Bulls' Draft Grade? C

The NBA draft is unwieldy and weird. Mock drafts do little justice to what actually happens when everyone packs themselves into the Madison Square Garden catacombs and get down to business. Really, anything can happen: Player X can fall into oblivion, Player Y can go much higher than he should, and the best laid plans of mice and ... well, you get the point.

How did the Bulls do with the pressure on? OK. And that's as nice as we're willing to be.

At No. 16, their first pick, the Bulls got the player many said they were most interested in: Wake Forest forward James Johnson. Pre-draft mocks had the Bulls taking Johnson, and for good reason: he's a rangy 3-4 tweener that would seem to fit their needs as best as any player could, in so far as the Bulls have clear needs. Mostly, the Bulls are young, and anything can happen with a young team; if you think a player is as good as James Johnson could one day be -- and you're interested in an athletic, big wing player -- then you take him without regret.

It's the No. 26 pick the Bulls badly flubbed. At 16, it was realistic the Bulls would take Pittsburgh forward DeJuan Blair. Blair is slightly undersized and is subject to questions about his knees, both of which were operated on in high school, but he was the best rebounder in the country last season, and the best collegiate offensive rebounder of the past decade. It's true. Check out the numbers. Instead, the Bulls chose Johnson at 16, which, you know, OK.

But then No. 26 rolled around, with Blair miraculously still on the board -- and the Bulls picked USC forward Taj Gibson instead. Gibson is an OK player. He's fine. He's solid enough. But Blair at No. 26 was relatively low-risk for the Bulls, and they passed. Many other teams passed, and Blair eventually fell into the second round. Maybe his knees are that much of a concern. But forgoing such a natural rebounder with a second first-round pick -- when the Bulls, and many other teams, were planning on picking him higher -- is a crucial mistake.

Who knows what the Bulls know? Maybe they have reasons to dislike Blair that didn't show up in his dominant Big East campaign last season. Only time will tell. But for the night, the Bulls get, at best, a C, and maybe worse; they passed on a surefire NBA contributor. In this draft, that's a major flub.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.

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