(Chron) Rockets planning to draft for Talent not Position...

in that situation (or any similar one) no. this team needs talent. if you have to use the pick, then you take the BPA.

my suggestion is to trade the pick. even the BPA at #26 can and up out of the nba in 4 years. for every parker and kirilenko drafted in the late first round, there is a million others who can't stay in the league.

why use a tradable asset (the pick) on a risk? since we are talking about hypothetical senarios... why gamble a $5 bill (our pick) on a chance you end up not even getting back a dollar? i would rather use those $5 in a package with luther and bring in a $10 bill. see what i mean?

 

I think this translates to the Rockets being confident in filling whatever positional holes through free agency.

 

I'm afraid that, if we take the best player available, we will be taking another point guard, Petteri Koponen.

 

People that have infused "trading up" into the discussion have confused the issue. The core issue has nothing to do with trading up. Trading up is hard to do and should have NO relevance in analyzing Morey's BPA @ 26 pronouncement.

IMHO, Morey's comment has to do with some statistical representation of the likelihood of success picking in this region. His deduction would be a statistically low probability of success occurence. I have no disagreement with that.

Secondly, Morey's evaluation of the BPA at 26 is going to have some form of a $Ball component. Given his background and how/why he was hired, it could be the ONLY criteria. This is where I start to diverge. Big men take longer to develop...that's a fact. So the $Ball talent evaluation you have built to prioritize your pick is skewed in the direction and skillset of players you already have an abundance of.

A practical example....

$Ball likely values Morris Almond above Glen Davis. Almond between the two is for practical purposes the BPA. However, Almond is plays a postion where there is an abundance of players and not many minutes....McGrady, Wells, Head, Snyder and some Mike James. Davis on the other hand would be on a roster contract depth chart of Steve Novak and Justin Reed.

Both players are a risk. Can Almond get off a shot against NBA defenses? JJ Redick struggles and he was a Lottery pick not a #26. Can Davis keep off the weight or is he destined to be Tractor Part 2?

But by Morey's logic neither will get playing time so they are "investments in the future". But without fast forwarding the future, you have delayed the decision on Almond and denied a big valuable PT required to develop.

These are reasons why I say you draft the BPA in an area of need NOT overall.

Luther Head got unexpected PT because of injury. What if Chuck Hayes can't be re-signed, what if Hayes is freakishly injured, what if you come up short in an already short list of unrestricted PF FA's, what if the Artest for scraps was more BS than it was possiblity, what if....you flat out come up short at PF? (And no, trading Wells is not an option if you ever want to sign a Bill Duffy FA again).

Given the skewed $Ball factor, given the big man development factor, given already existing PF depth issues, given already existing talent at PF and backup C issues beyond 2007-08, given how injury can affect PF much more than SG...but most importantly given that there is IMHO very little talent difference between the best available SG and the best available PF...you have to draft big and not small. Doing this the Rockets would have had David Lee and not Luther Head.

In closing, please don't turn the discussion into an Almond vs Davis debate. They were exemplary placeholders. And if Morris is as much better as you want us to believe he won't be there at 26 anyway.

 

Gater that was a very wisely worded comment.

I absolutely agree with you on this point. Going into this draft the Rockets have, imo, two options. Make some sort of deal that trades the pick for a useful PF (with the 26th pick there is going to have to be something else traded with it so you have to balance that out) or draft a big man to fill needs now and in the future.

And as much as I hate to say it, even if they do draft a PF at the 26th, I think they will need to still sign a big man in FA.

Somewhere along the line something is going to have to give. The Rockets have too many guards right now, there is no way you take a guard in the draft unless you intend to trade his rights for something else.