Under my RealGM pseudonym atk1984 — which is essentially the same as my one here at SBNation, AK1984, albeit with lowercase letters and my middle initial included in it — I made the following comments about Faried.

“Kenneth Faried will make an impact in the NBA, so no worries here. Faried will fare better than Renaldo Balkman, DeMarre Carroll, and any others who are lazily compared to him mainly due to a certain follicle-related reason. The difference is because of Faried’s eye-popping, jaw-dropping rebounding numbers this past season (i.e., 16.2% ORB% & 36.7% DRB%), which should translate smoothly from college to the pros.

Oh, and although this may seem altogether crazy to some of y’all, Faried is the closest player to Dennis Rodman since, well, “The Worm” himself. That’s from strictly an on-court perspective, of course. Yet, if Faried can come even close to duplicating Bad Boys era Rodman, then he’ll be an absolute steal in the second round of the 2010 NBA Draft."

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1007927

With that said, though, I don’t expect that the Portland Trail Blazers will draft Faried, since its frontline is pretty much set. Personally, though, i’d prefer having Faried taking up a roster spot than an undersized third-string center like Jeff Pendergraph or a slender pick-and-pop 4 like Dante Cunningham, but that won’t happen in all likelihood.

Now, I think you’re 100% right about how it’d be surprising if Faried went in the first round — which you seem to infer here — but some team will definitely pick him up somewhere in the second round. My hope is that Faried goes to the Milwaukee Bucks with the 37th pick, as he could be the 4th forward in a four-man rotation featuring Luc Richard a Mbah Moute, Carlos Delfino, and Ersan Ilyasova. Additionally, Faried is the kind of hard-working, rugged player — particularly on defense — who’s fully appreciated by a hardass head coach like Scott Skiles.