NBA 2004 Redraft: Picking between high school and college champions

#13 Pick: Tony Allen (Originally: Sebastian Telfair)

Sebastian Telfair was the kind of prep player who in today’s world would have gone to college for a year and maybe left, maybe stayed and realizing they need more time to grow. Instead, coming right out of high school with all the confidence having viral mixtapes can give you, he went late in the lottery to the remnants of one of the more infamous locker rooms in recent memory.

It would have taken a lot of mental toughness and maturity to enter a locker room with Zach Randolph, Damon Stoudamire and Ruben Patterson. Telfair was not that guy.

Tony Allen sure was though, given the bond he would form with Randolph years later in Memphis and the culture change that brought on the Grit’n’Grind Grizzlies.

Some of that could be because they grew substantially before coming together. It will be ignored for the sake of bringing this to a city that deserves some good basketball given injury-riddled seasons that would come before Damian Lillard was drafted.

Allen’s numbers are not exactly the stuff of legend, posting career averages of 8.1 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game. However, he is a six-time All-Defensive guard and is unselfish in deferring to teammates. Rather than threatening the touches of his older teammates, he would have made life easier for them on the defensive end and picked his spots on offense while they all took over.

With the fourteenth pick in the 2004 NBA Redraft, the Utah Jazz select…