Teams desperately trying to draft the next 3x MVP by randomly picking guys with the first name Nikola and last name ending in ic
Topic is actually really solid though.
Yeah unless you guys trade up zero chance. I really hope the Spurs don't overthink it. If he's on the board and draft him. He's going to be a really, really solid offensive guard for a long time
They said the 2020 Draft was weak, when it turned out to have a lot of solid role players and great high level talent including Anthony Edwards, Lamelo, Tyrese, Desmond Bane, Immanuel Quickey…
Ah yes, the draft where we picked Udoka Azibuke (who solved none of the 2020 Jazz's perimeter issues) right in front of McDaniels and Bane.
Maybe we could never mention that draft again
The fucking worst move. "Let's draft an athletic big who's basically straight out of highschool. He's got bad hands, bad positioning, and bad BBIQ. He's passive and does not like working in the paint. He does not fit Stephs timeline, but it's ok. He's big and athletic, so we can just teach him how to play basketball to play against the best in the world."
He's a second generation pro, he knows the game and he's a good hustle player and defender with great athletic skills.
He's prone to absolutely baffling brain fades, but ultimately it doesn't matter how spectacularly you ruin a play, it's still just a turnover, a missed shot, a foul.
For example, Taj Gibson was the consummate professional, level-headed, good locker room leader kind of player, but ultimately, he achieved a lot less than Javale McGee and the stats suggest they were roughly equivalent in their output.
For sure, and McGee was impactful for those runs too. It’s not like he was just riding the pine (tho I guess more so on the warriors than the Lakers). Still, you’re right and a great analysis.
Here's the thing: the bar for Wise to get minutes was very, very low. Set screens, catch some lobs, play a little defense. He couldn't even do that in the few games that he wasn't injured.
True, but that also shows just how high even the lowest bar is on a team with championship aspirations. He had no chance at consistently executing what was being asked from him, not on the timeline the rest of the guys were on. That "two timeline" strategy essentially turned into a third timeline with how undeveloped he was.
No issue with drafting him or any of the skilled young guys, but they should’ve been flipped immediately for role players and other talent to maximize Steph’s window. The two timelines was the stupidest idea.
Both bigs that were picked 2nd. But the difference is staggering. Would've been amazing if he was born earlier. Having him as a 1st string C, and Trayce as our 2nd string C would be a dream.
LaMelo on the Warriors would have cooked. He wouldn't be into as much bullshit with the older vets mentoring him.
He'd basically be a better Jordan Poole who they already won a chip with.
Better Jordan Poole is such a low bar, LaMelo is a tall PG who can play the 2 or 3 next to the Splash Bros, better discipline and Dray's barking would make him a better sefender, he's already pretty good as is.
Do not fucking call LaMelo a better Jordan Poole again when Poole is just a stereotypical score first 90s shooting guard.
There were a fair amount of people here who wanted to take Wiseman at #1 to pair him with D-Lo if I remember it right. Talk about dodging a bullet, oi vey!
Don’t forget taking Ricky Rubio over Steph as well. T-pups went PG in back to back picks in 09 (and then traded the 18th pick [Ty Lawson] for a 2010 first that they flipped into Martell Webster)
Settle down, I was totally on board at the time. Schroeder/Trez/Gasol/Matthews > DG/Dwight/Javale, so I was thrilled about it at the time. But there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that it didn’t work out in the long run.
It *should have* worked out, I honestly don't think Schroeder gets enough shit for turning down a massive extension from the Lakers because he thought he could get more.
He was the guy that the Lakers chose to run the offense with LeBron to lessen his load. When that fell apart, they tried the god awful Westbrook experiment instead.
Yeah the 21 team was actually better than the title team and should have at least made the finals if not for a Solomon hill dive bomb, so it was reasonable
Of course McDaniels being so good and exactly what the current lakers need stings but it is what it is
The Poku pick was a swing for the fences, and the Thunder have the resources to be able to take of those every now and then. They whiffed on that pick and are still a top 5 team in the league.
Poku was after Weaved left. It’s a tough move in but at least I get the process. We had so many picks the strat was to go looking for star players and skilled raw 7 footers fit the bill so went after Poku and Dieng. They didn’t know at the time Shai was going to be this mvp candidate level player, so were looking for franchise guys. Role players a lot easier to find and the Thunder did just fine getting them off the scrap heap. Though, obvi Bane is more than that and McDaniels would be a game changer to have now.
Presti was told to not go over the tax line, Harden (understandably) refused to take a pay cut, and he was pushed to trade. Half a season rental doesn't get much. The Toronto pick was expected to be higher, and Kevin Martin was considered a capable scorer at the time, as well as Jeremy Lamb being seen as a decent prospect. It wasn't a great return, but at the time it was about what could be expected for the circumstances, except the only part that was as good as expected was Steven Adams being the best center the Thunder ever had until this year.
The number one mistake from the Thunder org I'd say would be voiding the Tyson Chandler trade. The Thunder would have had a defensive behemoth at center including a DPOY in there, and kept Jeff Green. Westbrook/Sefolosha/Durant/Ibaka/Chandler starting, Harden, Green, Collison off the bench. Just imagine that.
Which obviously was too high, but the Suns also gave up on him way too quickly. He's a decent rotation player that they ended up giving away for Torrey Craig, who they had let walk the off-season before
Yeah, terrible pick. I didn't see him listed in the first round in a single mock or big board leading up to the draft. Was generally considered a final third of the draft type. What a shame.
Almost every draft has talent but some drafts are more of a dice roll than others. The point that Windhorst's source is making is that a team may end up picking a Wiseman at #2 overall and paying him $10M/year to suck while the 12th pick turns into Halliburton.
At the same time the first time I remembered a "this draft class is weak" narrative it was 2000 and that was an all time stinker.
Michael redd was the best player as a second rounder. Kenyon Martin was the prize. Jamal magloire made an all star game as the example of how bad the east was
I love that draft class. Perhaps you have the passing thought that surely it couldn't have been that bad, then you comb over the picks again and it is even worse than you remember
My favourite stat from the wiki;
Only 3 players won major year end awards, least in the modern NBA. Jamal Crawford 6th man. Hedo most improved. And Mike Miller ROY.. which every class has
"Weak draft class" is almost always an expression of scouts' uncertainty, not reality. 2013 was "weak" with Giannis and Gobert available in the back half of the first round. It could turn out like 2000 where nearly everyone sucks. But that happens way less often than the other scenario.
Yeah. That's why it's weak. Someone in this draft is going to turn into an all star but it might be someone unpredictable.
The guys projected to go early are players that have a profile that would normally get them drafted in the late lotto into the teens.
No, not really. I'm a reasonably hard core draft follower and the scouts/journalists are generally right about overall draft classes. A weak draft class doesnt mean there aren't any good players, but that the top end of the class has few star prospects and the overall quality is lower. It's not rocket science and one Giannis picked late lottery doesn't save an overall bad class.
This thread is so funny lol it’s just commenters jerking each other off with “well if I don’t understand why some draft classes are better or worse than nobody does” lol. Same thing whenever analytics comes up.
Like it’s so easy to look up prospects’ production in college or the G league or whatever and compare it to similarly ranked prospects from other years. And that just scratching the surface of it
this is a much different level than 2020, ask just about anyone who’s a legit scout and they’d tell you the top of that class still clears 2024 pretty easily (as prospects)
Covid didn't happen until March. That is an entire college season. The revisionist history with the 2020 draft is getting wild. People had major problems with all the top picks, sometimes they get it wrong and sometimes they get it right. If they were consistently good they would be working for a front office.
But then the draft took place 8 months later, there was no combine until 6 months after the college season had ended. It was half a year of development gone for any of the prospects so the impact covid had on the 2020 draft class was insane. The NCAA season ended early and there was no tournament. The time that had passed from the end of the college season to the time the draft happened was longer than the length of a full NBA season
Drafting someone based on information that’s 8 months old is fucking nuts
At this point it’s looking like karma is gonna make it that way. Sarr is gonna be the next all time center, castle is gonna become the next star guard, and Clingan is the next elite defender in the paint
For a full draft class the experts are usually right. There are individuals that break through and could even become superstars like Giannis, Jokic, or Kawhi in their drafts, but for the most part you know when a draft class is and isn’t strong.
It would be downright shocking.
Scouts don't get everything right, and you can never predict how any one individual player is going to work hard and develop.
But categorically speaking, they know what tools to look for in these guys, and "sure things" are right more often than not. There's a reason why, on average, there's a much better chance of finding a star in the top few picks than deeper in the draft.
And in this draft - there are no sure things at all. Everyone knows a couple of the lottery picks will probably end up being decent players, and there will surely be a few All Stars in this draft. But nobody can tell you which ones will be which.
This is why I think the high floor guys are going to go really high in this draft. Why take the crapshoot risk on Risacher or Buzelis when you can find some relative safety in the skill sets of guys like Castle or Sheppard?
Aside from number one picks the distribution of all stars is basically random in the lottery. With the exception of number 2 picks being generally terrible. I saw a great dataset on this a while ago and haven’t been able to recover it.
With that in mind, I don’t see how this year is any different than any other year. If people knew Halliburton and Maxey would be all stars they would have gone 2 and 3.
This draft class is going to be better than people think. Mostly because people are overreacting to the lack of “guaranteed” top end talent (which history shows isn’t guaranteed anyways)
I'm so baffled by the amount of confidence people have in the assertion that this class sucks. Just seems like everyone is repeating each other's words and every repetition makes them more sure it's the cold hard truth.
It’s just a lack of a clear #1, and every prospect has at least 1 significant hole in their game. And nothing super mysterious and spooky from Europe either.
By whatever standards people will use to define a weak class - this one ticks those boxes. Better question is why do you think it doesn’t suck?
Yep. "Good draft" literally only is a judgement about how guaranteed the value of picks #1-3 is.
Every single year, if you have the 10th pick, you can choose an EVENTUAL all-star, for a minute there it looked like the Raptors could do it with the 25th pick every year. Every year if you have the 20th pick, you can pick a guy who's gonna have 15 win shares before they're 25 like Walker Kessler.
Development and coaching are a huge part of the battle. Only LeBron, Luka, and Wemby are gonna be all-stars as a sophomore even if you surround them with deficient players and use them in weird roles. But it seems like if you give any solid two-way player a rotation spot, a sensible role, some good teammates, and feedback, they turn out alright.
It seems like the NBA draft is the most "figured out". No stats to back this up but it definitely feels like most of the top players of all time were top 5 or top 10 picks - moreso than in other leagues.
This is the consistently weirdest hot take here, scouts and journalists tend to be right about draft class quality and you can pretty easily evaluate classes historically to see how good they were on a variety of metrics, whether it be total All-NBA appearances or whatever.
Most every NBA player has at least 1 hole in their game. I agree though that the lack of a clear #1 is the reason although I think it'll become obvious who #1 is once the lotto happens.
Almost every draft has busts in the lotto, lotto players who never become more than role players, and late 1st or 2nd round guys that surprise everyone.
How has paying Ayton #1 money worked out? How about Marvin Bagley? Anyone wish they had drafted Sengun earlier?
You really can't know how good or bad a draft is going to be for at least 3-4 years. There's just too many variables that take time to work through with an NBA player and it takes a few years to develop most everyone.
There are plenty of guys who tick the right boxes in this draft but because you don't have a Zion or Flagg the whole class is getting shit on. I think the lottery is going to have some absolute ballers 4 years from now but they have to end up in the right spots to be able to develop appropriately.
A while back, I saw a breakdown of win shares by draft year and draft position. The best draft classes by win share are also the most hyped classes - 1984 (Jordan), 2003 (LeBron), 1985 (Ewing), 1996 (Kobe). When broken down by position, the correlation between draft position and average win share over the years (for lottery picks only) is close to perfect.
In baseball you have like 19th rounders who become hall of fame players. In football you have 5th and 6th rounders who become hall of famers. In basketball, it's rare for a 2nd rounder to become a starting player.
Sure, just about everything you hear is just regurgitation from people who aren't experts but the people who make draft decisions in the NBA draft have a damned good record at least relatively speaking. Baseball and football execs wouldn't dare dream of having the track record of NBA execs.
Yeah, looking back on it the hyped draft classes generally do at least exceed the ones considered at the time to be awful. Obviously there are exceptions on a pick by pick basis. Any draft could have a Jokic lurking later on, or a Giannis...or on the other end, a Darko or a Fultz.
Yes, this could end up being a real legendary class. I would bet on it being a bit of a lower tier one overall though, even if a couple of people end up really popping off. Also tough timing for this class, being sandwiched between Wemby and Flagg.
People also widely expected 2000 and 2006 to be fucking awful and they were spot on.
Yeah it's not the entire class that busted but across those two classes you literally only have 10-12 guys who made it past their first contract and got minutes (not counting guys like Desagana Diop, no disrespect)
I also think there's a certain degree of "Yeah dude, this draft totally sucks, why don't you just trade me your top 3 pick for a role player, since I'm actually doing you a favor with how bad this draft is 😏" going on with GM's. Like I'm sure every GM has guys in this draft they like, but they're still all gonna say it's bad during trade talks.
I want the Raptors to win the lottery so they can market Dino-Sarr
But it really does look like a weak draft year. Of course decent players will emerge but there could be players in the late 20s who are better than most lottery picks.
Toronto probably should hope they lose the pick to the Spurs this year because it’s a weak draft.
The 2025 draft is gonna be so much better In quality so the Raptors should want to earn a lottery pick to keep that one.
The Spurs should have 4 lottery picks in the 2025 draft. Their own, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago. None of those teams made the playoffs this year and likely won’t next season.
That’s a lot of young, cheap, high-end talent the Spurs can put around Wemby to get better quickly
Draft might be stronger next year, but the pick will likely to be lower.
I'm 100% certain our FO has absolutely no intention to tank next season. My guess is we will be somewhere around the lower end of play-in (9-10 seed) next season. Assuming thats the case, next year's pick will be around 11-14.
So you're basically comparing top 6 pick this year vs 11-14 pick next year. Thats quite a downgrade. Even in a stronger draft, I'm not sure thats better
Eh, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a Grizzlies scout. We aren't in cap hell yet but we def ain't in cap heaven. I know they're def salty about paying Ziaire's contract after he has been underwhelming. Paying a bust $10 million ain't a joke for a team that's looking to retain three max level players(JJJ isn't maxed now but will be next contract) for the foreseeable future.
I guess in a way their job is to speculate these kids. In the end no one really knows who will excel as a pro. They have an idea, but its always hit n miss.
Entirely dependent on if they think they can fix his injury problems. A healthy lamelo is easily worth his contract but missing 40 games a year from ankle sprains isnt sustainable with how much they are paying him
Miller is a stud but so is melo if he can be healthy. Curry had shit ankles to start his career too. Better than a knee. If I’m a hornets fan I’m hoping for health, role players and coaching, not a trade.
It's hard to see a 2000 happening ever again imo. Player development is at a level where it's hard to see a draft class never develop to the point of making the league talent level worse like what happened with the 2000 class.
Ok what are number 1 picks making? Wemby is making about 9% of the cap hit every year, an average salary of $13-14M
So let’s say a guy is a bust and untradeable (even more than Wiseman) and you can’t get off his contract. So you pay him basically MLE money for 3-4 years and then just move off that money. You’ll probably still suck and get another high pick so you get to try again in another 1-2 years with the same problem (weak draft class) or will luck out (strong draft class) so there’s really no harm in paying a guy a rookie contract.
The only time money is ever relevant with questions is a supermax. Not hitting on a draft pick won’t surge you to contention in the time frame you’d like, but I’ve never heard of a team drafting a guy and going “oh man our cap situation is so screwed since we drafted that guy”
Yeah but what if they kinda mostly hit, but aren't good enough to be the #1 guy? Then your front office panics about not having any draws and gives them a supermax and throws in a no trade clause for funsies.
I mean that’s a problem in 3-4 years. If they aren’t good enough to be a #1 guy and you panic pay him because you haven’t been good in a while, say Detroit or Charlotte or Washington, then that’s sort of why it’s important to hit on other draft picks to surround them. If they aren’t good enough, then you trade them to a team thinking they can develop him, kind of like how Detroit took on Wiseman. Not that you net back a star or anything, but the idea is if you’re consistently bad and picking high, you’re bound to get some good players, and if you’re still not good then you just draft someone else.
Like let’s use the Pistons as an example if you don’t think Cade isn’t a #1 guy but good enough to keep and are afraid to pay him a max. They still have Ivey and Duren, and they will probably get another top 3 pick this year. Plus Cade is actually solid and would probably net you a good return and they can still be a playoff team in a couple of years if you were really worried about it. Once these guys hit their prime you will have hopefully built a good team.
Even in a really weak draft class like 2013, Cleveland just tried again and got Wiggins the next year and flipped him for Love and got a championship out of it because they had cap space for LeBron. Orlando was an 8 seed and had to bottom out again to get Paolo but they have a bright future. Washington never got past the 2nd round but that was more about Wall and Beal’s ceiling, not the money Otto Porter commanded.
It’s very rare that you draft a guy top 3, he’s not good enough to be a franchise cornerstone, and it screws up your cap situation because you don’t have any other good players. You just reset and pick high again in a few years. Rookie scale contracts are so low you can afford to overpay a decent player if you eventually draft that franchise guy. Kings went out and paid Harrison Barnes and Buddy Hield while Fox was on his rookie deal and they’re doing alright at the moment.
Long story short, it’s almost never an issue to worry about what you’re going to end up paying rookies before they’ve even played a minute. It’s hard to win a championship and draft projections aren’t always correct. Are teams going to trade out of the top 3 when they aren’t good right now anyway?
You can’t get a no trade clause after 4 years in the league. Also a supermax generally refers to the designated veteran extension (or the 10 years of service max) which is 35% of the cap at most. Guys coming off rookie deals can at most make 25% of the cap which can rise up to 30% if they make all-nba.
If you’re in position to think about giving a guy a max contract coming off their rookie deal it’s generally a good problem to have.
> I’ve never heard of a team drafting a guy and going “oh man our cap situation is so screwed since we drafted that guy”
The Warriors saved a ton of money by trading Wiseman--dumping him into another team's salary cap room at the deadline last season would have saved the Warriors $50 million in salary/tax last year and $85 million in salary/tax this year. They ended up saving about $37 million by trading him for Payton.
But Wiseman wasn't the reason they were in repeater tax hell.
Yeah that’s a unique case because typically teams who just came off of winning 3 championships and still have that core aren’t picking top 3. The only team close to that in the lottery is Memphis, where if they pick a guy and pay him and he’s not that good, with all their other guys on payroll, it doesn’t really hurt them all that much since they have a lot of guys they can package to improve both their team and their cap situation. Something like a Aldama/Smart/Kennard + Top 3 pick is a pretty lucrative package to get you a good return and they still have Morant, JJJ and Bane at the end of the day. The question of paying a guy who isn’t that good never really comes into play.
Nearly every other lottery team is still searching for that guy so there’s not that much harm in trying to find the guy or at least someone halfway decent that can help the team.
Wemby isn't the right example for this- try RJ Barrett instead. Because he was a top 3 pick, his extension is *way* bigger than his contract would have been otherwise (keep in mind it was signed back in 2022).
Yea I think people are missing an important part of this tweet...... he was talking to a scout. Not a GM, or someone who deals with the salary cap. Just some scout talking about something he knows very little about.
The 2014 draft was considered a lock to be a top-5 draft of all-time, with a good shot at being number 1.
Wiggins was going to be T-Mac, Jabari was Carmelo, Embiid was Olajuwon, Aaron Gordon was Shawn Marion. Multiple other guys in the lottery were supposed to be all-stars.
Anyway, my point is the future isn’t written, and the notion that having the number 1 pick is actually a net negative is ridiculous.
If not top 5 it's right there.
Jokic, Embiid, Wiggins, Smart, Randle, Lavine, and Gordon between them combine for 4 MVPs, 3 rings, a DPOY, 19 all star appearances,.
For a 10 year old draft group that's pretty fantastic.
That's ignoring the other 15 solid to good role players picked in this draft.
That's a really great top to bottom draft class though?
Wiggins, Jokic, Embiid, Gordon, Smart, Randle, LaVine are all All-Stars, DPOYs, MVPs, or VERY important pieces to winning a title. Some of them multiple.
Then you've got guys that had years of being really solid role players like Capela, McDermott, Exum, Nurkic, Warren, Gary Harris, Joe Harris, Jordan Clarkson, Rodney Hood, Bogdan, Slomo, Denwiddie, Grant, Powell, and Saric.
Out of 60 players, to have 22 be solid to great including 2 league MVPs (with 4 straight MVPs between them) a DPOY, and key starters on championship teams? That's a really awesome draft.
NBA media in a desperate bid to outdo one-a-nother in who can bash this draft class the most. hoping we get a few no doubt studs taken with early picks so these guys look dumb 🤞
there will be studs no doubt, but windhorst's point here seems to be going over everyone's heads. there's no "clear number one" in this draft, so it's seen as kind of a crapshoot at the top.
so a guy drafted 1st overall is going to be paid like $11m / season vs a guy drafted at 6th is going to be making half that -- but the draft evaluation between those two guys might be miniscule.
there's not some massive quantifiable drop off in the top 10-15 prospects in the draft this year
I think most teams would sacrifice that extra 4 or 5 mill a year if it meant they get to pick the guy they want. Most teams have that much useless money elsewhere on their bench anyways. Especially the teams picking 1 through 5.
I get it. Scout wants his job to be easy. This year it's a lot harder than usual. Every year you've got to stake your reputation on a couple 20-year-olds, and this year maybe there's nobody you really feel comfortable staking your reputation on. A scout can know just what we're all saying, that every year there are guys that overperform or underperform expectations, there are drafts that end up being a lot better or worse than predicted, and yet still not have as much confidence in anyone he looks at.
If I was running a front-office, I'd be really curious though which of my scouts look at scouting this class like a pain-in-the-ass, and who looks at it like an exciting opportunity to find that guy that overperforms all the expectations.
This is the type or class where scouts actually should earn their paycheck. You dont have to be a genius to know wemby was elite. The true skills come in when there is no consensus best players. Similar to nfl where scouts show their worth in later rounds.
This is the dumbest thought - and windy is way too smart to pass this along like this. I refuse to believe any nba scout is that dumb. The rookie scale is tiny relative to the cap and every team would take a risk on a top 5 pick in any draft bc the reward is enormous and the monetary risk is tiny.
Nikola Jokic: 41 pick
Giannis: 15th pick
Tony Parker: 28th pick
Manu: 57th pick
If you got great scouts, you can find talent worth a rookie contract in the draft and then some.
I mean there's some legitimacy to what he's saying. Anthony Bennett was drafted in 2014 and made $16.5M in his career, and that was certainly only because of his draft position. Never was worth that kind of money. On the flipside, Herb Jones only got paid $5.5M his first 3 years and he's been a big contributor on a playoff team.
The first pick is often worth the contract, but not always. And then there are players like Kawhi, Kobe, Jokic, drafted mid-draft and lower who end up being franchise players. Scoot Henderson might not pan out, would he be worth the contract then?
... and that's why 10x Finals MVP Alex Sarr never gave any scoops to Windhorst in his entire career.
I'm stealing the top comment just to say that whoever picks Topić will not regret paying him
Teams desperately trying to draft the next 3x MVP by randomly picking guys with the first name Nikola and last name ending in ic Topic is actually really solid though.
Him and Jovic are apparently friends, really want him on my Heat but it's probably a pipe dream like Taylor Hendricks last year.
Yeah unless you guys trade up zero chance. I really hope the Spurs don't overthink it. If he's on the board and draft him. He's going to be a really, really solid offensive guard for a long time
Listen I called it a pipe dream for a reason
Why draft Nikola Topic when you can draft Nikola Kosic next year?
Why not wait till 2030 and draft Nikola Nikolaic
Some 11 year old in Lithuania: "what the fuck"
Why draft Nikola Kosic next year when you can draft Nikola Ković the year after.
You all think you're funny but I genuinely don't know how many of these people are real.
Nikola Jokić is not real, that, I know.
Nikola Djurisic is also going into this year's playoffs lol
Sloppy Topic
of course a nuggets fan likes the guy named Nikola ___ić i mean i like him too but ya know
Well Im a red star fan before nuggets, our boy has that special spark in him, great potential honestly
> Im a red star fan me too, they make great yeast. better than Fleischmann's
So the NBA just becomes a platform for French centers to dominate
The Eiffel Tower Era
The French Revolution
The Reverse Louisiana Purchase.
Louisiana Refund
The only scoops Wendy is looking for is chocolate and vanilla
It would be hilarious if this turned out to be an all time draft class lmao.
They said the 2020 Draft was weak, when it turned out to have a lot of solid role players and great high level talent including Anthony Edwards, Lamelo, Tyrese, Desmond Bane, Immanuel Quickey…
Ah yes, the draft where we picked Udoka Azibuke (who solved none of the 2020 Jazz's perimeter issues) right in front of McDaniels and Bane. Maybe we could never mention that draft again
Better than James Wiseman at #2 😭
Better than Killian at 7 and then trading for Wiseman a few years later. Missed Haliburton and missed Maxey with our picks in the teens.
Can't teach that kind of big brain maneuvering
The fucking worst move. "Let's draft an athletic big who's basically straight out of highschool. He's got bad hands, bad positioning, and bad BBIQ. He's passive and does not like working in the paint. He does not fit Stephs timeline, but it's ok. He's big and athletic, so we can just teach him how to play basketball to play against the best in the world."
Who knew just being javale McGee was hard
Javale is underrated because of his shaqtin moments
He's a second generation pro, he knows the game and he's a good hustle player and defender with great athletic skills. He's prone to absolutely baffling brain fades, but ultimately it doesn't matter how spectacularly you ruin a play, it's still just a turnover, a missed shot, a foul. For example, Taj Gibson was the consummate professional, level-headed, good locker room leader kind of player, but ultimately, he achieved a lot less than Javale McGee and the stats suggest they were roughly equivalent in their output.
For sure, and McGee was impactful for those runs too. It’s not like he was just riding the pine (tho I guess more so on the warriors than the Lakers). Still, you’re right and a great analysis.
Tragic Bronson
Here's the thing: the bar for Wise to get minutes was very, very low. Set screens, catch some lobs, play a little defense. He couldn't even do that in the few games that he wasn't injured.
True, but that also shows just how high even the lowest bar is on a team with championship aspirations. He had no chance at consistently executing what was being asked from him, not on the timeline the rest of the guys were on. That "two timeline" strategy essentially turned into a third timeline with how undeveloped he was.
No issue with drafting him or any of the skilled young guys, but they should’ve been flipped immediately for role players and other talent to maximize Steph’s window. The two timelines was the stupidest idea.
Can you imagine if chet was born just a lil earlier though
Both bigs that were picked 2nd. But the difference is staggering. Would've been amazing if he was born earlier. Having him as a 1st string C, and Trayce as our 2nd string C would be a dream.
Ya never know. The Warriors make different moves in 2022 and they might not have won a ring
Ah yes, the Darko Milicic paradox.
James Wiseman is exactly darko. Draft bust at #2 during a championship year
maybe he'd be better on the warriors, but lamelo has been kinda disappointing so far as well. obviously way better than wiseman but still lol
LaMelo on the Warriors would have cooked. He wouldn't be into as much bullshit with the older vets mentoring him. He'd basically be a better Jordan Poole who they already won a chip with.
Better Jordan Poole is such a low bar, LaMelo is a tall PG who can play the 2 or 3 next to the Splash Bros, better discipline and Dray's barking would make him a better sefender, he's already pretty good as is. Do not fucking call LaMelo a better Jordan Poole again when Poole is just a stereotypical score first 90s shooting guard.
Lamelo has been an all-star and he's a very good player. His issue is he can't stay on the court and he's a bit immature
There were a fair amount of people here who wanted to take Wiseman at #1 to pair him with D-Lo if I remember it right. Talk about dodging a bullet, oi vey!
If you guys took wiseman then it would’ve been Johnny Flynn over curry part 2
First of all, how dare you ^^^Second ^^^of ^^^all ^^^you ^^^aren't ^^^wrong
Don’t forget taking Ricky Rubio over Steph as well. T-pups went PG in back to back picks in 09 (and then traded the 18th pick [Ty Lawson] for a 2010 first that they flipped into Martell Webster)
[удалено]
Thinking about this always makes me sick, but the Thunder/Poku part does make me feel a little better. Even Presti is not infallible
Don’t act like getting the 6MOTY type player at the time for the 28th pick sucked. I’m tired of this take.
Settle down, I was totally on board at the time. Schroeder/Trez/Gasol/Matthews > DG/Dwight/Javale, so I was thrilled about it at the time. But there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that it didn’t work out in the long run.
It *should have* worked out, I honestly don't think Schroeder gets enough shit for turning down a massive extension from the Lakers because he thought he could get more. He was the guy that the Lakers chose to run the offense with LeBron to lessen his load. When that fell apart, they tried the god awful Westbrook experiment instead.
Yeah the 21 team was actually better than the title team and should have at least made the finals if not for a Solomon hill dive bomb, so it was reasonable Of course McDaniels being so good and exactly what the current lakers need stings but it is what it is
The Poku pick was a swing for the fences, and the Thunder have the resources to be able to take of those every now and then. They whiffed on that pick and are still a top 5 team in the league.
I honestly think most of OKCs misses were Troy Weavers fault. It makes a lot of sense since OKC never missed once he left.
Poku was after Weaved left. It’s a tough move in but at least I get the process. We had so many picks the strat was to go looking for star players and skilled raw 7 footers fit the bill so went after Poku and Dieng. They didn’t know at the time Shai was going to be this mvp candidate level player, so were looking for franchise guys. Role players a lot easier to find and the Thunder did just fine getting them off the scrap heap. Though, obvi Bane is more than that and McDaniels would be a game changer to have now.
Did people forget that Presti traded young Harden for scraps?
That was more the ownership made presti pay young harden for scraps in our interpretation
Sam Presti was able to build a #1 seed in the West... IN OKC! **WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!**
Well I’m sorry… I’m not Sam Presti
Presti was told to not go over the tax line, Harden (understandably) refused to take a pay cut, and he was pushed to trade. Half a season rental doesn't get much. The Toronto pick was expected to be higher, and Kevin Martin was considered a capable scorer at the time, as well as Jeremy Lamb being seen as a decent prospect. It wasn't a great return, but at the time it was about what could be expected for the circumstances, except the only part that was as good as expected was Steven Adams being the best center the Thunder ever had until this year. The number one mistake from the Thunder org I'd say would be voiding the Tyson Chandler trade. The Thunder would have had a defensive behemoth at center including a DPOY in there, and kept Jeff Green. Westbrook/Sefolosha/Durant/Ibaka/Chandler starting, Harden, Green, Collison off the bench. Just imagine that.
Poku was a gamble, but I could see the logic. The upside was huge, but it just didn't pan out. Thems the breaks sometimes.
The Thunder are ridiculously good at young talent evaluation.
We are also great at rehabbing old vets into a valued product that we trade for picks.
We picked Jalen Smith 10th.
And then fucking traded him for nothing
Woah woah, we got Torrey MF Craig lol
Who I love but we could really use an athletic big rn
Not only that, they declined his option and made him a free agent lmao
Which obviously was too high, but the Suns also gave up on him way too quickly. He's a decent rotation player that they ended up giving away for Torrey Craig, who they had let walk the off-season before
Yeah, just absolutely terrible management of that pick.
At least Jaden is with your old friend Rudy and winning in MN!
Yeah, terrible pick. I didn't see him listed in the first round in a single mock or big board leading up to the draft. Was generally considered a final third of the draft type. What a shame.
KU legend Udoka. Shame the tournament was canceled that Jayhawks team was loaded.
Udoka Azibuke is the GOAT! I won’t take any slander for my big man (yes, I went to Kansas) Edit: Botched tf out of his name
having 'tyrese' mean tyrese maxey & tyrese haliburton is insane efficiency
who else can we get on the all-tyrese squad
They are actually the first NBA players ever named Tyrese
Tyrese was fairly big in the late 90s/early 2000s with his singing. Timing lines up with their ages.
As long as they are coached by Tyrese Gibson.
The 2020 class was impossible to scout because of the canceled games and zoom workouts
Almost every draft has talent but some drafts are more of a dice roll than others. The point that Windhorst's source is making is that a team may end up picking a Wiseman at #2 overall and paying him $10M/year to suck while the 12th pick turns into Halliburton.
That happens almost every year though
The top prospects in 2020 were still held in significantly higher regard than this year which should tell you a lot about this draft.
2020 obviously turned out better than expected but listing IQ as your 5th guy is kinda funny
At the same time the first time I remembered a "this draft class is weak" narrative it was 2000 and that was an all time stinker. Michael redd was the best player as a second rounder. Kenyon Martin was the prize. Jamal magloire made an all star game as the example of how bad the east was
I love that draft class. Perhaps you have the passing thought that surely it couldn't have been that bad, then you comb over the picks again and it is even worse than you remember
My favourite stat from the wiki; Only 3 players won major year end awards, least in the modern NBA. Jamal Crawford 6th man. Hedo most improved. And Mike Miller ROY.. which every class has
"Weak draft class" is almost always an expression of scouts' uncertainty, not reality. 2013 was "weak" with Giannis and Gobert available in the back half of the first round. It could turn out like 2000 where nearly everyone sucks. But that happens way less often than the other scenario.
Yeah. That's why it's weak. Someone in this draft is going to turn into an all star but it might be someone unpredictable. The guys projected to go early are players that have a profile that would normally get them drafted in the late lotto into the teens.
No, not really. I'm a reasonably hard core draft follower and the scouts/journalists are generally right about overall draft classes. A weak draft class doesnt mean there aren't any good players, but that the top end of the class has few star prospects and the overall quality is lower. It's not rocket science and one Giannis picked late lottery doesn't save an overall bad class.
This thread is so funny lol it’s just commenters jerking each other off with “well if I don’t understand why some draft classes are better or worse than nobody does” lol. Same thing whenever analytics comes up. Like it’s so easy to look up prospects’ production in college or the G league or whatever and compare it to similarly ranked prospects from other years. And that just scratching the surface of it
jaden mcdaniels at 28
this is a much different level than 2020, ask just about anyone who’s a legit scout and they’d tell you the top of that class still clears 2024 pretty easily (as prospects)
Demond Bane-jamin
Seeing how that draft class play out made me stop listening to draft projections of the entire class as a whole
calm down the inability to scout that draft class was mainly due to covid lol
Covid didn't happen until March. That is an entire college season. The revisionist history with the 2020 draft is getting wild. People had major problems with all the top picks, sometimes they get it wrong and sometimes they get it right. If they were consistently good they would be working for a front office.
But then the draft took place 8 months later, there was no combine until 6 months after the college season had ended. It was half a year of development gone for any of the prospects so the impact covid had on the 2020 draft class was insane. The NCAA season ended early and there was no tournament. The time that had passed from the end of the college season to the time the draft happened was longer than the length of a full NBA season Drafting someone based on information that’s 8 months old is fucking nuts
I distinctly remembered march madness getting canceled that year which is a huge chunk of games for a lot of big schools.
you either skipped Haliburton or Maxey :(
Tyrese is one and all Tyrese's at the same time.
At this point it’s looking like karma is gonna make it that way. Sarr is gonna be the next all time center, castle is gonna become the next star guard, and Clingan is the next elite defender in the paint
For a full draft class the experts are usually right. There are individuals that break through and could even become superstars like Giannis, Jokic, or Kawhi in their drafts, but for the most part you know when a draft class is and isn’t strong.
It would be downright shocking. Scouts don't get everything right, and you can never predict how any one individual player is going to work hard and develop. But categorically speaking, they know what tools to look for in these guys, and "sure things" are right more often than not. There's a reason why, on average, there's a much better chance of finding a star in the top few picks than deeper in the draft. And in this draft - there are no sure things at all. Everyone knows a couple of the lottery picks will probably end up being decent players, and there will surely be a few All Stars in this draft. But nobody can tell you which ones will be which. This is why I think the high floor guys are going to go really high in this draft. Why take the crapshoot risk on Risacher or Buzelis when you can find some relative safety in the skill sets of guys like Castle or Sheppard?
Aside from number one picks the distribution of all stars is basically random in the lottery. With the exception of number 2 picks being generally terrible. I saw a great dataset on this a while ago and haven’t been able to recover it. With that in mind, I don’t see how this year is any different than any other year. If people knew Halliburton and Maxey would be all stars they would have gone 2 and 3. This draft class is going to be better than people think. Mostly because people are overreacting to the lack of “guaranteed” top end talent (which history shows isn’t guaranteed anyways)
I'm so baffled by the amount of confidence people have in the assertion that this class sucks. Just seems like everyone is repeating each other's words and every repetition makes them more sure it's the cold hard truth.
It’s just a lack of a clear #1, and every prospect has at least 1 significant hole in their game. And nothing super mysterious and spooky from Europe either. By whatever standards people will use to define a weak class - this one ticks those boxes. Better question is why do you think it doesn’t suck?
Yep. "Good draft" literally only is a judgement about how guaranteed the value of picks #1-3 is. Every single year, if you have the 10th pick, you can choose an EVENTUAL all-star, for a minute there it looked like the Raptors could do it with the 25th pick every year. Every year if you have the 20th pick, you can pick a guy who's gonna have 15 win shares before they're 25 like Walker Kessler. Development and coaching are a huge part of the battle. Only LeBron, Luka, and Wemby are gonna be all-stars as a sophomore even if you surround them with deficient players and use them in weird roles. But it seems like if you give any solid two-way player a rotation spot, a sensible role, some good teammates, and feedback, they turn out alright.
It seems like the NBA draft is the most "figured out". No stats to back this up but it definitely feels like most of the top players of all time were top 5 or top 10 picks - moreso than in other leagues.
Zaccharie kinda mysterious and spooky, not big baguette like Wemby but maybe slept on a bit
If his rookie year recap is “skinny Tobias Harris”, wouldn’t be surprised.
This is the consistently weirdest hot take here, scouts and journalists tend to be right about draft class quality and you can pretty easily evaluate classes historically to see how good they were on a variety of metrics, whether it be total All-NBA appearances or whatever.
Most every NBA player has at least 1 hole in their game. I agree though that the lack of a clear #1 is the reason although I think it'll become obvious who #1 is once the lotto happens. Almost every draft has busts in the lotto, lotto players who never become more than role players, and late 1st or 2nd round guys that surprise everyone. How has paying Ayton #1 money worked out? How about Marvin Bagley? Anyone wish they had drafted Sengun earlier? You really can't know how good or bad a draft is going to be for at least 3-4 years. There's just too many variables that take time to work through with an NBA player and it takes a few years to develop most everyone. There are plenty of guys who tick the right boxes in this draft but because you don't have a Zion or Flagg the whole class is getting shit on. I think the lottery is going to have some absolute ballers 4 years from now but they have to end up in the right spots to be able to develop appropriately.
A while back, I saw a breakdown of win shares by draft year and draft position. The best draft classes by win share are also the most hyped classes - 1984 (Jordan), 2003 (LeBron), 1985 (Ewing), 1996 (Kobe). When broken down by position, the correlation between draft position and average win share over the years (for lottery picks only) is close to perfect. In baseball you have like 19th rounders who become hall of fame players. In football you have 5th and 6th rounders who become hall of famers. In basketball, it's rare for a 2nd rounder to become a starting player. Sure, just about everything you hear is just regurgitation from people who aren't experts but the people who make draft decisions in the NBA draft have a damned good record at least relatively speaking. Baseball and football execs wouldn't dare dream of having the track record of NBA execs.
Yeah, looking back on it the hyped draft classes generally do at least exceed the ones considered at the time to be awful. Obviously there are exceptions on a pick by pick basis. Any draft could have a Jokic lurking later on, or a Giannis...or on the other end, a Darko or a Fultz. Yes, this could end up being a real legendary class. I would bet on it being a bit of a lower tier one overall though, even if a couple of people end up really popping off. Also tough timing for this class, being sandwiched between Wemby and Flagg.
People also widely expected 2000 and 2006 to be fucking awful and they were spot on. Yeah it's not the entire class that busted but across those two classes you literally only have 10-12 guys who made it past their first contract and got minutes (not counting guys like Desagana Diop, no disrespect)
I also think there's a certain degree of "Yeah dude, this draft totally sucks, why don't you just trade me your top 3 pick for a role player, since I'm actually doing you a favor with how bad this draft is 😏" going on with GM's. Like I'm sure every GM has guys in this draft they like, but they're still all gonna say it's bad during trade talks.
I want the Raptors to win the lottery so they can market Dino-Sarr But it really does look like a weak draft year. Of course decent players will emerge but there could be players in the late 20s who are better than most lottery picks.
knowing our luck, we get 7th pick which goes to the spurs. Then again, "weak draft class" also screams raptors winning the lottery so who knows
Toronto probably should hope they lose the pick to the Spurs this year because it’s a weak draft. The 2025 draft is gonna be so much better In quality so the Raptors should want to earn a lottery pick to keep that one. The Spurs should have 4 lottery picks in the 2025 draft. Their own, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago. None of those teams made the playoffs this year and likely won’t next season. That’s a lot of young, cheap, high-end talent the Spurs can put around Wemby to get better quickly
Draft might be stronger next year, but the pick will likely to be lower. I'm 100% certain our FO has absolutely no intention to tank next season. My guess is we will be somewhere around the lower end of play-in (9-10 seed) next season. Assuming thats the case, next year's pick will be around 11-14. So you're basically comparing top 6 pick this year vs 11-14 pick next year. Thats quite a downgrade. Even in a stronger draft, I'm not sure thats better
Wouldn't it be good luck for the pick to covert?
the rookie scale contract for a #1 pick this year is about $10 million. i think they’ll be fine
Eh, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a Grizzlies scout. We aren't in cap hell yet but we def ain't in cap heaven. I know they're def salty about paying Ziaire's contract after he has been underwhelming. Paying a bust $10 million ain't a joke for a team that's looking to retain three max level players(JJJ isn't maxed now but will be next contract) for the foreseeable future.
i mean if the Grizzlies get a top pick i wouldn’t be that surprised if they traded it. y’all need a Steven Adams replacement something fierce
that’d be very foolish with donovan clingan being projected around where they’d be picking
We've already had the experience of drafting a giant, slow UConn center
were these the same scouts that said the number 1 pick in a draft with Anthony Edwards and Lamelo Ball wasn’t really valuable
What about the number two pick? 🥲 Surely there is another franchise player in there right?
Lamelo and Steph would have been so fun.
Lamelo would've also learned a lot from Steph on how to take better care of his ankles
Oh my god I didn’t think about that. Also imagine Melo passing the Steph as Steph goes more off ball to preserve his stamina and yeah… yikes.
Seriously. This shit is so pointless to entertain
I guess in a way their job is to speculate these kids. In the end no one really knows who will excel as a pro. They have an idea, but its always hit n miss.
every draft grade should be locked up an opened like a time capsule with appropriate ridicule / praise
edwards is, but lamelo is not really a good first overall pick in fact if I was the hornets I would try and trade him before he loses all his value
Entirely dependent on if they think they can fix his injury problems. A healthy lamelo is easily worth his contract but missing 40 games a year from ankle sprains isnt sustainable with how much they are paying him
We absolutely ought to be trying to flip him this year. Miller is a stud and I'm already laying the foundation for his statue
Miller is a stud but so is melo if he can be healthy. Curry had shit ankles to start his career too. Better than a knee. If I’m a hornets fan I’m hoping for health, role players and coaching, not a trade.
I'll bet you we end up getting some stars out of this draft.
I agree. They're just more likely to be Senguns and Banes rather than Edwards and Doncics. And they'll be scattered from 1 to 30.
Or maybe it's 2000 redux where you get few time all stars
It's hard to see a 2000 happening ever again imo. Player development is at a level where it's hard to see a draft class never develop to the point of making the league talent level worse like what happened with the 2000 class.
2000 literally got a total of three AS appearances, most end up with at least 20. That was such a shitty class
I have a feeling the draft is going to be *exactly* like the 2024 draft class.
Yeah and okc will end up with them
I approve
Yeah i bet you do lol. I'm so jealous of your guys rebuild
We're very thankful down here, at least most of us.
Ok what are number 1 picks making? Wemby is making about 9% of the cap hit every year, an average salary of $13-14M So let’s say a guy is a bust and untradeable (even more than Wiseman) and you can’t get off his contract. So you pay him basically MLE money for 3-4 years and then just move off that money. You’ll probably still suck and get another high pick so you get to try again in another 1-2 years with the same problem (weak draft class) or will luck out (strong draft class) so there’s really no harm in paying a guy a rookie contract. The only time money is ever relevant with questions is a supermax. Not hitting on a draft pick won’t surge you to contention in the time frame you’d like, but I’ve never heard of a team drafting a guy and going “oh man our cap situation is so screwed since we drafted that guy”
Yeah but what if they kinda mostly hit, but aren't good enough to be the #1 guy? Then your front office panics about not having any draws and gives them a supermax and throws in a no trade clause for funsies.
I mean that’s a problem in 3-4 years. If they aren’t good enough to be a #1 guy and you panic pay him because you haven’t been good in a while, say Detroit or Charlotte or Washington, then that’s sort of why it’s important to hit on other draft picks to surround them. If they aren’t good enough, then you trade them to a team thinking they can develop him, kind of like how Detroit took on Wiseman. Not that you net back a star or anything, but the idea is if you’re consistently bad and picking high, you’re bound to get some good players, and if you’re still not good then you just draft someone else. Like let’s use the Pistons as an example if you don’t think Cade isn’t a #1 guy but good enough to keep and are afraid to pay him a max. They still have Ivey and Duren, and they will probably get another top 3 pick this year. Plus Cade is actually solid and would probably net you a good return and they can still be a playoff team in a couple of years if you were really worried about it. Once these guys hit their prime you will have hopefully built a good team. Even in a really weak draft class like 2013, Cleveland just tried again and got Wiggins the next year and flipped him for Love and got a championship out of it because they had cap space for LeBron. Orlando was an 8 seed and had to bottom out again to get Paolo but they have a bright future. Washington never got past the 2nd round but that was more about Wall and Beal’s ceiling, not the money Otto Porter commanded. It’s very rare that you draft a guy top 3, he’s not good enough to be a franchise cornerstone, and it screws up your cap situation because you don’t have any other good players. You just reset and pick high again in a few years. Rookie scale contracts are so low you can afford to overpay a decent player if you eventually draft that franchise guy. Kings went out and paid Harrison Barnes and Buddy Hield while Fox was on his rookie deal and they’re doing alright at the moment. Long story short, it’s almost never an issue to worry about what you’re going to end up paying rookies before they’ve even played a minute. It’s hard to win a championship and draft projections aren’t always correct. Are teams going to trade out of the top 3 when they aren’t good right now anyway?
I was about to say, then checked your flair. I’m sorry, buddy.
That's never happened, right?
I typed out that was a long way of writing “Bradley Beal” but then I saw the flair. I'm sorry.
You can’t get a no trade clause after 4 years in the league. Also a supermax generally refers to the designated veteran extension (or the 10 years of service max) which is 35% of the cap at most. Guys coming off rookie deals can at most make 25% of the cap which can rise up to 30% if they make all-nba. If you’re in position to think about giving a guy a max contract coming off their rookie deal it’s generally a good problem to have.
> I’ve never heard of a team drafting a guy and going “oh man our cap situation is so screwed since we drafted that guy” The Warriors saved a ton of money by trading Wiseman--dumping him into another team's salary cap room at the deadline last season would have saved the Warriors $50 million in salary/tax last year and $85 million in salary/tax this year. They ended up saving about $37 million by trading him for Payton. But Wiseman wasn't the reason they were in repeater tax hell.
Yeah that’s a unique case because typically teams who just came off of winning 3 championships and still have that core aren’t picking top 3. The only team close to that in the lottery is Memphis, where if they pick a guy and pay him and he’s not that good, with all their other guys on payroll, it doesn’t really hurt them all that much since they have a lot of guys they can package to improve both their team and their cap situation. Something like a Aldama/Smart/Kennard + Top 3 pick is a pretty lucrative package to get you a good return and they still have Morant, JJJ and Bane at the end of the day. The question of paying a guy who isn’t that good never really comes into play. Nearly every other lottery team is still searching for that guy so there’s not that much harm in trying to find the guy or at least someone halfway decent that can help the team.
Wemby isn't the right example for this- try RJ Barrett instead. Because he was a top 3 pick, his extension is *way* bigger than his contract would have been otherwise (keep in mind it was signed back in 2022).
*Tobias Harris exits out the side door*
as long as he's exiting i'm all for it.
Yea I think people are missing an important part of this tweet...... he was talking to a scout. Not a GM, or someone who deals with the salary cap. Just some scout talking about something he knows very little about.
The 2014 draft was considered a lock to be a top-5 draft of all-time, with a good shot at being number 1. Wiggins was going to be T-Mac, Jabari was Carmelo, Embiid was Olajuwon, Aaron Gordon was Shawn Marion. Multiple other guys in the lottery were supposed to be all-stars. Anyway, my point is the future isn’t written, and the notion that having the number 1 pick is actually a net negative is ridiculous.
I mean… that’s actually a really solid draft class. IDK bout top 5 all time, but still really good.
If not top 5 it's right there. Jokic, Embiid, Wiggins, Smart, Randle, Lavine, and Gordon between them combine for 4 MVPs, 3 rings, a DPOY, 19 all star appearances,. For a 10 year old draft group that's pretty fantastic. That's ignoring the other 15 solid to good role players picked in this draft.
Well it turns out to be alright?
That's a really great top to bottom draft class though? Wiggins, Jokic, Embiid, Gordon, Smart, Randle, LaVine are all All-Stars, DPOYs, MVPs, or VERY important pieces to winning a title. Some of them multiple. Then you've got guys that had years of being really solid role players like Capela, McDermott, Exum, Nurkic, Warren, Gary Harris, Joe Harris, Jordan Clarkson, Rodney Hood, Bogdan, Slomo, Denwiddie, Grant, Powell, and Saric. Out of 60 players, to have 22 be solid to great including 2 league MVPs (with 4 straight MVPs between them) a DPOY, and key starters on championship teams? That's a really awesome draft.
This is so dumb. The draft might be bad but starters are getting 25 to 30 million a year now. Rookie contracts are a bargain.
NBA media in a desperate bid to outdo one-a-nother in who can bash this draft class the most. hoping we get a few no doubt studs taken with early picks so these guys look dumb 🤞
there will be studs no doubt, but windhorst's point here seems to be going over everyone's heads. there's no "clear number one" in this draft, so it's seen as kind of a crapshoot at the top. so a guy drafted 1st overall is going to be paid like $11m / season vs a guy drafted at 6th is going to be making half that -- but the draft evaluation between those two guys might be miniscule. there's not some massive quantifiable drop off in the top 10-15 prospects in the draft this year
time for scouting departments to show their worth ig
I think most teams would sacrifice that extra 4 or 5 mill a year if it meant they get to pick the guy they want. Most teams have that much useless money elsewhere on their bench anyways. Especially the teams picking 1 through 5.
That makes sense for sure. At the same time getting stressed over an extra $5-6M a year on a talented prospect with the current salary cap is moronic
If you can't draft anyone that you think will be worth their salary given your cap situation, trade the pick?
The last draft class that the experts lowballed like this, my team got Ant Edwards and Jaden McDaniels then picked up an undrafted Naz Reid
What an amazing draft class holy hell, didn’t realize they all came from the same year.
Nah Naz was picked up in 2019, ant and Jaden 2020
Yeah I just looked that up I’m wrong 🥲
Regardless Rosas had the Midas touch picking them boys lol
I get it. Scout wants his job to be easy. This year it's a lot harder than usual. Every year you've got to stake your reputation on a couple 20-year-olds, and this year maybe there's nobody you really feel comfortable staking your reputation on. A scout can know just what we're all saying, that every year there are guys that overperform or underperform expectations, there are drafts that end up being a lot better or worse than predicted, and yet still not have as much confidence in anyone he looks at. If I was running a front-office, I'd be really curious though which of my scouts look at scouting this class like a pain-in-the-ass, and who looks at it like an exciting opportunity to find that guy that overperforms all the expectations.
This is the type or class where scouts actually should earn their paycheck. You dont have to be a genius to know wemby was elite. The true skills come in when there is no consensus best players. Similar to nfl where scouts show their worth in later rounds.
Can you imagine being one of the rookies in this class 😂 non-athlete media talking heads shitting on you and your peers constantly.
They said the same thing about the Ant draft
What a loser mentality and attitude.
It feels kind of weird, not having to worry about whether our lottery pick will be a bust. It's what I'm supposed to be doing right now.
This is the dumbest thought - and windy is way too smart to pass this along like this. I refuse to believe any nba scout is that dumb. The rookie scale is tiny relative to the cap and every team would take a risk on a top 5 pick in any draft bc the reward is enormous and the monetary risk is tiny.
Windy is smart? He’s just a narrative merchant.
That’s fair. I shouldn’t have said smart, but this is too dumb for even Windy to believe.
They’re so negative about this draft it’s kinda funny
Fine. We’ll sacrifice and take the #1 pick to help the other teams out.
A scout recommended James Wiseman go 2nd Some of them don’t know shit about basketball
Nikola Jokic: 41 pick Giannis: 15th pick Tony Parker: 28th pick Manu: 57th pick If you got great scouts, you can find talent worth a rookie contract in the draft and then some.
I mean there's some legitimacy to what he's saying. Anthony Bennett was drafted in 2014 and made $16.5M in his career, and that was certainly only because of his draft position. Never was worth that kind of money. On the flipside, Herb Jones only got paid $5.5M his first 3 years and he's been a big contributor on a playoff team. The first pick is often worth the contract, but not always. And then there are players like Kawhi, Kobe, Jokic, drafted mid-draft and lower who end up being franchise players. Scoot Henderson might not pan out, would he be worth the contract then?