Leslie Forman wrote:PaKii94 wrote:It's ridiculous how much he holds these "draft experts" to a high standard. The objective of those guys is to generate clicks for their pages! AK's objective is to find the best talent.
The cognitive dissonance it takes to call people who are literally amateur evaluators but just happen to be in the media "professionals" and to call the literal professionals a bunch of clueless idiots who don't understand the value of their picks
when they are the exact people who determine that value is, frankly, quite impressive.
The jury is still out on this pick, and we're just going to have to wait. AK thinks Pat is special, has to be, because he's really going against the grain here. With most people think he's clearly below guys like Deni, Hayes, Okoro, OO, Hali. So, for him to make that bold of a move it's either
(a) he thinks very highly of Pat's quality. A situation where quality > quantity (trade down for 2 lower picks). And missing on Pat is not worth the risk.
or
(b) the talent pool after Pat is not worth the investment (in his mind) and also, since he's sort of in a "win now" mode, quantity of less than ideal talent (in his board) don't necessarily yield the best return in the Win column next season.
I can't back up AK for that, that's his own decision. But I'm pretty sure he's done a thorough research and made thoughtful decision. While blogger scouts and armchair GMs have certain judgement about talents, AK and team is the one being held accountable for their decision. He's not GarPax who has had a very long leash for almost 20 years not being held accountable due to nepotism. So for that at least I'm comfortable believing that AK and team don't just fool around.
Also I've tried to deduce his decision from his interview, and it's these 3 statements I think is the key (I'm rephrasing his statements):
1. Liking 4 people, is easier than liking 20 people
2. Statistically the chance of top 4 pick to succeed is higher than the next group.
3. He hopes to never see us pick this high again
The way I read this is, his confidence level is higher with his top 4 prospects, if he has to trade down and get 2 picks, say 7+16, he's basically left with choosing from bigger pool of players he's less confidence with, and on top of that he doesn't know who will be left available? The remaining guy available may not even be in his board. So Patrick was already on AKs top 2-4 list. So he's more confidence about Pat, and has high hope that Pat can contribute to winning right away. At least developing 1 high ceiling guy is better than having to develop 2 guys who he's less confidence with especially when you want to focus on winning. Since we already have bunch of guys on development watch as well (Lauri, WCJ, Coby).