his athletic skills, they were really impressed."

Rose said that teams also raved about Fredette's shooting ability. So why didn't someone make him a promise? Rose said the timing was tough thanks to a new NCAA rule that gives underclassmen a narrow window to test the draft waters.

"They were all interested in drafting him, but it was just too early in the process to give him a guarantee. So Jimmer decided to come back and work on his game."

Rose said that Fredette has made his biggest strides transitioning from a scorer into a point guard. "He's really improved his ability to recognize defenses and be able to attack it. He's become really patient and now understands how to get his teammates involved."

So why, exactly, aren't NBA teams fawning over Fredette? Rose has a theory.

"Jimmer's a unique player, and unique players are just harder to scout." Rose said. "The NBA guys are all looking for a prototype. They look for long. They look for explosive athleticism. Jimmer isn't those things. But he does a lot of things that almost no other player in the country can do. Those are things that translate at the NBA level, too."

Rose might be right. One NBA exec said Fredette's workout last year, combined with his improved play this season, has erased most of his doubts.

"We really had all the concerns that you spoke about. Is he quick enough? Can he guard 1s? Will he be able to get to the basket at the next level?" the exec said. "So [when he came in for the workout] we put him up against the quickest guard we could find. And we were really blown away with how well he played. He defended and he still was able to do his thing. He's not a sure thing the way a John Wall or Derrick Rose was. He has to play on the right team with a coach who uses him the right way. But I wouldn't bet against that kid. He's tough, he's more athletic than you think and he really knows how to play.

"I don't know who will or won't be in the draft, and there's guys I'd take ahead of him, but I also know I'd want him on my basketball team. He's going to go higher than people think ... the same way Tyler Hansbrough did a few years ago. We spend so much time talking about tools or lack thereof, but sometimes a guy is just a basketball player."

Fredette has been stuck in the mid-40s on our Big Board all season based on the feedback we've received from NBA scouts and executives. However, after our latest round of interviews, we've moved him up to No. 30. Given that a handful of prospects above him on our Big Board won't declare for the draft, that would project him as a mid- to late-first-round pick. And if Fredette and BYU go off on a huge run in the NCAA tournament, he has the chance to rise even higher.

GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:Chad Ford:

"Fredette, coming off a terrific junior season in which he averaged 22 ppg and shot 44 percent from 3, declared for the 2010 draft but failed to get a first-round promise. Fredette was so interested in the NBA that he gave a late workout to the New York Knicks on the premise that they promise to take him with their second-round pick -- and the Knicks passed after the workout."

Horrible paragraph, most likely written without actually speaking with Jimmer.

This taken from an actual article where he was interviewed.

"I was able to go to Oklahoma City on Monday [May 3], Boston on Wednesday, then the Nets on Thursday, the Knicks on Friday, and I came home [to Glens Falls, N.Y.] that night. My dad came down on Thursday to meet me, and we stayed in a hotel near the Knicks facility; I had no idea until afterward that my dad ended up having to pay for our hotel room that night, though. Everything else on all the trips was great -- teams covered airfare, hotel, drivers. They'd drop me off at the hotel, tell me to order whatever I wanted from room service, and pick me up in the morning to go to the workout.

One day later is a late workout?

"In Oklahoma City, I went against Marquez Haynes, from Texas-Arlington; in Boston, I was there with Jordan Crawford from Xavier, JaJuan Johnson from Purdue, and they had some local kids from Northeastern there, too. Jordan and I flew to New Jersey together and I worked out with him there again, along with Eugene Harvey from Seton Hall. At the Knicks workout, the other point guard there was Bobby Maze from Tennessee. I kind of tweaked my left quad during a sprint early on in the Knicks workout, so we didn't even start the basketball stuff. It got cut short.

Kind of important to note that he actually didn't work out for the Knicks because of the injury?

"As for feedback, it was weird -- all of the teams told me the same thing: that I could go in the 20-40 range. Those were all teams who were looking for point guards and had picks in that range, so I trusted it. I was looking for a first-round guarantee in order to stay in, but no one could give me one, because it was so early in the process, and so much could change between May 8 and the draft.

He wanted a first round guarantee. Knicks could not since they only had 2 2nd round picks

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/luke_winn/05/13/nba.decisions/index.html#ixzz1BP0UQna6

GustavBahler wrote:

orangeblobman wrote:Well, Morrison is diabetic. And Reddick has adjusted well.

C'mon man, he played with diabetes in college and you missed my point about Redick.

Ok, ok, it's true. But here, hello, does Reddick provide something good to his team? Is his presence on a team a net gain right now? I think it is. And if Jimmy can come here, to the Knicks, and if he can provide a net gain, then that's great. No one is looking for him to win MVP in the NBA league, but we just want someone that can contribute. There's no reason to doubt that. Even Reddick contributes.

GustavBahler wrote:

orangeblobman wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

orangeblobman wrote:Well, Morrison is diabetic. And Reddick has adjusted well.

C'mon man, he played with diabetes in college and you missed my point about Redick.

Ok, ok, it's true. But here, hello, does Reddick provide something good to his team? Is his presence on a team a net gain right now? I think it is. And if Jimmy can come here, to the Knicks, and if he can provide a net gain, then that's great. No one is looking for him to win MVP in the NBA league, but we just want someone that can contribute. There's no reason to doubt that. Even Reddick contributes.

Redick has been in the league since 06'. Like I said, Redick is having a good year but it took 4 years to get to that point. I doubt the Knicks would be so patient.

Never said not to draft Fredette, I just don't want to see the Knicks drafting him too high when they have other needs like PG and center.

I see, yea. Well, you know, I don't know enough about Jimmy but we have to be careful when talking about Jimmy in terms of JJ. They're individuals and while JJ might give us a few hints about Jimmy, it's possible that Jimmy's NBA career goes totally differently than JJs.

why listen to this idiot ever?

Ira wrote:Imagine if we came out of the draft with Fields and Fredette on two second round picks.

There is a huge difference between rautins and Jimmer. Rautins was never a star he was role player for Syracuse and then started his senior year. He cant handle the ball very well for a so-called PG--I mean no comparison and I think we will see that next year. Jimmer is going to be much more like steph curry.

JohnWallace44 wrote:I've probably watched more of Rautins than anyone else on this board.

I thought he was an interesting pick and one that I suggested as a possibility here on UK months before the draft. He's got court vision that was very similar to Curry's, but he doesn't have ingrained, pure point skills that Curry does. The guy works his butt off and you saw that from year to year at Syracuse. He went from an end of the bench guy, to a role player, to a key player, to a point-forward on a #1 ranked team.

I have no doubts that Rautins will maximize his talents with the Knicks.

My fear is that if he maximizes his talents, he might be a tad better than Luke Ridnour and I'm not sure where that gets us.

Jimmer looks good and he's putting up crazy numbers, but I think if you're an NBA GM now... you look at potential point guards very differently than if you were evaluating them five years ago.

The league now has Paul, Williams, Rose, Rondo, Westbrook, Curry, Wall, Evans, Collison, Jennings, Holiday... those are all new guys who will be in the league for the next decade. So, if you're evaluating talent at the PG position you're measuring them against those guys in terms of the skills they display now and the skills they'll have soon since a lot of them are relatively raw still.

Jimmer? Let's be honest, he's not going to take a team and lead it past an opponent with one of the guys noted above or any of the old vets I'm leaving out.

The NBA is overflowing with PG talent now so I can see why GM's aren't really going crazy about Jimmer. I don't think they're going crazy about Walker either. Jimmer will be a second unit guy who I would compare to Meeks for Philly.

There is a new standard for PG's in the NBA. That's why I have had a two year long nervous breakdown on this board that we passed up half a dozen very good young point prospects and took Hill instead in the '09 draft. It will take a great deal of work by Walsh and his staff to make up for that mistake in subsequent drafts.

J Wallace--I think Freddette is one of those guys who will be doubted at every level and then go on to conquer.

JohnWallace44 wrote:

As great as Fredette has been, would you take him over Selby who has more raw tools? He's the next PG Fredette would have to jump on the draft boards. No responsible GM is going to pick Fredette over players like this that they can envision going head to head against the best young points in the league.

Hes been shaky at best(selby). Watch Sd state BYU tonight--good game