Kevin O’Connor: In the weeks leading up …

Kevin O’Connor: In the weeks leading up to the draft, I had a conversation with a handful of people about LaMelo and the intel feedback was like Tatum: Teammates love playing with him, he works hard, don’t worry about the stuff with his dad, he’s his own person and genuinely loves basketball. With Hayes, the intel wasn’t quite Fultz-like but there were plenty of conversations about his youthful maturity compared to Ball and Anthony Edwards, never mind just how much of a projection his game was compared to them excelling at much higher levels of basketball.