Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 8:00 am  |  11 responses

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SLAMonline Mock Draft: DaJuan Summers, No. 27

How does a player so versatile get this slept on?

by Vincent Thomas / @vincecathomas

With the 27th pick in the 2009 SLAMonline Mock Draft, the Memphis Grizzlies select…

DaJuan Summers.

Don’t let his modest 14 ppg and 4 rpg, fool you.  This dude is a gem and essential for the Memphis Mission.  We make this selection because what we need now, to start building a contender, is versatility off the bench—talented hole-fillers. Contenders and eventual champions are comprised of players that fulfill specified roles. That’s how the Lakers got down, that’s how the Cs got down. Trevor Ariza was just an athlete on the Orlando Magic. He was a game-changer with the Lakers because he knew exactly what was needed of him.

I see DaJuan Summers being a Lamar Odom-type for our squad. We already have our understated orchestrator at point (Mike Conley), two dynamic swing man (O.J. Mayo and Rudy Gay), a brawny, scoring power forward (Marc Gasol) and a rebounding, shot-blocking center (our No. 1 draft pick, Hasheem Thabeet). That’s our starting five.

What we get with Summers is a natural 3 that can shoot and handle, plus he’s got court vision. He’s 6-8, 241 pounds—that means he can spend some time at the 4 in spot-duty. Truth be told, he can sub sporadically at the 2-guard spot. He’s that versatile. He’s a bit raw, but we have time for him to develop. You see how the team is developing, though.

When explaining our pick of Thabeet over Rubio, I told you were trying to build a young team with an identity. The only way we do that is to get the necessary composite parts. Summers is a piece of the puzzle that, in our opinion, has the potential to be so good that we might have the uneviable task of figuring out how to keep him on our payroll in four years. The “experts” putting out these mock drafts have him going in the second round, so picking him here might seem high. But, we think it’s a steal.

Vincent Thomas is a columnist and feature writer for SLAM, a contributing commentator for ESPN and writes the weekly “From The Floor” column for NBA.com. You can email him your feedback at vincethomas79@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @vincecathomas.