“With the 54th pick in the 2013 NBA draft, the Washington Wizards select Arsalan Kazemi,” said future NBA commissioner Adam Silver Thursday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Kazemi was the lone Duck to be drafted, going late in the second round to Washington. He was immediately traded to the Philadelphia 76ers. Statistically, Kazemi, being drafted where he was, doesn’t have a great shot at a long and lustrous NBA career. In 2010, the average length of an NBA career was a little more than six seasons. The average for players who played a career average of fewer than 12 minutes per game was two.
However, Kazemi has a few things going for him. First, advanced stats guys love him. He has a great motor, a knack for rebounding and does a lot of things on the court that don’t show up in the box score. In today’s NBA, that’s huge. Every team in the league, in some form or another, has hired an advanced stats guy as a consultant. This will help Kazemi’s chances of staying in the league immensely.
“Kazemi is another favorite of the analytics crowd,” Chad Ford wrote on ESPN.com. “He’s not a great scorer, but he’s one of those guys who just makes everyone around him better.”
Second, and most important, Kazemi fell into an ideal situation with the 76ers. They easily had the best draft in the league, trading for the projected first overall pick (he slipped to sixth because of character issues), Nerlens Noel. They traded their All-Star point guard, Jrue Holiday, to get him, but also received a 2014 first round pick. With their own first rounder, the 76ers nabbed Syracuse point guard Michael Carter-Williams to replace Holiday.
Aside from having some exciting new players on his team this season, Kazemi will benefit from the plan in Philly. The team is in a rebuilding stage. Andrew Bynum will likely not play for them, Holiday is gone, and all the focus is on developing young players. They have zero playoff aspirations and will likely be in contention for the first pick in the 2014 draft. This means that Kazemi could possibly see more playing time on Philly than any other team in the league.
However, there are some uncertainties. The largest is that currently they have no coach and haven’t expressed definite interest in anyone. The rumors coming out of Philadelphia are that the front office was waiting to see how the draft played out before starting their coaching search. They want to hire a guy who’s on board with the plan and can develop their young players, which could end up working out in Kazemi’s favor.
It will be a few years before the 76ers are a threat in the playoffs, but they have put themselves in position to have a very bright future. Kazemi has a great opportunity to get playing time and prove to the organization that he can be a part of that long-term plan. His good attitude in the locker room and hard work on the court should do nothing but help his chances. It really is an ideal fit for the Oregon fan favorite.