But we have Zach Collins over Donovan Mitchell...

Right now Mitchell is the far better player. I'll reserve judgements for a couple of years. Collins is just a baby with a ton of room to grow. I'm thrilled to have him on the team. The draft is a crapshoot. If you can get one of the handful that ends up being good, you gotta take that.

 

Also, something I said about Mitchell on Utah board when they were discussing him as the rookie of the year. He’s an incredible player but he also went into a perfect situation for him at Utah who were not afraid to give him a lead role on the offense and surrounded him with defensively sound players. He might have not made the same leap at any other team, even though he would still be great.

See, if you put Mitchell in Sixers team instead of Simmons, they become worse. If you put Simmons in Utah team, they are much worse off too. This could be similar with Collins in 2-3 years. He might not be a better player than Mitchell but could be a much, much better fit.

Besides, we wouldn’t have moved up in the draft for anybody else. The team that should be regretting not taking Mitchell more are Sacramento who could have had the best young backcourt in the NBA with him and Fox (athleticism and dynamism of this duo would be amazing). Then Detroit who took Kennard and maybe Knicks who took a punt on Ntilikina. All other teams basically took players who were projected as better prospects. And then obviously Utah hit the jackpot and I am happy for them because it looked like they were going to struggle post Hayward and they actually replaced him with a superior talent.

 

So a draft is a failure unless we get the best player in it ? Breaking news, they're multiple good picks per drafts, and we need to wait to see if our is one of them, but I'm pretty confident it is

 

I mean, it sucks that the Blazers didn't get Giannis and Mitchell. But even the best scouts can't see how good a player will become until they set foot in the league. The Spurs pass up plenty of great prospects, for that matter.

At the least, the Blazers got a promising project player in Zach. Hopefully, it does not end becoming another Meyers Leonard type situation where the rookie shows promise only to somehow lose that resolve over time.

 

Not at all.

Trading CJ for George, then drafting Mitchell, and we're probably still playing

 

Why is it during the draft last June there wasn't a single post by you touting Donovan Mitchell as the player we should draft? I call your bs simply as hindsight.

 

Eh, if we took Mitchell people would say he's too small to be playing in our backcourt. So whatever... I'm happy with Collins.

 

The draft is a crap shoot. We did good drafting Zach.

Caleb on the other hand was a whiff, IMO.

 

Yeah, if we should have predicted Mitchell was going to be this good, then he would have been picked in the top 5. You can't have it both ways.

Zach is definitely more of a long term project. Nobody knows exactly what he will become, but he seems to have some interesting tools. I was very surprised by his ability to put the ball on the floor and drive a tight baseline. If he can develop that along with his shot and basic post moves he really could be special. I just hope he doesn't defer too much. I want him demanding the ball when he gets good position. We have too many passive players who just take what comes to them (not named Dame or CJ).

 

D69 had Giannis rated well above CJ before the draft....he needs no hindsight.

 

I like ZCo. I think he has a lot of potential..... but another project big man was the last thing this team needed. Swanigan was a horrible pick as well. Sometimes I just don't understand Neil. He doesn't have a bad eye for talent necessarily, but he seems to make the wrong pick based on what's available.

Picking CJ was a head scratcher for me at the time because Dame had just won ROY. And even though their games are not totally the same, they still play very similar styles. Obviously CJ is a talented player, so it was a good pick, but I would love to know if Giannis was on our radar. Or Gobert.

Going into the last draft, this team had a lot of holes and I was really hoping we could turn our three picks into a veteran player. Someone that would contribute right away. Instead of having someone that would help in the playoffs, we got 7 ppg on 36.7% shooting from Zach, and we got a big fat donut from Caleb. It really feels like this entire season was a waste of time. We didn't learn anything new. Dame and CJ are a year older. We're going to have to pay Nurk. Unless something drastic is done to shake things up, I don't see a huge difference coming next season.

 

Lots of great, logical takes in this thread. Here's my thought:

Why speak logic to someone who clearly doesn't deal in it?

 

Hypothetical scenarios are pretty worthless. Why did we take Bowie over Jordan? Why did we take Oden over Durant? Just no point at all worrying about those things that are long done.

With that said, a better question would be: is Neil Olshey still the right GM for this team? Has he made enough bad decisions that he needs to go?

So in that vein, was picking Zach Collins a bad choice for this team, and should Neil be held accountable for it?

I'm really on the fence, because Neil is still vastly better than some of the other GMs we have had in the past 20 years, but is he the right GM to take this current team to the next level?

 

Forgive me for doubting your scouting abilities. You are obviously great at evaluating draft prospects.

BNM

 

Just because we didn't get the immediate results you wanted from him doesn't mean he was the wrong choice.

Could Dame, CJ, and Mitchell even coexist? I don't know but don't think so. Mitchell isn't bigger and isn't a plus defender.

 

You rang FAMS!?!

 

But that was really my issue from the very moment that we made the trade to move up to 10th.

We didn't get immediate results from him, and that's why I thought it was the wrong choice. We had three first round picks, and we took two bigs that weren't able to contribute really anything this season.

How did that end for us? A sweep in the first round.

I wanted to trade those picks for a veteran who was going to contribute right away. We already have enough young project guys that don't contribute on a nightly basis. Harkless, Nurk, Pat, etc. They're all talented young guys that we can't count on to give us something every single game. Instead of trying to find someone who would, we instead drafted a 19 year old who has a bright future, but clearly isn't ready to contribute every night, and a slow footed big who probably won't be in the league in four years.

 

We aren't in contention bro. Which is why Zach was a good choice.