The Pistons traded down three spots and out of the first round to draft Walter Sharpe. If the NBA draft had been this week instead of last, chances are they would have had to trade up to get him. That’s how quickly the stock of perhaps the biggest surprise of NBA draft ’08 was rising.
“As of the first of June, all he had been doing for months was trying to get eligible” to come back and play at Alabama-Birmingham as a senior, Sharpe’s agent, Danny Servick, told me. “He had not been training. He was doing classroom work. He was 252, 253 pounds at that point. It was like, could I even get a workout with anybody? When he worked out for the Pistons (last Tuesday and Wednesday), he was 232 pounds. That shows you how quickly he got going.”
Sharpe’s workout schedule got crowded pretty quickly in the three weeks leading up to the draft. The Celtics, fresh off their first NBA title in 21 years, tried to get him in on the morning of the draft. Sharpe wound up working out for eight teams and in most of those workouts, he was going up against a group consisting of some or all of Darrell Arthur of Kansas, Anthony Randolph of LSU and Donte Green of Syracuse – all first-rounders that many had pegged going in the lottery.
“I would say, at a minimum, he held his own against all of those guys – at a minimum,” Servick said. “When he worked out for the Pistons, I think they had Jason Thompson, who went 12th; J.J. Hickson, I believe, who went 19th; and J.R. Giddens, who went 30th. The second workout (with the Pistons) was Serge Ibaka and Nathan Jawai. I think it’s safe to draw assumptions about what the Pistons saw.”
Servick said that when news began spreading on the NBA grapevine that the Pistons had held Sharpe over for a second day of workouts, everybody’s eyebrows arched a little higher.
“When people found out he spent two days in Detroit right before the draft, everybody kind of follows the Pistons as validation of guys,” he said. “The Celtics tried to get him in the day of the draft. The Lakers squeezed in a workout. Teams were scrambling.
“He’s just one of those special talents. When people saw him at all the workouts, they were like, ‘Wow.’ Everybody had somebody in the organization who was aware of him, but because there was so little to go on from only having played 18 games the last three years, there were others in the organization who’d say let’s move on to the next guy. We were joking on draft night that they had more footage of some guys from Russia or Eastern Europe and had nothing on Walter. It was funny watching (ESPN analyst) Jay Bilas stumble. It caught everybody completely off-guard.”
Servick said Sharpe put his name in the draft at the urging of UAB coach Mike Davis as a hedge against the possibility the NCAA would reject his appeal of its ruling him ineligible. The appeal was based on Sharpe’s diagnosis of narcolepsy, which he contended should qualify him for special consideration. But as the June 16 deadline approached for removing one’s name from the draft and Sharpe’s academic standing was still unresolved, he and Servick decided to stay in the draft.
Davis requested Servick come in as Sharpe’s agent. Though Servick, a Huntsville, Ala., resident, was well aware of Sharpe’s talents as an Alabama schoolboy, he was at first skeptical of representing him because of the red flags on Sharpe’s record – from his academic missteps at Mississippi State and UAB, to the disorderly conduct charges, since dismissed, against him for a nightclub incident, to being shot two years ago as an innocent bystander.
“I’d been very familiar with him as a talent,” Servick said. “Mike Davis is a friend of mine. He asked me to come down at the end of December. My initial reaction when he told me about Walter … he had a lot of problems going to class, he was shot. But when he told me the story about him as a person and he explained the whole story of his narcolepsy, that’s when I was like, wow. That was judging somebody before knowing him. You’re going to see, once you get around him and come to know Walter, he’s an incredibly likeable person and he’s thrilled to be coming to Detroit to play for coach (Michael) Curry and Joe Dumars and his whole organization.”
Servick said the Pistons are getting a highly skilled player who, had he been able to play a full college season, would have never been available to the Pistons at the top of the second round.
“He is a first-round talent and a lot of scouts told me that had he played more and more people been able to see him, he had lottery-type talent and potential. I think he’ll be a real surprise. You’re getting a 6-9, incredibly skilled player. Handling and passing are two of his greatest abilities. He’s athletic. He really knows the game.”
When Servick got the go-ahead from Sharpe and Davis just a little more than three weeks before the draft to start aggressively soliciting workouts from NBA teams, he wrote a letter to all NBA teams explaining the situation.
“I said he was essentially a first-round talent,” Servick said. “I really thought someone in the second round would take him, but I was just hoping he’d get drafted. I didn’t know what point that would be. But to find somebody at 6-9 with his skills and his athleticism, I just thought he was a steal. And that’s what it was.
“His workouts got better and better as he started getting in better shape. If there was another two weeks before the draft, there’s no telling where he would have gone. All these other guys he was going up against in his workouts had played a full season, the NCAA tournament and then immediately began training for the draft. A lot of guys put off their classwork to do that. He came right out of playing for a week or two, so when he’s going toe to toe against these guys, you kind of start scratching your head.”
By draft day, Servick had a pretty good sense Sharpe would be taken and hoped it would be the Pistons.
“I was hopeful Detroit would be interested in him,” he said. “I was hoping the Pistons would be the bookends for him (with their picks) at 29 and 59. I had a lot of teams calling me with picks in the middle of the second round saying they were trying to move up to get him, but you don’t ever know. I wasn’t sure. Walt really clicked with the whole staff when he was up there in his interviews – coach Curry and his whole staff, Mr. Dumars, Scott Perry, George David. He really felt comfortable.
“I was joking with Walt after the first day, he said this is where I would like to be and I said, ‘This isn’t like going to college – they have to pick you,’ ” Servick said. “In the end, I’m so happy it was the Pistons. Detroit’s got a history of success with Mr. Dumars taking guys that a lot of people thought were taken too high. Some thought (Rodney) Stuckey went too high and when Tayshaun (Prince) was selected or Amir (Johnson). All those guys were set up to have success.
“Once the public starts to see him, he won’t be such a secret any more. My hope is one day they’ll laugh about how they didn’t have any video of him on draft night.”
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Award-winning journalist Keith Langlois, most recently lead sports columnist at The Oakland Press, joined Pistons.com as the web site editor on October 2, 2006. Langlois, who brings over 27 years of professional sports journalism experience to Palace Sports & Entertainment, serves as Pistons.com's official beat writer and covers the team on a daily basis.