2023 NBA Draft Thread 4

[MoGrAdY]

I can’t wait for Thursday night.. I honestly don’t see too many scenarios where we lose on Draft Night. I can advantages to take so many guys. Amen, Ausar, Cam, Jarace, Hendricks, Bilal, Kobe, Hawkins, Wallace and Dick. The only guy that just doesn’t make sense to me is Black. I would be really disappointed with him at 6. I trust WeHam regardless.

[fendilim]

As a big believer of Warp and the rankings the front office use are the same,

Pelton just finished the final version of Warp for this year’s class

Factoring the espn top 100 ranking

My projections translate performance in NCAA Division I and other levels to an NBA equivalent, then adjust for age and position to project value over a player's next five seasons. Lastly, I factor in ESPN's top 100 prospect rankings for the best consensus projection.

Note: There are no projections for players from Overtime Elite (OTE), including Amen and Ausar Thompson, who both are in the top five of ESPN's top 100 prospects.

https://www.espn.ph/nba/insider/insider/story/_/id/37847803/nba-draft-2023-breaking-30-best-prospects?platform=amp

Wemby
Brandon
Whitmore
Hendricks
Dick
Cason
Live
Walker
Brandin
Sens
Whitehead
George

[Black and Blue]

Great post. I think the point about the coach at Nova is very important.

This is what makes this particular draft class so hard for many people (and the reason for the calling out of pepe to say who he actually would like the Magic to draft): Everyone besides Wemby has big questions regarding their level of competition, role in college, lack of shooting prowess, or more. You can take any player and say, "I wouldn't touch this guy with a ten foot pole because of ____" and have it make complete sense.

The tricky thing is next year's draft thus far profiles as worse, and there are several players this year who have shown glimmers of greatness. We are forced to squint and project the future more than normal so the posts on here people make about who they LIKE are so much more useful than who they don't.

Is the athleticism the Thompson twins showed in their inferior league translatable in the NBA? How much did Cam's program work against him in college? Has Scoot showed enough to be worth mortgaging a ton to go up and grab him? Has Anthony Black shown enough to be drafted 6? Is it worth taking a person with good role player upside like Hendricks or Dick at 6?

I'd argue when in doubt you shoot for the stars. This year that unfortunately means the biggest boom or bust prospects. Role players can be had in free agency if that's all you are missing. I'm not of the opinion the Magic are 1-2 role players away from being a top team. They need something far greater, and this is their best chance to take that shot. Sometimes it fails spectacularly, like with Bamba and Isaac, but the past two years have shown how good it can work when done right.

For that reason, if you ask me who we SHOULD target, I'd say a lot of names people would probably get annoyed at because they are so high risk with lots of potential: Both Thompson twins, Scoot (with an expensive trade up), Cam Whitmore, Kobe Bufkin, Bilal Coulibaly, Keyonte George, and the like. You'll also see me pushing names further down the list where the scouting report says how they are close to a solid finished product but will never be a superstar.

Regarding drafting for upside...wouldn't you say that the Franz pick was all about his floor? He was about as solid as it got coming into the league. He already played winning basketball as a connector, super high feel for the game...kind of what people are saying about Black this year.
Paolo I suppose was a swing on upside. I think he was the best player in the draft, certainly the best college basketball player, but everyone assumed Jabari's elite shooting made him the safest pick, and plenty including myself probably considered Chet as the highest upside, even thougb Paolo's high end outcomes were very high as well (guess time will tell on this one)

While Franz did have a rather solid floor, there were still some very exciting unknowns at the time of his drafting that made his ceiling higher than expected: 1) how much more would he grow (he had grown a lot late), 2) how much did his overseas play factor into his upside, 3) how much did his college program hold him back 4) how overblown were concerns about his handle and rebounding 5) could his Swiss Army knife play overcome explosiveness worries. Those who liked him most in the draft leading up seemed to think people were tossing rather overblown attributes in his weakness column. Really happy the Magic were one of them. With hindsight being 20/20, Franz’s game is way more suited to the NBA than to college.

[Petre1978]

Wallace will be a Magician on Thursday.
Lively will follow him soon after.

Perfect with Wagner and Banchero.

[drsd]

#6 : Keith Bogans
#11 : Jeryl Sasser

[drsd]

The mocks are currently unkind to Leonard Miller, GG Jackson, Tristan Vukčević, and Keyontae Johnson.

There will be value n the second round this year.

[Petre1978]

Watch on YouTube

[Petre1978]

Watch on YouTube

[dsg2021]

I know you all have been waiting patiently on my useless take on this draft so you can place your wagers in Vegas. I've put in a grand total of about 45 minutes of research for this so I have been completely unaffected by the lamestream media and their biased picks.

BPA:
Wembanyama
Miller

Sleepers:
Coulibaly
Brice Sensabaugh
Tristan Vukcevic
Trayce Jackson-Davis

Busts:
Scoot
Thompson twins
Gradey Dick
Everyone else not listed here

Magic draft:

Coulibaly
Sensabaugh
Tristan Vukcevic/Trayce Jackson-Davis

in whatever order necessary to acquire both/all.

Think of me when you are buying that lambo with your winnings.

David Steele said in that official Magic podcast type thing that he loves the idea of drafting a 2/3 who can play a little bit of a 1 with the ball. I love his judgement and started thinking about players who could potentially fit that in their future NBA years. I think Sensabaugh is one of them, and could be a little bit of a Donovan Mitchell of the draft. I also thought of maybe Gradey Dick and a couple others.

To the other posts lately, Anthony Black is someone that I could easily embrace if we drafted him for sure too. I like him much more than the twins for some reason. Maybe because of the 70%+ FT shooting.

[Petre1978]

I know you all have been waiting patiently on my useless take on this draft so you can place your wagers in Vegas. I've put in a grand total of about 45 minutes of research for this so I have been completely unaffected by the lamestream media and their biased picks.

BPA:
Wembanyama
Miller

Sleepers:
Coulibaly
Brice Sensabaugh
Tristan Vukcevic
Trayce Jackson-Davis

Busts:
Scoot
Thompson twins
Gradey Dick
Everyone else not listed here

Magic draft:

Coulibaly
Sensabaugh
Tristan Vukcevic/Trayce Jackson-Davis

in whatever order necessary to acquire both/all.

Think of me when you are buying that lambo with your winnings.

David Steele said in that official Magic podcast type thing that he loves the idea of drafting a 2/3 who can play a little bit of a 1 with the ball. I love his judgement and started thinking about players who could potentially fit that in their future NBA years. I think Sensabaugh is one of them, and could be a little bit of a Donovan Mitchell of the draft. I also thought of maybe Gradey Dick and a couple others.

To the other posts lately, Anthony Black is someone that I could easily embrace if we drafted him for sure too. I like him much more than the twins for some reason. Maybe because of the 70%+ FT shooting.

Sensebaugh cannot play a little bit of a 1

[Knightro]

As a big believer of Warp and the rankings the front office use are the same,

Pelton just finished the final version of Warp for this year’s class

Factoring the espn top 100 ranking

My projections translate performance in NCAA Division I and other levels to an NBA equivalent, then adjust for age and position to project value over a player's next five seasons. Lastly, I factor in ESPN's top 100 prospect rankings for the best consensus projection.

Note: There are no projections for players from Overtime Elite (OTE), including Amen and Ausar Thompson, who both are in the top five of ESPN's top 100 prospects.

https://www.espn.ph/nba/insider/insider/story/_/id/37847803/nba-draft-2023-breaking-30-best-prospects?platform=amp

Feels like the WARP argument went out the window when they took Paolo last year, right?

His WARP was very low, 11th in the class, but especially compared to both Holmgren (historically good) and Smith.

[basketballRob]

Watch on YouTube

I go back and forth on him and Black. Today, I think I'm leaning towards Cam. He has the potential to be a really good shooter. He also has a path to be a starter at SG.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

[basketballRob]

I know you all have been waiting patiently on my useless take on this draft so you can place your wagers in Vegas. I've put in a grand total of about 45 minutes of research for this so I have been completely unaffected by the lamestream media and their biased picks.

BPA:
Wembanyama
Miller

Sleepers:
Coulibaly
Brice Sensabaugh
Tristan Vukcevic
Trayce Jackson-Davis

Busts:
Scoot
Thompson twins
Gradey Dick
Everyone else not listed here

Magic draft:

Coulibaly
Sensabaugh
Tristan Vukcevic/Trayce Jackson-Davis

in whatever order necessary to acquire both/all.

Think of me when you are buying that lambo with your winnings.

David Steele said in that official Magic podcast type thing that he loves the idea of drafting a 2/3 who can play a little bit of a 1 with the ball. I love his judgement and started thinking about players who could potentially fit that in their future NBA years. I think Sensabaugh is one of them, and could be a little bit of a Donovan Mitchell of the draft. I also thought of maybe Gradey Dick and a couple others.

To the other posts lately, Anthony Black is someone that I could easily embrace if we drafted him for sure too. I like him much more than the twins for some reason. Maybe because of the 70%+ FT shooting.

Bufkin fits that role, too. He's 2 inches taller than Harris and can also play some PG.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

[eyriq]

If we believe Whitmore can be a SG he feels like the best SG in the draft and an easy choice at 6

[yoyojw17]

Watch on YouTube

Whitmore and Dick

I'll be for it too!

Hendricks falls all the way to #12

Hawkins went before dick at #10

This is going to be a wild draft I feel! Kinda exciting!

[MagicFan101]

Pretty much every mock has Orlando taking Ausar Thompson which tells me we can cross him off the list.

If Jarace Walker is available at 6 I wonder if we pull the trigger there on the versatile big man?

[bigdogdylan5]

Are they continuing to train it? I thought it’s training material was cut off in like 2021?

Edit: I just read it again and it says you fed it the data from ESPN. That makes sense lol

Yeah, still stuck on 2021

I wonder what kind of proprietary AI tools teams have access to.

AI is kind of a catch all term. I don’t believe NBA teams need to have LLMs like Chatgpt or have the expertise to build and create those are beyond the resources of an NBA front office. I am sure they do have their proprietary machine learning models for classification and prediction of outcomes. Probably also some clustering models as well. I am skeptical any one nba team could have the resources to make advancements in CNN creation for computer vision when you have all the big tech companies grabbing up as many of those experts as they can. Also it would make more financial sense to create a tool outside of a team then sell it to all the teams.

[fendilim]

As a big believer of Warp and the rankings the front office use are the same,

Pelton just finished the final version of Warp for this year’s class

Factoring the espn top 100 ranking

My projections translate performance in NCAA Division I and other levels to an NBA equivalent, then adjust for age and position to project value over a player's next five seasons. Lastly, I factor in ESPN's top 100 prospect rankings for the best consensus projection.

Note: There are no projections for players from Overtime Elite (OTE), including Amen and Ausar Thompson, who both are in the top five of ESPN's top 100 prospects.

https://www.espn.ph/nba/insider/insider/story/_/id/37847803/nba-draft-2023-breaking-30-best-prospects?platform=amp

Feels like the WARP argument went out the window when they took Paolo last year, right?

His WARP was very low, 11th in the class, but especially compared to both Holmgren (historically good) and Smith.

I wouldnt say out of the window entirely. Its been right or really close to accurate prior to last year.

[yoyojw17]

Watch on YouTube

I like him. and his family. Maybe the combination of a crappy team (Villanova) and hand surgery slaps a very talented individual into our laps!

[basketballRob]

Watch on YouTube