Second-round picks more important than ever

[Harry]

That trend could be seen all over the NBA playoffs, where teams struck gold with players drafted in the second round, or not drafted at all. The Golden State Warriors had Draymond Green and Carl Landry. The Houston Rockets had Omer Asik and Chandler Parsons. The Indiana Pacers had Lance Stephenson and Sam Young. The Memphis Grizzlies had Marc Gasol.

They were all players who were drafted in the second round, either by the team they were playing for or a previous team, and all played crucial minutes for teams making postseason runs.

It was more of the same in the NBA Finals, where Miami had second-rounder Mario Chalmers and undrafted big men Chris Andersen and Udonis Haslem against the San Antonio Spurs, perhaps the NBA's gold standard for finding and developing under-the-radar talent.

Danny Green was a second-round draft pick of the Cavaliers in 2009 and was cut twice by the Spurs before developing into a reliable perimeter shooter who broke the record for 3-pointers made in a finals series. Gary Neal was undrafted and had to go over to Europe before getting a chance with the Spurs' summer league team and solidifying himself as one of the team's first players off the bench.

And Manu Ginobili, of course, has been one of the most successful second-round picks in NBA draft history, a three-time champion and one-third of a Spurs core that has stuck together for 10 years.

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