Bob Whitsitt would never have ran a draft like Nate McMillan did last night. (I mean Chad Buchanan). Amateur hour for sure.
It seems to me that people who were anti-Miller are much more prone to meltdowns than people who aren't big fans of Felton. I guess we'll wait and see. Ed O.
That is a PERFECT example. Whitsitt drafted Respert at #8 and then traded him for Trent (#11) and a first round pick. He could have just taken Trent at #8, but he wisely got additional value. Excellent point. Ed O.
Of course Faried isn't comparable to LMA or Wallace - he still would have given the Blazers a cheap and servicable reserve at a position the team needs depth. As many people have noted, he is an elite rebounder, and that is a skill that usually translates well from college to the NBA. What does Smith bring to the party? He wasn't even a full time PG in college, so what are the odds of him becoming one in the NBA? On the plus side, they say he is a "good character guy."
Well Brady wasn't a full time QB at Michigan either. Some college teams have too much depth. But I will say I know as much about Smith as all of you do. Which is not much. Same with Faried. However the arguement seems to be that the guys is not a PG. Well our scouts think differently. And they have actually seen him play. We are not over crowded at PG. IMO It is a much bigger need than the BU PF spot. The center spot is another position of need. Then the PF spot.
So who was it? We only had a 12 man team at that time, so did he make it? Whitsitt would have been better off taking a 6'6" white guy with the 8th pick. Yes that was too high for Brent Barry (who was projected to go later and did at 15) but they instead went for more "value". The point is that Whitsitt was far from perfect on draft day.
Who's saying he was perfect? He was obviously going to take the best players he could... but he picked the best players he could WHILE OPTIMIZING the value. It doesn't matter who the Blazers ended up with that first rounder. The point is that they received it. Whether they sold it or drafted a guy and then declined to sign him or drafted a future HoF, the process is the exact same. And it's far superior to just "taking our guy". Ed O.
My post was in response to Fez: " Bob Whitsitt would never have ran a draft like Nate McMillan did last night. (I mean Chad Buchanan). Amateur hour for sure. " And i obviously disagree with the amateur hour part.
I dunno, if they like him at 21, and you're CERTAIN you can slide down, you do it. But, just looking at DX's last mock, they had Smith going 36. So say we traded down to 36. Between 21 and 36, you had Jackson, Mack, Joseph and cole all drafted. All except for Jackson were "mocked" to go after Smith. There's a chance we slide back there, and Smith is gone, with one of those teams preferring him to Cole, Mack or Joseph. Similarly, Bertans was mocked to go 26. If we liked him, we would have been trading up to 25-ish to grab him, and he went at 42. So we would have wasted value. I know a lot of the mocks do fairly solid, but I think that's more so in the lottery, and then when there's a clear guy a team likes. Otherwise, there's lots of misses late, and it's pretty easy to assume the mocks teams do privately are probably more accurate. Hell, a day or two ago, everyone was thinking brooks at 15. What if we were excited for him and jumped to 14, only to see he would have fallen all the way to 25.
You can disagree all you'd like, of course. But taking a player just because you want him--and ignoring where you could probably get him--is leaving money on the table. Amateur. Ed O.
Where you could probably get him. So you read Chad Ford saying a guy will go here, and then you think teams are just trading up and down based off of a consensus of the mock drafts. Amateur. Fact is, you have no clue where we could have gotten him at. I think if you do that in the top 10 with a guy l;ike that, fine. At 21, when maybe a guy goes 22, maybe he goes 50, no. You take him. An extra 2nd rounder isn't worth the risk of losing out on a guy if you trulylike him.
Listen. I'm not the one who said that if you like a player, you take him. That's Buchanan, right? That is a loser's approach to the draft, IMO. And I consider it to be amateur. It has nothing to do with where I think a player would go. It has nothing to do with which players I like. It has to do with the team deciding, of the players it likes, where the optimal place to select the player is. To maximize value. The team would not have picked Nolan Smith at #1, right? Or at #2. Or at #10, presumably. COULD they have picked him at #30? Maybe. And if they could get value by sliding back 9 spots, and Smith wasn't there, then presumably there'd be someone worth that spot plus the value they got. It's this manipulation of the draft that I am impressed by and, I believe, is both professional and successful. Whitsitt was good at it. KP was, too. Cho seems to do it. "If our guy's there, we'll take him" is a weak approach and I'm disappointed that the Blazers' GM relies on it. Ed O.
Sure, there's always just someone else you could pick. But if you trade down from 21 to 30, just to pick up a late 2nd, and then miss out on the guy you want, so you just grab someone else seems stupid to me. Well, we really wanted Nolan Smith, thought he was BPA, but had to go to our 5th choice, because we traded from 21 to 30, thinking or hoping he might be there, because that's what the mock drafts told us, and now, in between 21 and 30, not only did he go, but our top 4 other choices. So then, we're going to reach for someone at 30, and fans will whine and bitch, because they saw a mock draft say he would go later. I understand the trading back and getting value. It's great if you can do it and still get your guy. It's stupid late to move too many picks back, not knowing if your guy, or your next 4 guys will be there. Like I said, I think mocking the lotto is a little easier. So trading back from 5 to 8, knowing who is going at 6 and 7 is good. 21 to somewhere like 30 is a lot more risky, and foolish if you like a guy, for what amounts to not much value in return.
The squandering of assets is what had me pulling my hair out last night. If you want a reference of what maximizing your draft value does for you, look no further than Scott Paoli and the NE Patriots. They trade down and trade into future drafts and replenish their team better than anyone.
This quote: Makes me think the Blazers went into the draft not thinking BPA. That even if a better talent dropped to them, they would still take Nolan Smith.
