Drafting: Need vs Best Available

When you are bad, you go BPA because you need to accumulate talent.

When your core is in place, you go best fit. That's best fit at a position of need, best fit with the team's culture, and you stay the HELL away from potential bad apples. Everyone has to be willing to put their nose to the grindstone and sacrifice for the good of the team. This is the Spurs philosophy, and they have enough confidence in their coaching staff to coach up whoever they pick. Hence making tremendous use of guys like Dejuan Blair, Danny Green, Gary Neal, Cory Joseph, Tiago Splitter, Matt Bonner, we could go on and on.

The Rockets need to be like the Spurs now. Enough BPA. Go get a backup big man, wing defender/3pt threat, spread four, or 3rd PG. You're not gonna find a starting PF in the second round of this draft, so you might as well get someone who is gonna help.

 

Some of it depends on where you are drafting but for the most part best player available is best. Simply because the BPA can then be traded for more value than that "need pick" or the "need trade" will be for you.

If a team does not have at least 1 superstar player than it's greatest need is to get that superstar. That means drafting BPA.

Then after getting that superstar player, an assessment needs to be made as to whether the teams needs another superstar player. If so, then you're still drafting BPA looking for that next superstar player.

Yes, it's frustrating at times. I kept watching our guys last year and kept waiting for Morey to go get that legit backup center that we needed for Asik. In my mind, a quality backup big man (not necessarily a rookie) acquired early in December would have allowed us to push for top 5 seeding. I really thought that at the deadline Morey would bring in somebody. But it's not where we are at. We can't sacrifice assets right now. Gotta get that second superstar. That means when supertalented guys like Royce White are staring you in the face, you gotta take 'em and see what happens. That means when the best potential player on the board is PF and you've already got 5 of them on the roster, you gotta take him. And that also means you can't get locked into a $2-5 million long term deal on bench players until you've got your superstars and most of your rotation guys set.

 

I'm hoping we go after a wing player who can defend and knock down the 3. Maybe we can trade ****e for a second round pick and also draft Muscala.

Who is a good fit for us at the SG/SF position?

 

Gah we could've had Zeller over White. Hinesight is 20/20 but sighhh

 

Actually we could've had ANYBODY over White.

 

Tony Snell may be there in the 2nd round...

 

This is a very good draft for centers. Could find an immediate backup for Asik but perhaps an eventual replacement for him as well if need be. Morey may consider trading into the mid first round and draft one. But I wonder how much faith he has in Tim Ohlbrecth...

 

So you are worried about the Rockets missing with the Best Player Available, but you want to increase risk of missing by limiting number of draftable players?

 

Best Player Available is somewhat overrated, because GMs just aren't good enough///players develop differently.

So, while you obviously aren't going to leave LeBron on the draftboard because you really need a 5, sometimes the player you select for the position ends up being better than the supposed best player available.

(A bad example, because LeBron would probably be one of the best 5's in the league.... CP3 and Atlanta is a much better real life example at the 1.)

 

Rockets had Budinger and drafted Morris when they came up to pick in 2nd round a couple years ago, so they didn't need a SF. Jeremy Tyler was the need pick at center. Rockets picked Parsons. Granted they over drafted Morris a little (he's probably about the 16th-20th best player drafted that year).

 

I think, at pick #34, you really have no choice but to go with the best available player. If, for some reason, Tim Hardaway Jr is there at #34, do you pass him up because you need a big more? I don't think so. I think the only exception here is the PF spot. I think even if the BPA is a PF, you gotta pass here with all of the PFs on the roster. Otherwise, BPA all the way. If the Rockets were drafting in the early to mid 1st round, I'd be all for filling a need. But they aren't. They're in the early 2nd round. Go with the best non-PF on the board. If that's Muscala or Nogueira or Jaiteh, then you kill two birds with one stone, but I think Nogueira and Jaiteh are YEARS away from contributing. So, if Muscala is gone by #34, what do you do? Gotta go with the BPA.

 

I'll draft the best available.

 

The only real position of need that the draft an help us with is at PF.

But even then, are those picks at 34 going to be better then DMo, TRob, or Jones? Highly doubtful imo. You have to go with the BPA.

 

Parsons ending up being better than the vast majority of the 2011 draft kind of prove my point that going for BPA doesn't exactly work?

But, when MM was drafted, the consensus was that he was going to play the SF (and almost everyone here also wanted Leonard for the 3 instead.) We had PFs galore.

Didn't MM even say he was going to play the 3 in interviews?

And did Tyler finally switch to C from PF, otherwise he still would have been 1 of 10 thousand.

 

Muscala looks like a definite steal if we can get him at #34.

Are Snell and Leslie options at back-up SF?

 

we're looking at 2nd round people. BPA is most likely our option here. Morey is a wizard with those 2nd rounders.

 

Honestly there are plenty of borderline 1st-2nd rounders that I am pretty excited about this year. All it takes is for one to slip to us and that isn't unheard of to speak of. I think I am getting more excited about these players this year since we have no 1st round pick so I actually get to focus on these fringe players and see their strengths and weaknesses where I would normally just ignore them.