Lester Hudson is the pick

Posted by Brian Robb on Jun 26, 2009 25991 commenthttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F2009%2F06%2F26%2Flester-hudson-is-the-pick%2FLester+Hudson+is+the+pick2009-06-26+04%3A17%3A59Brian+Robbhttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F%3Fp%3D2599

After a long night of wheeling and dealing amongst almost half the teams in the league, Danny Ainge stuck to his guns about sitting this one out. Instead he waited patiently until the 58th pick in the draft, where the Celtics selected Lester Hudson out of University of Tennessee-Martin.

Hudson is a 24 year old guard who can score with the best of them, averaging 27 points a game this past year for UT-Martin, good for 2nd in the entire nation. Not too shabby for the 58th pick.

Celtics Hub’s Zach Lowe profiled Hudson as a possible pick for the C’s last week and will have a more detailed analysis of Hudson later today. In the meantime, here is an excerpt of Lowe’s analysis of Hudson from last week.

 “His shooting percentages were decent (51 percent from two-point range, 35 percent on a whopping 284 three-point attempts) considering the difficult looks he had to take, and his rebounding numbers are outstanding, according to both LaGree’s numbers and those on HoopsAnalyst. He topped all 21 shooting guards LaGree tracked in DRB rate and ranked sixth in ORB rate, and only three other guards in LaGree’s database swiped the ball from opponents more often than Hudson did. He has a reputation as a solid man-to-man defender. 

So why so little NBA appeal? Well, Hudson turns 25 in August, meaning he’s older than the Celtics starting point guard, their starting center and LeBron James. (Upside: His game is fairly polished). He is fairly turnover prone, though that’s likely to the product of having to do pretty much everything in college. There’s also the slight problem of measuring 6’1” in shoes after being previously listed as 6’3”, though he has a nice wing span at 6’8” if you’re into that sort of thing (and NBA teams are).

Hudson likely won’t amount to much in the NBA, but there’s a chance he could be a useful back-up guard. His role will obviously be much more limited at the pro level, and he should be ready to fill it immediately if given the opportunity.”