I guess ADD doesn't keep you from jumping very, very high.

I don’t know about you, but where I come from almost everyone in my school was diagnosed with ADD. I’m not even exaggerating either. You don’t like school? Bam, you’ve got ADD. You have trouble focusing on homework when basketball games are on TV? Here, take some Ritalin, you’ve got problems. You doze off in class because your teacher is more boring than watching figure skating? Well you must have ADD too!

So I find it odd that Hassan Whiteside’s agent said his recent diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder was one of the reasons he fell in the draft. (NBA Fanhouse)

In what may have been the most surprising slide of the NBA Draft, Whiteside was shockingly there for Sacramento’s taking at No. 33 for a number of reasons.

He is a raw talent, albeit a potentially dynamic one. He played in Conference USA, although he dominated the lower-level competition and was named the conference’s top freshman and Defensive Player of the Year after leading the NCAA in blocked shots.

Yet his agent, Andre Buck, confirmed what a league scout told FanHouse, that questions about the 21-year-old’s maturity and his struggles with Attention Deficit Disorder appear to have scared some teams into passing on him.

Buck said Whiteside’s ADD was diagnosed during his one season at Marshall, where he began to take medication to help with his focus but stopped doing so midway through the season.

“He’s going to have to figure out how he’s going to address it, whether it’s medication that’s prescribed that helps him be better and that he’ll probably take to get better,” Buck said by phone. “At Marshall … he was on medication he didn’t like and didn’t think was good for him. He stopped taking it.

“If he takes it and he’s better, people are going to be mad they didn’t take him earlier (in the draft). If he uses this as fuel, he could be really good, and teams will be sorry they didn’t take him.”

Am I the only one who finds this story a little hard to believe? I mean, ADD isn’t too debilitating, right? Sure, it keeps you from focusing a little bit but I’m pretty sure half the people I know had it. And, out of the hundreds of people I know who have ADD, I don’t think it hurt anyone else’s draft stock.

(Note: This video is from last year.)

Luke Haran-goofy.

Q: What happens when you’re a white, undersized, slow college basketball superstar who can barely jump over a credit card?

A: You get labeled as an inevitable NBA bust.

Thus is the life of the Celtics’ newest goofy-looking, pasty-skinned big man, Luke Harangody. Think Brian Scalabrine mixed with college statistics that would make even Christian Laettner jealous.

Despite having his way with college basketball the past few years, despite being a three-time All-American, one-time Big East Player of the Year, and the only Big East player to ever average 20-10 in conference play during an entire career, Harangody’s accomplishments have always come with an asterisk: *Draft at your own peril.

Harangody could have scored 35 points per game and pulled in 14 rebounds every night, but it wouldn’t have changed the fact that he’s 180° from the NBA prototype. (Boston Globe)

“I’ve had to deal with that,’’ Harangody said. “I put my name in the draft last year and I’ve heard it ever since that you’re going to be a second-rounder, but that only just motivates me more. I feel like I’ve put my dues in college and I wasn’t good enough to get in the first round but I kind of just have to start over again and do the same thing as when I came to college because I wasn’t really a big name then. I have the motivation and it’s great. I’ve got to start all over again, and I’m just another player.’’

I’m one of the doubters. I loved Harangody’s game in college, but he’s going to have to seriously improve his athleticism if he expects to make it in the League. Still, as Harangody would be the first to tell me and all those other nay-sayers out there, his physical limitations haven’t slowed him down yet.

If Harangody has anything to say about it, he’ll continue to keep those limitations — obvious to everyone else — well in his rearview mirror. This is the same guy who was banned from playing one-on-one against his brother while growing up because the games would undoubtedly evaporate into fist fights; who thought he was never going to amount to anything when Rob Kurz continuously kicked his ass during freshman practices, then became Big East Rookie of the Year; who once tied his previous personal-best in bench press, but was so furious he didn’t beat it that he kept trying time after time even though he was already dead tired.

Harangody’s not wired like the rest of us. It’s why, for four years, he was able to succeed against players bigger, longer, and more athletic than he. Scratch that, he didn’t merely succeed — he dominated. Tell him he’s too short and he’ll dunk on you. Tell him he’s too slow and he’ll drive right by you. Tell him he’s not good enough and he’ll slap 20 and 10 on you, all while you wonder how in the world this farmer-looking dude keeps scoring buckets.

Can he still do it in the NBA? Against all odds, can Luke Harangody still be an impact player at the Next Level? Only time will tell, but if he fails to be a good pro I’ll bet you one thing: It won’t be because of any lack of effort.

It will simply be because those damn limitations, the same ones he’s been able to keep in his wake for so long, might finally rear their ugly heads.

A sprained ankle requiring surgery and keeping someone out two months? That's one hell of a sprain, no?

Avery Bradley’s ankle surgery will keep him out six to eight weeks, according to Danny Ainge, but Bradley should be 100% by training camp. (Boston Globe)

On draft night, Celtics president Danny Ainge said he was surprised to see Bradley slip so far, but acknowledged the injury might have been one of the reasons. Ainge said the rookie would have surgery and rehab in Boston.

“Avery will need a scope of his ankle,’’ Ainge said. “It will be about six weeks. He’ll probably say three weeks, but probably six to eight weeks but he’ll be 100 percent by training camp.’’

I’ve got a question about this injury — if it’s only a sprained ankle, why does he need surgery that will require six to eight weeks of rehab? I’ve seen a lot of sprained ankles in my life and they’ve never, ever required surgery, and certainly not such a long recovery. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it comes out that Bradley’s injury is worse than we know.

In other Bradley news, SI’s Ian Thomsen said Bradley is the next Eddie House and could potentially play both backcourt positions. (WEEI)

The Celtics got a better version of Eddie House. They got a guy who’s a terrific shooter; he’s got great range, but he’s a very good defender. The one thing he doesn’t do [is] he doesn’t drive the ball great. He’s a much better shooter than he is a driver. And is he a true point guard? They’re going to have to hope he can come off the bench and be the backup point guard they needed.

A lot of teams looked at him and wondered if he ever would be a true point guard. You’re going to have to think of him as more of an off-guard. If he’s your third guard and he can come in and play some point guard minutes, and then he can bring the ball up, he’s your deep shooter that they used to have with Eddie House.

They sort of have this hybrid, all-for-one thing that works well with what the Celtics have been the last few years. It’ll be interesting to see what the Celtics are a couple of years from now, if they’re operating on the same formula. I think that there’s always that need for an Eddie House kind of threat.

If Bradley is a better version of Eddie House, if he’s such a ”terrific shooter,” then why did he average 11 points per game last year? Down the road, Bradley could become a very good player. Given Ainge’s track record and Bradley’s potential, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. But for now? I wouldn’t expect anything out of the combo guard.

I want to like Avery Bradley’s potential, I really do. I want to like that he’s a defensive stopper, that he’s very athletic, and that he was the number one player in his high school class. So every time I start to think about Bradley playing the exact same position as Rajon Rondo, or needing surgery on his ankle, or averaging only 11 points and 2 assists for Texas last season, somebody please remind me to watch this YouTube clip.

I know a little bit about Avery Bradley the player, but I hardly know anything about Avery Bradley the person. This piece from ESPN, written before this past season, is a start.

“I told them I wanted to wear zero,” he said. “To me, this is a fresh start. High school doesn’t matter. It’s over. There are no more rankings, any of that. I have to prove myself all over again, so that’s why I wanted to start at zero. Start at the beginning.”

Imagine that. No sense of entitlement or grandiosity, two feet planted firmly in Austin and not halfway in the NBA.

You ask Bradley, who many figure for a one-and-done, if he thinks about his future and he sheepishly says, “People tell me I have potential, but until I go out there and prove it, what people say or think about me doesn’t matter.”

There’s a word for kids like Bradley.

In a sad testimony to the state of the game today, that word is throwback.

“The thing about Avery, he doesn’t come in here thinking he knows everything,” Texas coach Rick Barnes said during the recent Big 12 media day in Kansas City. “He came in here this summer to work out with Kevin [Durant] and Justin Mason and he was like a little puppy, following them around. He’s just got it figured out.”

So Avery Bradley was the number one high school recruit (ahead of John Wall, who — this is absurd — was cut from his high school team as a sophomore), but had no ego about it? I don’t know whether to say that’s a good or bad thing. It would definitely be good if he came in, destroyed all opponents and just didn’t want any credit for it. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he came in as the number one recruit and then failed to live up to expectations, averaged only 11 points and 2 assists, and was generally the biggest disappointment in the entire state of Texas. So maybe he should be more egotistical.

If it was a bigger head he needed, maybe Bradley has gotten it: He said his goal for next season is to win Rookie of the Year. I guess he forgot that Doc Rivers doesn’t play rookies and, even if he does break through Doc’s unwritten rule of benching all first-year players, Bradley will have to battle Rajon Rondo for playing time. Methinks Rookie of the Year is just a little bit out of the question.

We’re going to be running a live running diary-type thingy of the NBA Draft tonight. We’ll be discussing picks, trades, and bad suits, so I wouldn’t want to miss out if I were you. Just come right back to this page at 6:30 and join in the conversation. Ask us questions or make points and we’ll post the most interesting ones.