2006: Jazz select Ronnie Brewer (14), Dee Brown (46) and Paul Millsap (47)
In all honesty, the Jazz should feel pretty good about the 2006 NBA Draft, especially considering that their late-second round pick, Paul Millsap, was leaps and bounds better than four of the top five picks selected that year.
This is particularly true given that the No. 1 pick that year was Andrea Bargnani, who isn’t far from Kwame Brown as the worst No. 1 pick overall ever.
While Ronnie Brewer was a solid player for the Jazz during his short stint in Utah, he seemingly plateaued after his third season and never thrived on any other team in the league. Despite several positive qualities, Brewer was never quite the scorer the Jazz needed him to be and he posted a horrible three-point percentage of 25.4 for his career. This was unacceptable for a shooting guard/small forward of Brewer’s size.
The two players that really stand out that would have been available to the Jazz were Rajon Rondo and Kyle Lowry. While Brewer was a mediocre role player for the Jazz, Rondo was playing a key role for an elite Boston Celtics team that won the 2008 NBA Championship.
However, while Rondo’s career has certainly taken a sharp decline, Lowry remains one of the best point guards in the league and would have definitely been the best option for the Jazz at the 14th pick.
In 2015-16, Lowry put up his best season yet, averaging 21.2 points and 6.4 assists per game while shooting a career high 38.8 percent from behind the arc.
When the Jazz selected Dee Brown, there was quite a bit of excitement about his potential as a backup to the recently acquired Deron Williams. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly pan out as Brown played just one year with the Jazz as part of a short, three-year career.
The best pick available after Brown was undoubtedly the one that the Jazz snatched up next, Paul Millsap.
While we’ve certainly seen some disappointing Jazz picks thus far, the Millsap pick is evidence of just how hard predicting the draft can be. Despite being selected 47th, Millsap was easily one of the five best players to come out of the 2006 draft and Utah definitely made the right choice by selecting him.
Despite putting up mediocre stats in his first years in Utah (largely due to coming off the bench behind Boozer), Millsap exploded in 2010-11 as Utah’s full-time starter at power forward, logging 17.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game on 53.1 percent shooting.
Millsap has continued to improve as a member of the Atlanta Hawks, earning three straight All-Star appearances from 2013 to 2016.
Assuming in this hypothetical analysis of what “could have been” that the Jazz had instead opted to pass on Dee Brown and take Millsap with the 46th pick, the remaining players drafted weren’t all that much more promising than Brown.
However, in 2006 current NBA player C.J. Watson, who has served as a reliable role player on a number of teams, would have been a solid option compared to the other players available. Given that Watson is still in the league and put up decent numbers of 10 points per game and 40 percent three-point shooting as recently as 2014-15, he would’ve been a much better selection than Brown with the Jazz’s final draft pick.
Who they should have taken: Kyle Lowry (24), Paul Millsap (47), C.J. Watson (Undrafted)
Next: 2007