Jay Bilas: Nets can find value pick in 20s

Jay Bilas doesn't feel this is a watered down draft.

Bilas, ESPN's college basketball analyst, thinks the Nets can find value if they stay pat at No. 22. In Bilas' eyes, there's should still be plenty of talent available in the latter stages of the first round when the draft gets going at the Barclays Center Thursday night.

"I believe that this being a weak draft has been totally overblown," Bilas said on a conference call Wednesday. "I do agree with a lot of my colleagues that say there is no no?brainer No. 1 pick or no no?brainer, obvious All?Star or Hall of Famer in the crew. Like when LeBron James came out, it didn't take a genius to figure out that guy was going to be pretty good and same thing with Kevin Durant.

"You really believed he was going to lead the league in scoring. You knew that. There are some question marks at the top. In most drafts, the top five players in this year's draft probably wouldn't go in the top five. But the way I see it, if this draft started at No. 5, the first thing David Stern did tomorrow night would be to come out and say, 'With the fifth pick, the Cleveland Cavaliers select' and we'd say this is a deep draft. There are a lot of players in this draft.

"But it's not. So we're starting at one and we don't have a lot of traditional one through four, one through five picks. But we've still got a lot of really good players. So you get down into the 20s where you're talking about, there are a lot of good values there that are going to be solid players.

"I don't subscribe to this is a weak draft, therefore if you're not drafting in the top five, then you've got a real problem. I don't believe that."