The selection by the Brooklyn Nets of Latvian forward Rodions Kurucs in last June’s NBA Draft was met with little fanfare.
That’s not surprising — 40th overall picks generally don’t get a lot of fanfare unless they are players who were projected to go earlier.
Coming into his rookie season, Kurucs was seen as a long-range project and it came as a bit of a stunner that general manager Sean Marks signed the second-round pick to a four-year deal at roughly the same value as first-round pick Dzanan Musa.