Ramos Declares for Draft

[Town Drunk]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Ticker) - Teenage giant Peter John Ramos is set to become the first Latin player to jump from high school to the NBA after declaring himself eligible for the draft Wednesday.

The 7-3 Ramos, 18, is widely expected to be chosen in the first round. He is in his senior year in high school.

"I worked hard and I believe I deserve this," said Ramos, who plays for Criollos de Caguas in the Puerto Rican League. He is averaging 18.4 points, 8.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists in 12 games.

His mentor, Criollos owner Felix Rivera, said Ramos will participate in many scouting sessions before the draft.

"If one week before the draft we believe he's not in good condition to be a first-round pick, then we can withdraw his name," Rivera said. "If this happens, there are many European teams who have already shown interest in signing Peter John." One indication of Ramos' potential is that Puerto Rico coach Julio Toro already has decided to include him on his Olympic roster.

"He is 2.17 meters tall and we know that he is still growing," Toro said earlier this week. "He has played two games for the national team and he will be included in the 12 great Puerto Rican players that I'll be taking to the Olympics."

In high school, Ramos led Academia Bautista de Caguas to an 86-6 record and consecutive national championships. He will graduate next month.

"I want to thank all who helped me to be here now. To my family, my Bautista school fellows and every coach who helped me to improve,'' Ramos said at a news conference.

Ramos was born in Puerto Rico but moved with his family to New York when he was 5. When he was 14, Rivera spotted him in a shop and convinced him to return to his country to play basketball.

If Ramos makes it to the NBA, he will join compatriots Carlos Arroyo of Utah and Daniel Santiago of Milwaukee, both Olympic team members.

Only two Puerto Ricans have been first-round picks - Butch Lee, who was taken 10th by Atlanta in 1978, and Jose Ortiz, who was taken 15th by Utah in 1987.

 

[Chaplin]

This kid better have some stellar workouts.

 

[George O'Brien]

Draft City

Peter John Ramos-- the Next BIG Thing?
By Jonathan Givony, Deputy Director of Scouting
March 27th, 2004

Did someone say something about a lack of true centers in the NBA? Well, the rest of the world must be listening, because help just might be on the way. As many as six traditional back-to-the-basket type centers could be drafted in the first round of this year’s draft, five of them from outside the continental United States. We’ve all heard at least something about Pavel Podkolzine (Russia), Kosta Perovic (Serbia and Montenegro), Rafael Araujo (Brazil), Ha Seung-Jin (Korea), and even the high schooler Robert Swift (an American, if you can believe it). But now there’s a new kid on the block, and he’s just as big and talented as the rest of these guys.

His name is Peter Ramos. He was born in Puerto Rico, but spent most of his childhood in New York, where he moved at the age of five. When he was 14--and almost seven feet tall--he was spotted by the owner of a Puerto Rican basketball team (Caguas) named Felo Rivera at a Big’n’Tall store in Brooklyn. Rivera convinced him to come back to Puerto Rico with him and join his team, despite Ramos not having played any organized basketball up until then. Over the next four years, Rivera and Caguas coach Leonel Arill patiently developed Ramos into a legit NBA first-round draft prospect. People who have watched Ramos develop over the years say that “he couldn’t take more than two steps without tripping when he first arrived here.” His coach, Leonel Arill, was quoted a few months ago in the Orlando Sentinel saying, "He knew almost nothing. We'd tell him to shoot the ball, and he would just shoot the ball Granny-style."

What a difference a couple of years can make! He now plays in two different leagues: the Puerto Rican high school league, where he largely dominates, and the professional Puerto Rican league, where he is putting up excellent numbers against some decent competition. His stats for the year so far: 17 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 blocks per game. Ramos’s height is obviously his number one advantage, but he has more to his game than just that. For one, he moves extremely well for a player his size. While he won’t be breaking any world records in the 100-meter dash, he runs the floor extremely well, and gets up off the ground to pull down rebounds, which is already more than you can say about most seven-footers. He is starting to grow into his frame nicely. He has big hands and long, strong arms, with good lower-body strength. He blocks plenty of shots and passes the ball extremely well. In terms of his body and athleticism, there is no doubt that he is NBA-caliber. His game itself is pretty raw, especially on defense, but he shows signs of becoming a capable starting NBA center if a team will have the patience to develop him. The biggest question about Ramos is, exactly how good does he want to be? He doesn’t always play the game with too much enthusiasm; he loses his concentration easily; and he doesn’t really like to take contact. He often looks lost on defense and doesn’t play aggressively enough, especially when it comes to rebounding. Despite his mature appearance it is important to remember that he is just a high school senior, and any draft evaluations of him will be in comparison to fellow high school seniors such as Robert Swift or Randolph Morris. He has plenty of time to improve his percieved lack of effort.


Image courtesy of the
Orlando Sentinel
We got to watch him play earlier in the week, as he matched up with one of the better teams in the league, Bayamon, who have probably the best defensive big man in the league— Richard Lugo, the 6-10 starting center for the Venezuelan national league. Lugo is an NBA-caliber defender who spent last summer working out with the Houston Rockets in their summer league. So in terms of the level of competition, this is a great matchup to watch. Young Ramos started off the game slowly, clearly looking frustrated by the extremely physical style of Bayamon’s defense, and he didn’t quite know to react. He looked apathetic and did a lot of standing around, only going for rebounds that were right in his area, and in general doing his best Houdini impression. In the second half, Ramos started feeling more comfortable. His teammates started feeding him the ball inside, and Ramos was clearly dominating after bringing up his intensity a couple of notches. He showed a wide array of moves in the paint, a nice turnaround jump shot after establishing position on the blocks, some nifty footwork to catch his man in the air and draw the foul, a good looking jump shot from about 18 feet out, and most impressively, a lethal hook shot that he uses from all over the paint. Lugo picked up a couple of fouls on Ramos and Bayamon was forced to switch defenders, this time using another defensive specialist, Puerto Rican national team member Jorge Rivera. Rivera tried to take Ramos out of his game by being physical and bodying him up, but this time Ramos showed a lot more composure. At one point in the second half the two were involved in an altercation in the paint, and Ramos showed his nasty side by throwing the 6-7 Rivera out of bounds. (In Ramos’s case, this is a very encouraging thing to see.) Ramos finished the game with 23 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 blocks in 38 minutes, but Bayamon got the upper hand by nailing a desperation three pointer at the buzzer to win the game 88-87.
Ramos will most likely enter the draft this year, and will keep his name in the mix if he can secure a first-round guarantee. He is being actively recruited by a number of sporting agencies, with the large and influential Interperformances agency pushing the hardest. Their client base includes Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Arvydas Sabonis, Manu Ginobili, and fellow Puerto Rican Carlos Arroyo, among others. There isn’t much talk about Ramos right now in draft circles, but once he makes it over to the States, expect to hear quite a bit of noise about him. With his combination of size, strength, athleticism, and soft touch around the basket, Ramos has enough potential to be drafted anywhere from the late lottery to the mid-late part of the first round, as long as he can show teams that he has the motivation to do what it takes eventually to become a starting-caliber center in the NBA.

 

[George O'Brien]

Here's More

Peter John Ramos

Name: Peter John Ramos DOB: 5/13/85
Height: 7'3" Weight: 275 pounds
Teams: Criollos de Caguas

Strength
Standing seven feet and three inches tall, Ramos already has a huge advantage over 98% of the NBA. While most players at these heights are notorious for being labeled “stiffs” because of their lack of mobility, this is not the case with Ramos. He actually moves well for a player his size and is very capable of getting up and down the floor and moving in all directions. He is an above average athlete with good reflexes and decent coordination, and he can jump pretty well of the ground to block shots, finish alley-oops, and throw down powerful dunks. I personally saw him take off from not too far from the free throw line for a thunderous tomahawk jam in a game I watched, and I’ve heard other accounts from people of him doing even more impressive stuff in practices and in game time situations. What is probably most encouraging about Ramos is the fact that already at the age of 18 he has a good body and well proportioned frame which can be carved to help him withstand the physical nature of post play in the NBA. He has a good wingspan (no T-Rex arms), big hands and he is already reasonably well built with the potential of becoming bigger and stronger down the road.
On offense, Ramos really knows how to use his size in the paint. He has an assortment of post moves that he combines with nice footwork and you can tell that he’s well coached despite the fact that he has only been playing basketball for a couple of years. His go to move is a lethal jump hook shot which he can score with from almost anywhere in the paint. He has a soft touch around the basket, and he can use how lower body strength to seal and back down his man effectively on the dribble and finish in a variety of different ways. Once Ramos establishes position in the paint, he will usually end up with either two points or a trip to the free throw line. He has a very nice looking stroke on his shot and even though he isn’t a very good shooter right now from either the free throw line or on the perimeter, his excellent mechanics and quick release suggests that he has what it takes to become ample in this aspect eventually.

Ramos usually has a very good sense of where he is on the court. He is an excellent passing big man, and likes to use his height to find the open man cutting into the paint. He knows how to use screens to his advantage and excels in the high/low offense.

Something that should be stressed is the fact that Ramos is only a high school senior. In spite of that, he plays a couple of times a week against solid competition, at a level that is much higher and more physically challenging then most NCAA players--against men, not boys. His coach and team owner, Leonel Arill and Felo Rivera have made sure that Ramos is constantly playing basketball, something that is extremely important for a young developing big man his age. Just in the past year, he has played against American and Puerto Rican high school teams, in the Puerto Rican league, International play with the junior and senior national teams, and in a Puerto Rican developmental league for players under the age of 25. This is probably the best way to explain Ramos’ rapid improvement over the past year, along with the way his body has matured. Especially encouraging is the fact that Ramos has not suffered any injuries in this time and his body seems to be ready for the wear and tear of the NBA.

Weakness
Ramos has only been playing organized basketball for about four years now, and his game is understandably pretty raw. Defensively is where he will struggle the most initially. The Puerto Rican league does not have a defensive three second rule and Ramos spends most of his time standing underneath the basket waiting to challenge anyone that steps inside the paint. He blocks a good amount of shots in the Puerto Rican league due to his size and athletic ability, but this will not be nearly as easy in the NBA. His team defense needs a lot of work, as he is often slow to rotate and does not have or at least doesn’t show great lateral movement. He will need a good amount of fundamental coaching before he’ll be able to be considered the anchor of any defense. Ramos will also need to add some bulk to his frame, but this shouldn’t be much of a problem.

His hands aren’t great, it isn’t rare to see passes bouncing off his hands and he sometimes struggles to catch airborne post entry passes that aren’t thrown right at him, but this might be attributed more to a lack of concentration then anything.

The weakest part of his game is on the glass, he just does not put enough effort into boxing players out and he has a bad habit of just standing around waiting for rebounds to come to him. He also needs to work on his free throw shooting, as he is hovering around 50% right now.

The biggest concern about Ramos is regarding his passion and devotion towards the game. Just how smart, mentally strong and coachable is he? He will often display a serious lack of intensity and motivation on the floor, and he tends to get frustrated easily, especially when players get physical with him. He looks lethargic and even downright lazy at times, and he will hang his head and pout when things aren’t going his way. The same thing can be said about a lot of people when they are 18 years old, but with so much money and resources on the line and with his current status as a project player, teams might be more interested in rolling the dice on someone else instead of gambling on the fact that he matures.

 

[slinslin]

7'3 17yrs and rather athletic. He sounds like a wildcard guy who could go almost anywhere in the first round.

The guys who have seen him play are very impressed especially with his latest play.

http://nbadraft.net/profiles/peterramos.htm

 

[F-Dog]

Sounds like Podkolzine without the pituitary problem.

 

[George O'Brien]

Actually, he sounds like every other over seven foot teenager in this draft - good mobility and no defensive skills at all. Ah for a minor league.