Official 2013 Draft Thread - Part II

[Dat2U]

Underrated.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpxLbcI_fQY[/youtube]

Quick reads, quick reaction, no ball stalling to get his points in, quick reads on defense shading for teammates who get beat. It's his mind and quickness I'm reading, not his 'grown man against babies' type of body.

Excellent points doc. That's something you can't really teach. I'm not sold if he really brings enough offense to the table to be a starter at the NBA level but his awareness / IQ gives him a long term job at the next level. Dieng & Withey are similar prospects. Solid backup Cs with value in the mid 1st rounder area.

[doclinkin]

Impressive stuff. I'm concerned that he's already 23 and his overall production has been basically flat for three seasons. Not much reason to expect him to fill out that much or improve significantly, is there?

Some call that "consistency".

Lack of variation is not bad when you are pretty good. By some measures Dieng is one of the best defenders in the NCAA over the past few years.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pla ... eaderboard
http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/lea ... areer.html
http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/lea ... areer.html

But yes on our squad he's a role-player, but in a key position, and in the role you want him to play. Developing on the bench behind players who are ideally suited to mentor him by example (in Nene and Okafor) his game is very like the UConn version of Okafor, with a little more of Nene's passing and range.

[doclinkin]

Excellent points doc. That's something you can't really teach. I'm not sold if he really brings enough offense to the table to be a starter at the NBA level but his awareness / IQ gives him a long term job at the next level. Dieng & Withey are similar prospects. Solid backup Cs with value in the mid 1st rounder area.

Agreed with one qualifier. Dieng added that longer ranged shot relatively recently. He is in fact developing, subtly, adding an improved assist % , cutting fouls, reducing TO's. And championship contending experience goes a long way towards further improvement. AFAIC he's the most important player on a team I'm going to say will probably win the NCAA tourney. In any case, any other player on the squad could have had their foot flapping like a dirty sweatsock but if that was Dieng then Pitino's squad doesn't win.

Eeegh, that injury still makes my innards wince. Gruesome.

[nate33]

Dieng has very good but not particularly eye-popping numbers in the sexy defensive stats: rebounds and blocks. But what I like the most about him are his sneaky good numbers in steals, assists, TOV% and fouls. Those numbers really support doc's praise of his basketball IQ. It's possible that he might pan out to be a bit more like a Joakim Noah/Ben Wallace type of defensive quarterback, rather than merely a Theo Ratliff/Robin Lopez type of rebounding/shot blocking grunt.

After looking at the numbers, I think I'd place Dieng ahead of Withey among the polished ready-for-NBA defensive bigs. Our only problem is that we are currently chock full of young, athletic defensive minded front court players. We need a few more guys who know how to put the ball in the basket. It's tough to contemplate using our #10ish pick on Dieng, but if we can trade down with Atlanta or Utah, pick up 2 picks, and use one of them on Dieng and the other on an offensive player, I'd be pretty happy.

[fugop]

Dieng's game has matured an incredible amount in three years. There isn't a highlight video that focuses just on his play in the Big East championship game, but it was the most impressive performance I've seen from a center in a long time. Dieng ran the entire offense from the high post. He finished the game with 8 assists. You can see some of the details in the video in this story:

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... east-title

Like I said in my long post on Dieng a few days ago, I think he's going to be a great pro, but still a role player.

[truwizfan4evr]

There's two guys i hope drops to wizards Cody Zeller and Shabazz Muhammad. On nbadraft.net they have both guys dropping in the draft Cody Zeller would be a nice fit for wizards. Would anyone be interested in getting Glen Robinson 111 ?

[sfam]

There's two guys i hope drops to wizards Cody Zeller and Shabazz Muhammad. On nbadraft.net they have both guys dropping in the draft Cody Zeller would be a nice fit for wizards. Would anyone be interested in getting Glen Robinson 111 ?

I definitely don't want Shabazz, and am not sold on Zeller being productive in the pros. I'd rather take my chances on Len.

EDIT: and I'm guessing Glen Robinson 111 isn't going to be born, much less be drafted any time soon.

[Nivek]

Right now in YODA, this year looks like the weakest draft at the top since the Wizards picked Wall. Obviously need to add in combine results when they're available, but there's really no one who has a YODA score of a "typical" number one overall pick.

[nate33]

Right now in YODA, this year looks like the weakest draft at the top since the Wizards picked Wall. Obviously need to add in combine results when they're available, but there's really no one who has a YODA score of a "typical" number one overall pick.

How does the 10th best player compare with a normal draft's 10th best player?

[doclinkin]

Dieng has very good but not particularly eye-popping numbers in the sexy defensive stats: rebounds and blocks. But what I like the most about him are his sneaky good numbers in steals, assists, TOV% and fouls. Those numbers really support doc's praise of his basketball IQ. It's possible that he might pan out to be a bit more like a Joakim Noah/Ben Wallace type of defensive quarterback, rather than merely a Theo Ratliff/Robin Lopez type of rebounding/shot blocking grunt.

After looking at the numbers, I think I'd place Dieng ahead of Withey among the polished ready-for-NBA defensive bigs. Our only problem is that we are currently chock full of young, athletic defensive minded front court players. We need a few more guys who know how to put the ball in the basket. It's tough to contemplate using our #10ish pick on Dieng, but if we can trade down with Atlanta or Utah, pick up 2 picks, and use one of them on Dieng and the other on an offensive player, I'd be pretty happy.

That's where I am as well. In a draft with a wide array of talents and no cluster of superlative stars at the top I prefer to get more bites at the apple -- to get lucky with a late pick, and also get better value-for-pick later on. I like Dieng + McDermott or whomever more than I like KellyO and his Kurt Rambis hairdo. But it takes a seller who is willing to trade up, so not really much of a plan unless somebody else is in love with a guy at #10.

Plus I think Dieng's stock will rise in the mocks following his tourney run.

[Nivek]

Right now in YODA, this year looks like the weakest draft at the top since the Wizards picked Wall. Obviously need to add in combine results when they're available, but there's really no one who has a YODA score of a "typical" number one overall pick.

How does the 10th best player compare with a normal draft's 10th best player?

It's a great question. At first glance: about the same. Need to revisit this after I have the combine stuff.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

If Dieng is on our board, this should probably be the reason why:

That picture IMO speaks to his boldness, fearlessness, and Dieng being a protector. The more I learn about Dieng the more I like him.

http://www.cardchronicle.com/2013/3/9/4 ... rgui-dieng

"When people said, 'oh, you play like Kevin Garnett,' I just said, 'nah, I'm Gorgui Dieng.'"

I've had one goal since I came to Louisville: win. That's all I need. It doesn't matter if I score 100 points or zero points, as long as we win.

I want to go back home and give back. People helped me to get here to go to school and play basketball, I want to go back home and do the same thing for the kids. I think they really want it. I don't want to be selfish. People who helped me do what I'm doing right now, I want to go back and do the same thing for them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zbtJzhZLbM[/youtube]



What I like is Dieng's serious, mature demeanor. At about the 2:50 mark Dieng talks about things like discipline, respect, education. Funny part is when he talks about taking a teammate to Senegal. That teammate would have to pull his pants up. He mentions training one's brain to be disciplined enough to succeed in life. This guy will be very low maintenance and a player who does all that is expected of him and more.

[nate33]

Dieng grew up in Senegal. Comparatively speaking, Senegal is a relatively peaceful and stable country relative to other African countries, but it's still quite a bit more dangerous and violent than America. I wonder if Dieng has seen some pretty serious s**t in his day, so he's a little more prepared for visual images like the one witnessed this weekend.

[sfam]

Dieng grew up in Senegal. Comparatively speaking, Senegal is a relatively peaceful and stable country relative to other African countries, but it's still quite a bit more dangerous and violent than America. I wonder if Dieng has seen some pretty serious s**t in his day, so he's a little more prepared for visual images like the one witnessed this weekend.

I was in Dakar and the surrounding area back in August. Not even the police carry guns there (this is fairly unusual in developing countries). Even with like 45% unemployment, violent is not a word you'd associate with the place. You have large numbers of unemployed people exercising in groups at the beach all day. That said, there definitely has been violence in some of the rural areas recently over tribal conflicts, and there was definitely fighting in the 90s.

[payitforward]

...we unconsciously employ all sorts of hindsight biases when reviewing (or ignoring) our record of these types of predictions in order to reinforce an idea that we have much better powers of prediction than we really do.

+1
We have many practitioners of that art on this site.

(I'm not one of them, no way. The reason I'm right so much is because of my incredible analytical skills and my crystal ball)

...Trying to claim X player will succeed and Y player will bust is a fool's errand IMO.

Agreed -- all the tools that work are statistical, but statistical tools do not scale down to a single player, because they mask too many effects at the individual level. But... if you *ignore* statistical tools you can be sure to get bad players.

Another way to put this: there are lots of false positives -- guys who do well in the NCAA but don't do well in the league. But there are very very few false negatives -- guys who don't put up good numbers in the NCAA but do well in the NBA.

All the freshmen in the draft these days means these tools are less reliable -- smaller sample sets and players much earlier in their development.

One reason why, on the whole, we should never be as good as an NBA front office in player selection is that they have access to so much more data.

Alas, more data doesn't seem to make a person better at drafting. The proof is that, after the #1 position in the draft, there seems to be no significant statistical correlation between "high-ness" of pick of a player and how good an NBA career he has. This is something Dave Berri has studied specfically, and the numbers just don't show it.

TBH, I don't think many GMs have the faintest ability to target the right players, or that their scouting staffs do. Some organizations do a good job, it's true (San Antonio being the prime example), but most are just terrible at it. And we are worse than most of them.

The problem with "data" is that GMs use it subject to selection bias and confirmation bias. They take in only the data that confirms what they want to prove. And they weigh data that confirms their prejudices more than they weigh data that denies it.

[payitforward]

Age is really an important consideration....

On the money, CCJ. If we are trying to build a contending team, the rookies we add must have the head room to improve significantly in their first 3-4 years. That means drafting young. Draft someone who's 23, and he's unlikely to improve much.

It also means drafting lucky! If you draft for potential and it isn't realized u are screwed. A good example of this two-sided problem coin can be seen w/ Booker and Seraphin.

Trevor will turn 26 about 8 games into the season this Fall. He had among the best first 2 years of anyone coming out of the 2010 draft, and he is a good player when healthy. But he has no upside. OTOH, we drafted Kevin when he was 20 -- but he hasn't developed.

"Lucky" -- would we regard Sam Presti as a terrific GM if Portland had picked Kevin Durant #1?? You'd still view Ibaka as a great pick in the middle of the first round -- but then... is that one just luck too? I.e. was the Ibaka pick a lot like the Seraphin pick, except he's turned into a good player?

I've kind of lost the thread of what I was writing! Anyway -- CCJ, you are way right. You can't compare a guy who's 23 to someone who hasn't turned 20 yet.

[sfam]

Alas, more data doesn't seem to make a person better at drafting. The proof is that, after the #1 position in the draft, there seems to be no significant statistical correlation between "high-ness" of pick of a player and how good an NBA career he has. This is something Dave Berri has studied specfically, and the numbers just don't show it.

TBH, I don't think many GMs have the faintest ability to target the right players, or that their scouting staffs do. Some organizations do a good job, it's true (San Antonio being the prime example), but most are just terrible at it. And we are worse than most of them.

The problem with "data" is that GMs use it subject to selection bias and confirmation bias. They take in only the data that confirms what they want to prove. And they weigh data that confirms their prejudices more than they weigh data that denies it.

I gotta wonder if the era of "big data" we're now entering will affect the draft process like it has politics, marketing and all the rest. Perhaps there are real correlations we can make on performance that only become visible after larger, seemingly unrelated information sets are looked at differently.

[payitforward]

Right now in YODA, this year looks like the weakest draft at the top since the Wizards picked Wall. Obviously need to add in combine results when they're available, but there's really no one who has a YODA score of a "typical" number one overall pick.

How does the 10th best player compare with a normal draft's 10th best player?

It's a great question. At first glance: about the same. Need to revisit this after I have the combine stuff.

Who do you have at #10, Kev? Or, lets say who do you have at 8 - 12?

[Nivek]

Top 12 I have in so far with "standardized" YODA score:

1. Oladipo 14
2. Olynyk 13
3. Trey Burke 12
4. Nerlens Noel 11
5. Zeller 11
6. Porter 10
7. Bennett 9
8. McLemore 9
9. Ryan Kelly 9
10. McDermott 9
11. Marcus Smart 8
12. Deing 7

Typical #1 pick has a score over 20. Top score ever was Shaq's sophomore season (36). Davis last season scored a 28.

In last year's draft, the talent was better at the top, but the drop-off was steeper.

[payitforward]

Top 12 I have in so far with "standardized" YODA score:

1. Oladipo 14
2. Olynyk 13
3. Trey Burke 12
4. Nerlens Noel 11
5. Zeller 11
6. Porter 10
7. Bennett 9
8. McLemore 9
9. Ryan Kelly 9
10. McDermott 9
11. Marcus Smart 8
12. Deing 7

Typical #1 pick has a score over 20. Top score ever was Shaq's sophomore season (36). Davis last season scored a 28.

In last year's draft, the talent was better at the top, but the drop-off was steeper.

Got it, but on their own the rest of the raw YODA numbers don't convey much.

What are typical scores for guys picked 8 - 12? W/ that info we can compare what we're likely to get at our pick w/ what we'd be likely to get in most drafts or some other drafts anyway. Maybe "typical" isn't the right word -- some comparative info is what I'm hoping for, obviously. However you think it would be framed most usefully.