Dominique Archie among the 2010 D-League draftees for the Austin Toros

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Separate from the hoopla of Tiago Splitter’s debut for the San Antonio Spurs last night against the Los Angeles Clippers, San Antonio’s farm team filled out their training camp roster with the NBA D-League Draft.

The Austin Toros had the 14th pick in the first round of the draft and selected small forward Dominique Archie from South Carolina. Via the press release:

The Austin Toros selected 6-7, 217 pound forward Dominique Archie with the 14th pick in the first round of the 2010 NBA D-League draft Monday night. Archie, 23, averaged 14 points and six rebounds in five games as a senior at South Carolina in 2009-10 before suffering a season-ending knee injury.  As a junior, Archie averaged 11 points, six rebounds and 29.4 minutes and was named to the All-SEC Second Team and SEC All-Defensive Team.

“We’re very excited to get him,” said Toros Head Coach Brad Jones. “We considered him a top five pick. We look forward to his development and seeing him at the next level.”

It’s a little curious that the Toros are bringing another small forward to training camp, seeing as Kevin Palmer was allocated from the Spurs’ training camp roster to the Toros, and Alonzo Gee will probably be sent down to Austin.

Although, Gee played mostly 2-guard with the Toros last season, so Austin could have a rotation of Palmer, Archie and Gee playing the shooting guard and small forward positions interchangeably. And if the Toros run small-ball sets, all three could see the court at the same time.

The Toros could be getting good value for Archie, as a lot of times knee injuries scare off teams (See: Blair, DeJuan). I could only find information online about the injury being a knee sprain, but Archie ended up having season-ending surgery back in December. The injury originally occurred the previous month. A curious case, indeed.

Regardless, the D-League Draft is as good a time as any to take a chance on someone with injury concerns if the upside is there.

Besides Archie, the Toros also drafted several other players:

The Toros also selected forward Lance Thomas (6-8, 225 Duke), guard Josh Young (6-1, 172 Drake), forward Garrett Williamson (6-5, 200 St. Joseph’s), forward Marcus Hubbard (6-8, 230 Angelo State), Vernon Hamilton (6-1, 195 Clemson), center Shagari Alleyne (7-3, 270 Kentucky), and guard Scooter McFagdon (6-5, 205 Tennessee).

The Toros will report to training camp next Tuesday, November 9, and from there the team will begin to cut down the roster to the league maximum of 12 players. Austin’s first game is on Saturday, November 27 against the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

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  • Jacques

    Drafted Lance Thomas as well. I love this guy, but I doubt he’ll play for the Spurs. Interesing pick anyways…

  • Tim in Surrey

    I’m a Vanderbilt alum and they’re in the SEC East with South Carolina, so I know a good bit about Dominique Archie. He was a very underrated player for a very underrated team and his injury scuttled SC’s season. Here’s Jason King’s comment from Yahoo!:

    “South Carolina suffered a crushing blow when standout Dominique Archie sprained his right knee just seven minutes into a loss at Miami on Sunday. Archie, who entered the game averaging 16.3 points and seven rebounds, is out indefinitely …”

    With him they were a likely NCAA team, without him they were a .500 club. I saw him in an epic battle with Jeffery Taylor, where Taylor led a furious Vanderbilt comeback, only to foul out guarding Archie. Considering that Taylor was the best defender in the SEC by a wide margin and a likely lottery pick this year, Archie’s performance was quite impressive.

    This is a really nice pickup, in my opinion. Archie is very much a Spurs kind of player. Although he’s very athletic and good for some highlight dunks, he’s one of those kinds of guys who doesn’t seem as effective as he is, but really fills up a box score-steals, blocks, assists, (turnovers), etc. He was a very good defender, making the All-SEC defensive team. The one thing he always lacked was a really effective jump shot. But his final year he was really starting to knock them down, even from 3-point range, before the injury. He reminds me a lot of the kind of do-it-all forwards that Denny Crum always seemed to have at Louisville-guys like Derek Smith, Billy Thompson, Junior Bridgeman, and Rodney & Scooter McCray. In many ways, he was also a lot like Tennessee’s Tyler Smith, who was a better ballhandler but not as strong of a defender. Both probably would have been drafted in the second round if they had turned pro after their junior years. But both were told that they needed to develop their perimeter game and then ran into disaster as seniors (although very different kinds) that scared teams off. Last June I was hoping the Spurs would draft Smith with a second-round pick or bring him in as a free agent, but I had forgotten about Archie. So I’m happy they picked him up. The only question I have is how much the knee injury has affected him.

    If you’re interested, I found a pretty good YouTube profile of him here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArSf-T4-3Sg

    BTW, I also saw a lot of Shagari Alleyne and Scooter McFadgon. Alleyne is tall and that is all. McFadgon (which is the correct spelling, btw, pronounced with a soft “g” at the end, as in “pigeon”) has a lot of great intangibles and something of a killer instinct (or at least he did when he played at Tennessee, back in the Pre-Cambrian Era) but probably not enough upside to stick in the NBA. I remember him as something like a smaller version of Jared Dudley.

    I have to say, though, that I like the kinds of players they’re bringing in. They all have a Spurs-friendly game, with an emphasis on defense, teamwork, and intelligence.

  • http://48minutesofhell.com Andrew A. McNeill

    @Tim in Surrey

    Good stuff, thanks for the info. I don’t watch much college ball (no time, what with all the NBA games on), so most of these names are lost on me.

  • http://www.48minutesofhell.com Timothy Varner

    Very helpful, Tim. Thanks.

    Archie is long. I wonder how he’ll translate as a defender.

  • Tim in Surrey

    Tim,

    Pretty well, in my opinion. He’s quick and suprisingly strong, with a good motor (at least from what I saw). But he really has to want it, of course.

  • The Beat Counselor

    Holy cow!!! I just saw this finally!

    Lance Thomas!!!!

    YES!!!

    Wow, the basketball gods are listening!

    Develop him. Please.