I think the correct answer is this:

The bad news is, he looked like a bust.

The good news is, he looked like a bust in summer league. That is a slight indication, but he's got a good 2-3 years before he can be considered truly a "bust."

 I hate picking around 6-10. You think that you should be getting a good player, but if you look at the list of guys drafted around there, you find that more than half of them never seem to turn into the player you were hoping for.

 Players who were taken #8 - Shawn Respert, Todd Day, Adonal Foyle, DeSagnia Diop, Channing Frye, Brendan Wright,

woodsboy:

but if you look at the list of guys drafted around there, you find that more than half of them never seem to turn into the player you were hoping for.

If "never turning out to be the player you had hoped for" is the standard, then most people drafted #1 are busts.

Starting with 1990 these are #1s that have underachieved as far as #1 picks go: Glenn Robinson, Joe Smith, Michael Olowokandi, Kenyon Martin, Kwame Brown, and Bogut, Bargnani, and Oden are still question marks.  My point is that I don't think that's a very fair standard to apply to picks because often our expectations are much too high.

The main criticism of Alexander going into the draft was his lack of basketball IQ, due to his lack of playing basketball most of his life, like the other players.  He is probably totally lost out there on the court and is of course going to look like crap.  We might have to wait longer on Joe before we get a good read on him.  I think he will be good if he figures out the mental part of the game.

Just a quick ? Did anyone in this form think that Alexander was going to be a stud?  When they made the pick all I thought was he'd be at best a top sixth man in the league.