It's pointless to look at players who were picked later than our picks and who blossomed into stars because there are always some great players who were passed over by many. To my mind, a useful way to evaluate Ernie (or any other GM) as a drafter is to compare the player he chose with the next player chosen. That means if Ernie's choice was not the best at that spot, then we can see whom other teams would have chosen. Of course the other teams may be smart or dumb, but it is usually a different team drafting behind us each year (or even each pick in the same year) so we are getting roughly a representative sample of the wisdom of the rest of the league. Below are the list of Ernie's picks and the picks that immediately followed ours. You can see if what we actually got was better or worse than what the average of other GM's would have taken if they did not take the same pick that Ernie did. Of course, any GM would have taken Wall where we did. The rest are open questions. In cases where we traded or sold our pick, I have listed the pick that was taken at our spot by the other team. The picks following ours are listed followed by ours in parens.

2011

Biyombo (Vesely)

Tobias Harris (Singleton)

Tyler Honeycutt (Mack)

2010

Evan Turner (Wall)

Eric Bledsoe (Seraphin)

Damian James (Booker)

Ryan Reid (N’Diaye)

2009

Ricky Rubio (our won pick, traded)

Jermaine Taylor (our own pick, sold)

2008

JJ Hickson (Javale McGee)

Bill Walker (our own pick, sold)

2007

Sean Williams (Nick Young)

Marc Gasol (Dom McGuire)

2006

Quincy Douby (Pecherov)

Terrell Everett (Justin Williams)

2005

(no first: traded for Brendon Haywood before Ernie era)

Ryan Gomes (we took Blatche)

2004

Devin Harris (traded for Jameson)

Lionel Chalmers (PJ Ramos)