Right out of the gate let me say I was very worried the day of the draft because I felt (and still do) that a few teams passed us by in efforts to win a title. I did not give much thought to our 58th pick the night of the draft and spent the evening stewing about the day down here in Houston. Easy to do since it has been over 100 for about two weeks.
Then I decided to give Danny the benefit of the doubt since he has been brilliant in the second round over the years. What I found was quite impressive: Every pre draft work out I could find (The Kings, Atlanta, Houston a few other that slip my mind) talked about not only was Hudson a surprise, but frankly a revelation.
Everywhere he worked out he gave other players fits on D, scored at will and was consistantly hitting shots from outside of the area code the gym was in. According to reports, during a workout in Houston, he gave Curry everything he could handle.
Then this happened: I have mentioned on this site a few times that I work in the Restaurant/Bar biz down here in on-fire-ville, sorry, Houston. One of my regulars is guy who works for the Rockets. He helps the scouting department compile data on players and teams. (basically he does a lot of data entry, but it gets to see film and notes and such) He came by for a drink last night and when the draft came up said "****ing Danny did it again, Hudson is a stud".
According to him Hudson torched guys in workouts in Houston, Shot threes like they were lay-ups and in general was amazing. This of course led me to ask, then why the hell did he go 58th? His response circled around these points: He will be 25 by the time season starts, He's a tweener, his "History", and the level of play he faced.
In the end he told me the folks with the Rockets thought VERY highly of this guy. He is convinced Hudson will stick. He compared him to Hill on the Spurs. I came away impressed.
I then spent last night not drinking and trying to watch as much film on Hudson I could find.(See the sacrifices I make for this blog) What I could come up with left me thinking this guy better than House for sure and could be a great rotation guy. He just flat out can score.
I watched film from his game last year against Memphis and no matter what they did he lit it up. 33pts in 29 minutes. In fact every time he palyed big D-1 schools, he torched them. Strangly enough, Michael Lemaire wrote about Hudson last year and figured the C's would draft him because he was exactly the kind of player Ainge tends to find.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/19546-college-basketballs-diamond-in-the-rough-lester-hudson I am feeling very good about this guy. House should not be.