He's been on blast for 3 years due to the Harden trade. We get it. But man, this guy is incredible at drafts. We know about Durant, Westbrook, Harden, and Ibaka. Actually, out of all those, Durant was the only "easy" pick. Westbrook was a PG/SG from UCLA; many questioned if he was even going to make it as a PG in the NBA. Even though Harden was a good player at the time, many in the NBA though he wasn't athletic enough to justify the #3 draft spot at the time. Ibaka was drafted outside the lottery, so it was a gamble as well. He drafted Reggie Jackson, who may potentially get a $15 mil/yr offer this summer. He drafted Steven Adams, who is a legit 7 footer, who's averaging 7.4 pt/7 rebs/1.2 blks in 24 minutes as a 21 year old. He is already above avg defensively and his offense is coming around. Basically a 21 year old who's already a legit 7 foot starter on a playoff team. He drafted Mitch McGary, who is a 6'10 255 lb PF/C that's averaging 8.3 pts/6 rebs/0.5 blks, 54% FG in 16.5 min/per game. While still questionable defensively, he has a wide array of offensive post moves and can step out for an 18 foot jumper. The way he shoots the ball, there may be potential to shoot 3s in the future. His overall game is similar to Kevin Love when he was starting out, but of course, may not reach Kevin Love's level. I'm just amazed at Sam Presti's work. He constantly finds players that are way above their worth in drafts.
Been discussed before. He is vastly overrated. Durant was an absolute no brainer that any sentient life forms would have picked. Westbrook was also the consensus BPA. Harden was a good choice but again he wasn't exactly an unknown. He was also a consensus hi lotto player. It's good to have 2 out of 2 hi lotto hits but not really that unusual The rest of the guys are just role players of the type most GMs unearth every now and then. Not particularly impressive.
I don't think we will ever see a team draft a durant, westbrook, and beard in back to back to back years. That's incredible. All three have an argument of being the best player in the world.
There's some revisionism here. Here's the 2008 consensus mock drafts from all the major sources: http://www.nba.com/draft2008/board/mock.html The consensus pick for Westbrook was #8. Of the 13 drafts included, he never went higher than #6 in any of them. (OKC picked him at #4). Here's the same for 2009: http://www.nba.com/2009/news/features/06/10/consensus/ This was a bit better - Harden was consensus #4. In 12 drafts included, he was picked at #3 three times and once at #2. Ricky Rubio was the consensus #3 pick that year. In both cases, OKC picked those players ahead their consensus spot. They could easily have drafted Brook Lopez and Ricky Rubio instead. If you look at the rest of those drafts, Westbrook and Harden have proven to be better than several (or all) of the players that were projected to go ahead of them. The only players arguably in the same tier are Derrick Rose (had he not been injured) and Steph Curry.
Consider this: Durant obvious pick If he doesn't like Westbrook, then Love was taken with next pick, so he takes Love instead If he doesn't like Harden, then Curry is still available And we're still calling him a great drafter, when in reality he was in great drafts with very high picks. Also, picking Harden when he already had Westbrook, was a BPA pick whereby others might have gone for fit.
The suns have a pretty good draft history too if I'm remembering correctly, they just traded a lot of them away.
As some have already said, he's a very good drafter with picks like Ibaka, McGary, Reggie Jackson, etc., but he's also benefited from being at the top of extremely good drafts as well. I won't sell him short, though. The dude has come out with great talent time and time again.
Looking back at james draft night. You can hear the okc fan chanting rubio after harden was selected at #3 James "I'm gonna keep it for a few weeks... but I might wanna shave it." lol <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fPRaQnmDQxI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
You could just as easily say that if he doesn't draft Westbrook, he drafts Danilo Galiari or Joe Alexander. And if he doesn't draft Harden, he drafts Ricky Rubio or Jonny Flynn. By your standard, no one in the NBA is a good drafter, because if they didn't draft whoever they did, they could probably always have gotten another player that would be reasonably good too.
You're using a composite of mock drafts, which reflect Chad ford et al guessing at what teams will do based on need in part. That doesn't have anything to do with scouting Westbrook at all. There's no doubt at all that Westbrook was considered a to 5 talent and probably the best point guard after Rose. It wasn't an incredible reach, it's not like anybody freaked out because they passed on Brook Lopez.
You claimed he was the consensus BPA. I agree that mock drafts aren't the most reliable source, but what is your alternative? Where is the evidence that a consensus of GMs would pick him at #4 while no one in the media had him going above #6?
Flipping Jackson for Augustine might be his best move, the thunder were better when he was on the floor
I think his point is there wasn't a wrong choice for Presti because whoever he chose in that range would still turn out good. If he went KD/Love/Curry we'd still all be sitting here talking about how good a drafter Presti is...considering how good Curry and Love would fit next to Perkins/Ibaka maybe he should've drafted those guys instead. With Presti, IMHO he is OK but not special apart from the big 4 his picks aren't that good he also got Green and that other big guy from the lottery, Perry Jones and of course he let Landry and Bledsoe go. What I'm saying is he is still inferior IMHO to the Spurs, Rox and Portland
I'm just saying for all we know he had Love on his list after WB and Curry after Harden. I'm just saying it was hard for him to not come away with great players. It's a simple statement that not all drafts are stacked when you have great picks to use.
But the only way to make that argument is to ignore the fact that there were, in fact, plenty of bad choices too. He could easily have drafted Jonny Flynn or Ricky Rubio or any number of other players. It's not an automatic that if he didn't draft the players he did, he would have gotten a good player. Lots of other teams in that range didn't. Another way to look at this question is to ask what GMs have done a better drafting job (given their positioning) in recent history? I think we'd all agree that the Spurs are far and away superior to everyone else with how they've come up with so many stars in the lower portion of the draft. But what other teams would we say have done an outstanding job on the draft?
