NBA Draft: Re-drafting the historic 2009 NBA Draft

Now you and I both know that if the Utah Jazz had a chance to draft a player like Tyler Hansbrough in this spot, they absolutely would. This is the same organization that would later draft Duke Blue Devils guard Grayson Allen in the first round, to taking Hansbrough wouldn’t be too far of a departure from that.

Hansbrough left the North Carolina Tar Heels as one of the most dominant college players ever. He finished his four-year amateur career with averages of 20.6 points and 8.6 rebounds, a 61.3 true shooting percentage, .260 WS/40 and enough awards to fill multiple shelves in his house.

That being said, you didn’t need to watch too many Tar Heels games to know that Hansbrough would have a tougher time in the NBA than he did in the ACC.

Even though Hansbrough eventually took on a limited bench role for the entirety of his career, he still would’ve given the Jazz more than real-life draft pick Eric Maynor did. Maynor played all of 26 games for the jazz in 2009-10 before they traded him to the Oklahoma City Thunder for the much-needed Peter Fehse.

Feshe man so anonymous that Basketball-Reference doesn’t even have a page for him and that site has pages for just about everybody. Maynor bounced around for a few other teams and hasn’t played an NBA game since 2014, amassing 3.3 win shares in five seasons.

Hansbrough checked the boxes of just about every adjective used for white players, so his contributions on those Deron Williams-led Jazz teams, however minute, would’ve been greatly appreciated by the Salt Lake City faithful.