Hakeem & Clyde One first round pick by us, one in a trade. Yao and Tmac Same same. How many players on Detroit were drafted by Detroit? Build through Free Agency, and sprinkle in a draft pick now and again. You can not afford to build through the draft any longer. Players coming in are too inexperienced, and young. DD
Don't underestimate the draft. Look at the Heat...that team sucked, and then they draft Butler one year and Wade the next. In 2 years they went from one of worst teams to one of the best. Yes they did sign Odoms too.
Bobs gave two 2s for Ely and House. Ely is a promising servicable big. Would you have traded a 1 for him/them?
Have you also noticed that Barry chose the Spurs because he felt they were closer to winning, Dice and Hudson are going to get ridiculous contracts, and Fisher is just mulling his options. I'm sure CD was getting plenty of calls, but the agents on the other line probably wanted huge sums of money for their players. The Rockets will get role players.
to put it bluntly, les is not a "drafting" type of GM, and JVG is certainly not a coach who will develop players. In three years, we've only kept one player, I think that pretty much states our stance and efforts on drafting, keeping and developing our players.
I wouldn't give up a 1st round pick for Daniels. when Barry went down the Sonics became very sluggish. Daniels couldn't run the team from the 1 guard spot. We need a player who can be a floor leader. Late first round picks are usually not very useful but occasionally players like Rush can be found.
I used to believe that building through draft was the best way. It is no doubt the most satisfying way. Now I am all for trading picks for solid veteran players. Due to the influx of HS and foreign prospects, the draft is getting less and less reliable as a way to build a team's talent pool. The success stories are all from hindsight. There are only a handful of "can't miss" prospects in each draft. If you don't have a top 5 pick, you are just getting some "potentials." There seems to be as many busts as great finds. Of course, I say this because we already have two stars on the team. If we had a starless team, I'd go for the draft hoping to luck into a future franchise player. Getting franchise players through trades or FA is extremely difficult.
I agree, for the most part. It's easy to look back and handpick the draft day steals of past drafts, but there are a lot more end-of-the bench players in spots #20-30 now than there were in pre-HS/Euro draft days. I challenge somebody to accuratley predict who the 2 best players drafted #20-30 in 2004 will be in 5 years. With such a high probability of missing on a low 1st round draft pick, it's totally defensible to target veteran (but not necessarily old) NBA players who you can see fitting into your system. That being said, I don't like the idea of just giving away draft picks for nothing (i.e. Glen Rice deal). They still are a way to improve a team in the long-term or can be bargaining chips at the very least.
