[Crystal Ball: 2016 Draft] A Return to The Familiar 9th Seed 14th Pick. Our picks from the past & fu

This is masturbatory b-u-l-l-s-h-*-t.

If only we had drafted Kawhi Leonard, blah-blah-blah.

You might as well include the next five guys in the draft, three/four of which were underwhelming.

 

I'd usually agree, except for the fact Kawhi was the very next player taken after Marcus Morris, and was on several teams' draft boards to be selected higher than that and to be the obvious BPA on the board when he dropped to become available at #14.

Morey went for need vs BPA with Morris over Kawhi, and used the stupid argument that Morris can play both SF and PF. I don't think Kawhi as BPA at #14 is disputable.

Kawhi would have been selected by most everyone except Morey.

 

Unlikely. Kawhi (like all players outside of the top of the draft) had issues. Obviously he overcame those issues. And I for one would not discount the Spurs organization's ability to develop players.

What is so totally obvious now (like all the teams that undervalued Draymond Green, the #35th pick in the 2012 draft) was also totally not obvious at draft time.

 

Like Morris. That's why Kawhi dropped to #14. But he was BPA at that point.

Admit it. You forgot Kawhi was the very next player selected after Morris.

Chad Ford had Leonard at #7.

Check out these mock drafts. Not one person had Morris over him. Most were agreeing with Ford that he'd be top 10.

http://www.nba.com/2011/news/features/05/18/consensus.mock.draft/

 

Thibs and JVG will grind a player down to the nub . . . .
Do you seriously think Curry would sit any 4th quarters with those guys?

Rocket River

 

Yeah. Moronic thinking that people love to regurgitate.

What about the 13 other teams that also passed on Kawhi?

This whole analysis reeks of low brow confirmation bias.

The logic is silly. Do this for every GM's draft picks over the past 6 years and list all the players they "missed out" on.

 

Even if he turns out to be good he'll get broken under the Rockets development anyway, see Yao & DMo. They still don't get it about putting on too much weight & too quickly. Especially for these naturally lean bigs.

 

Calm down. We are sitting at .492 and 8th seed.

 

Going year by year and listing who we "missed" without putting it into any context is half hearted at best and dishonest at worst. More likely, you were just being intellectually lazy. So much so that in looking at the 14th pick (as your title suggests) you managed to put all the other players selected at different positions as well. After that you then included who we "missed."

Surely it wasn't to build a narrative.

Seriously. Do this for every consistent playoff team over the past 5 years in the west:


For every Chandler Parsons the Rockets selected, there's a Royce white.

For every Kawhi Leonard the Spurs selected there's a Jackie Butler. For every Tony Parker there's a Livio Jean-Charles. For every Manu Ginobli there's a James Anderson. And the Spurs are the best at drafting.

Have the Mavs even drafted a single person of note who panned out in the last ten years?

Has Memphis?

Portland in the recent past while getting McCollum has selected awesome gems such as Myers Leonard and Nolan smith.

Okc had about 5 top 5 lottery picks to get their core. Not even worth discussing.

Warriors have done an amazing job through the draft in the recent past and no one can deny it. They basically have no mistakes.

The clippers picked Griffin (after they tanked) and Jordan but have struck out on legitimately every other person they've drafted lately.


Only three teams in the west have realistically (arguably) drafted better than the rockets. The Spurs, Warriors, and Thunder. Of those teams, the latter two were tanking (rebuilding) for about 5 years and had very early draft picks for numerous drafts.

Those are irrelevant to compare to the Rockets as really it's apples to oranges.

Only the Spurs have been consistently better. They're the best.

So yeah, having the 14th (or later) pick sucks. But let's not pretend the Rockets have failed. Morris and Patterson are key rotation pieces on playoff teams in the east. Surely if we end up at that position again, we'll do pretty good relative to most other teams. Yeah it's still not that great. But no one has an unblemished track record in the draft (except the warriors in the last 5-6 years). That's the nature of the draft.

 

LOL

I found the other poster calling you bullcrap actually is too nice.

Its laughable bullcrap.

Just because a team get lucky on a Chandler Parson does not make Morey a master of second round.

Isaiah Canaan? Nick Johson?

and how many of these names you still remember?

Furkan Aldemir? Joey Dorsey? Maarty Leunen? Jermaine Taylor? Sergio Llull?

and wtf had Chase Budinger achieved in this career so far?

Second round is a crap shot, you are lucky if you will hit one, if you don't, that's normal.

Mid to late first round picks are pretty similar also, the max ceiling you are looking for is probably just a rotation players, if somehow you get a star in this range, you are just lucky.

 

This is far from the truth,

its more about luck than perfect execution.

Out of those 4 years GSW picked the 4 max (current and going to be) players in their team now, their highest pick no. 6 in those years actually is the worse picks of all.

And the last draft, they picked a guy whose needing surgery right after the draft, unlike Dekker, and his condition was actually well known and GSW still took that gamble. That is a bad pick for a team which is paying luxury tax and going all in.

 

i agree 100%. my head and my heart are in the 9th seed though. no way am i giving up a first round pick in exchange for 4 blowout losses to the warriors. i'm not sure who benefits from that. none of our young guys would even play. harden/dwight/ariza/bev already have playoff experience. #saveourpick.

as for that offseason plan, very similar to mine:

first:
i would let dwight walk (unless he takes a lowball offer that you said you'd offer). capela isn't too far behind and is only 1/10th of the cost of retaining dwight. not to mention there are plenty of decent centers on the market to backup capela, or challenge him for the starting spot.

second:
let all of our free agents and NG contracts walk. clear as much cap as possible to reload. i'd consider keeping dmo depending on how he looks the rest of the year after the back surgery, and depending on how cheap we can get him. everyone else, gone.

third:
target borderline star free agents while the rest of the league waits for horford and durant. give extra preference (and extra money) to players from teams ahead of us in the standings. stealing those players will improve us while weakening them. this helps us rise in the standings exponentially.

fourth:
avoid the traps. gasol is too old. batum, jefferson, and noah are always injured. whiteside will cause more harm that good, just ask miami. same for rondo.

primary targets:
conley
barnes
ezeli
parsons
clarkson