Blazers Edge: Why Kyle Lowry May Become a Blazer on Draft Night

I wouldn't classify drafting Bowie over Jordan and Oden over Durant as "bad luck."

 

What a freaking fantastic post... Plus rep for this domination...

 

A team would be ridiculed for trading a top 5 alone for Kyle Lowry.

 

I agree with others that this is a great post but there are 2 major factors we have to consider. Aside from the goods that you mentioned... Kyle still being young, improving and on a bargain of a contract we can't avoid the bad:

1) Kyle is unhappy here and he's not going to play for McHale.
2) Kyle wants to start and I think majority vote (management included) is that we would rather sign Gogi and have him run the team.

When you take into consideration those 2 things and consider the current state of the team (mediocrity) you have to take the best deal available and if there's a deal to trade one of your starting PG's for a chance at a player that can change your franchise you go for it.

If we draft a bust at #6 then so be it... We're losing Kyle one way or another. I'd rather trade Lowry for a draft pick as opposed to a star on the decline (Gasol) or some other marginal veterans. I'm okay trading Lowry if it meant we had a chance at a "Brandon Roy type of player" considering the 2 major factors mentioned. If we end up with a "Jonny Flynn type of player" I can live with that knowing that we at least took a risk to turn this franchise around.

I guarantee you there's going to be AT LEAST A COUPLE of players drafted #6 and beyond that would be drafted top 5 if the draft were to be re-done at the end of the season.

 

People are overlooking this post.

 

I skipped over this post.

Great point. I touched on a similar point in my post. Many of those players can help to turn a franchise around and some of them are actually franchise players. You can also add Paul George, Granger, Rajon Rondo and David Lee off the top of my head for franchise/borderline franchise players off the top of my head drafted after pick 6.

 

Nice list, I'd trade Lowry to Portland for the 6th pick. I'd be worried if we get Drummond, low IQ and motor questions. He went to UCONN like Thabust, Yikes!! I would be happy if Beal fell to 6th, which I doubt. I wouldn't be dissapointed with Waiters or Lillard.

 

I see you've included picks outside the top 10. Even top-15 for Hibbert. Let's just include all lottery picks outside the top-5. 6-14 x 11 years means 99 picks. Now for the sake of argument that every player on that list are better than Lowry. I disagree personally, but let's just assume they are. That's 17 players you listed, or ~17% chance that the Rockets hit on a player of that caliber with pick #6. If you think Morey is a better judgement of talent than an average team, double that up to ~33%.

So we're looking at trading Kyle Lowry for at best, 1/3 chance of landing a player the caliber of Brandon Jennings or Iggy or Jefferson. and 2/3 chance of landing a player vastly inferior to Lowry. Is that really something to be excited about? Only one player in that entire group, Amare, can be considered a bonifide star in his prime.

 

Yes and we would be the ones laughing and pointing the finger.

 

Have everybody forgotten that Thabeet was punking Drummond in workouts just a few months ago?

 

I think you're overrating Lowry,

All those guys on that list are either currently better than Lowry, were better than Lowry at one point and time or will be better than Lowry.

I'll take a 33% chance of landing a player that can help us turn the corner as opposed to having Lowry complain about playing time, butting heads with the coach and helping us secure the 14th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.

 

The team with the poorest record has a 25% chance of winning the NBA lottery.

33% is pretty good.

 

I think that there is one thing that we can be sure of - Morey won't pull the trigger to get the 6th pick unless there is someone there he really wants.

 

And I will be ok with his judgement.

 

sorry stupid iPhone corrected, was meant to say you "can't" look at pick number historically.

 

As I said, that's immaterial. Because I don't care to argue something which I find unimportant for the sake of this discussion.

Now here's the important distinction. I don't see replacing Lowry with players such as Jennings, Gay, Curry, etc. would take us out of the dreaded 14th pick slot. Maybe it goes down to 16 or 17. But I don't think it take us to the late 20s.

So really, I was arguing against those players turning the franchise around. You may believe they are franchise changers, even though I have absolutely no clue why you feel that. I would say most posters here would not exactly be giddy with this team if we had, say, Rudy Gay instead of Lowry on the roster right now.

 

Let's see if this works. The above graph is a smoothed (best fit with the first pick anchored) graph of 25 years of NBA draft data. It values each draft choice relative to each other. You can mix in current NBA players only if you first estimate what draft pick you believe they could be traded for.

The graph offers visual confirmation as to why NO rejected the rumored trade offer of draft picks from Cleveland.

This is really just a test of incorporating images into CF articles before I publish the full article.

We will see.

 

I didn't overlook it, it makes no sense to me because you could make that argument with any pick. By that logic you might as well just trade anyone like Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, or Kyrie Irving because TECHNICALLY you could have drafted Lebron James if you had the #1 in 2003. It's a statistical fallacy, to take the tip of the iceberg (i.e. the BEST players in the entire draft below 6) and say that that's representative for the value of the #6 pick. What you hope to represent instead is a sample size that is not far removed from the variable that you are trying to quantify. A.k.a. what is a #6 pick worth. I suppose the team that is trading the #6 pick would like to make you believe that it is worth the maximum of all the picks selected on or after 6. Whereas the team trying to acquire the pick would look at it more truthfully, in a statistical sense. A guy like Morey would easily call BS on the former line of thinking.

 

let's stay on the treadmill of mediocrity! yay.

cos there is no way in hell anyone is trading a top 5 pick of value or anything of value for Lowry that will make our team go into the top 10. but hey if we're happy with it and les is making money let this train roll on!

 

Maybe not Rudy Gay per se but I'd be STOKED if we had Brandon Roy before his injury, Iggy, Gallinari, Eric Gordon or Paul George.

Anyways, if contracts were equal I WOULD say most posters here would be giddy to have Rudy Gay as opposed to Lowry.

What good is Lowry if he's going to be unhappy playing backup for a coach he doesn't want to play for?