I know PER is a stupid stat sometimes, but it's a decent shorthand for what I'm about to say... In 2015, we had Dame at 22 PER, CJ at 18 PER, Plums at 17 PER, which is good (not Finals good but makes-the-playoffs good). But, we had Harkless at 13 PER, and Aminu at 13 PER. Not good, but luckily Ed Davis was an 18 PER off the bench; not often you get one of those. We need two players at 20+ PER (Drexler/Porter were both above 20 in the 1990-1992 era), and also no more than one starter below 16 PER (Duck was a 13 PER). I think we still have the benefit of expecting year over year growth from CJ and Harkless. If you can get CJ from an 18 to a 20 PER next year, and Harkless from a 13 to a 15 PER next year, that's as good as any clever trade or FA signing for those positions (Hark is so young, you can hope that 2018 Harkless grows more too). If you can lure a PF/C here that can give us 18-20 PER as well, we'll be in great shape. Move Plums or Aminu to the bench for a stronger bench mob, or trade them for guys who are okay with playing off the bench.
Dirk was a draft day trade. Lebron took the Cavs to the finals. Kobe was also a draft day trade. Dirk and Kobe have never worn a jersey other than the LA or Dallas.
Interesting thought on PER, @BlazerCaravan . GSW: Curry (32), Klay (19), Draymond (19) and then 4 other guys above league average of 15. Jesus. OKC: KD (28), Russ (28), Kanter (24), rest are around average or worse. CLE: Lebron (28), Kyrie (20), Love (19), rest are average or worse. SAS: Kawhi (26), Aldridge (22), Manu (18), West (18), Tim (17), TP (16) We are definitely lacking a high usage 3rd guy.
Yeah that says way more about how poorly managed Orlando and Cleveland were, and bad teams in general are more likely to fuck up their good draft picks because often the reason they're bad is bad management. San Antonio tanking for Duncan was brilliant because it wasn't a stupid management move like Philly.
Yeah, a medium-to-high usage third option that's also 17-19 PER in efficiency. Man, if we had Kanter... we'd be playing SAS right now (imho).
Is it fair to expand this to top 10? Or would that just skew the argument? Several have taken their teams to the finals. Wade has won 2 as well who was a top 5 pick
Man, I wonder if TOR would be willing to part ways with Valanciunas. That guy is screaming for a bigger role.
Prying good players from deep playoff teams is hard because those teams generally aren't run by idiots.
Speaking of which, I'd keep an eye on CLE this summer as well. If they lose again in the Finals, GM LeBron will have heads rolling. Kevin Love is their usual scapegoat.
Ya, tanking for the purpose of tanking is garbage, but rebuilding the right way....and obviously, like SA and Houston with the twin towers, you have to get lucky You obviously have to make good draft picks. GS has done great, but if a team in front of them, oh I don't know....Minnesota, for example takes Curry instead of Rubio and Flynn, then GS more than likely doesn't have a title. If anyone takes Lillard before we did, we probably suck right now. There has to be luck involved, but sometimes teams have to create their own luck
Wade is the other one, but he needed Shaq and LeBron to win it all. If you expand it to top 10, you'll find more, but you'll also find a LOT more total busts (not that there is any shortage of them in the top 5 - Darko, Oden, Olowokandi, Kwame, etc.). The total number of players that have won titles for the teams that drafted them will go up, but so will the total number of players that were absolutely wasted draft picks. And, that's kind of my point, the draft is a total crap shoot. Even if you get lucky and end up with the 1st pick when a once a generation player is supposedly available, it doesn't guarantee a championship. As mentioned, LeBron is the biggest draft prize post Tim Duncan and that was 13 years ago and he still has't won a title in CLE - a team that had three other No. 1 overall picks and a total of 5 top 4 picks in the 4 years he was off winning titles elsewhere. Think about that. CLE has LeBron, the best player of his generation, and has had five other top 4 draft picks in the last 5 years, and they still haven't won a championship. Of course, we lucked into the No. 1 pick in the "Oden Draft" and we all know how that worked out. BNM
It is a crap shoot. I guess I've always been a believer in havign a better chance to get it right the higher you are in the draft. We could've selected Durant, but teams 3-13 could not have We could have selected Drummond instead of the injured guy had we had a higher pick.
We did have a higher pick. We used it on Damian Lillard. No regrets there. The problem is, those higher picks come at a cost, and sometimes they aren't available at ANY price. No way in hell was CLE trading the No. 1 pick in 2003. We got REALLY lucky convincing NJN to give us the pick that turned out to be Damian Lillard. Everyone thought Drummond would go higher and was surprised he fell to 9th (at the time, many thought we were crazy for taking Lillard over Drummond at 6th). Sure, we could have had him instead of Meyers (or with Meyers), but it would have cost us Dame. In most cases, all a really high draft pick means is you really suck and will probably continue to suck for a while until you finally luck out and get a player that you can build around. (PHI, MIN, SAC, the pre-Olshey LACs, etc.). BNM
But missing even MORE free throws would have drove people nuts... so many variables, and hopefully his defense and other tangibles produce less points for them and more points for us... but god damn would we miss a lot more free throws... It's hard to say. I just hate missing free throws. But yeah, other than that, Drummond would be nice.
Conversely it's also the easiest way to stop sucking. HOU, SA, GS, POR Had we finished worse it would not have cost us Dame. Dame was from NJ.
My original comment was drafting higher means you have the opportunity to land better players. I brought up not being able to draft Drummond someone Portland reportedly really wanted, and having to settle for the injured guy as an example. Boob said had we drafted Drummond we wouldn't have got Dame, which is correct. Just not what I was saying. Had we had a higher pick that year we could have had dame and Drummond. Then again we could have had Dame and Soup Juggler, so you know. It's not an exact science
ONE of my ideal draft days is to have the Lakers talk to Charles Barkley. He would convince them that Biebs would be "perfect" next to Julius Randle... http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/241922/Lakers-Expected-To-Trade-Pick-If-It-Falls-To-No-3
