John Hollinger Drools over Thadeous Young

[corwin]

I disagree somewhat in this case, and am harping on the issue again, but they should have never traded Koponen and Fesenko. Down the road, they could be steals, and they exchanged them for players that will be lucky to have 3 year NBA careers. A young tall PG, and a young 7' center were in their hands, and they traded them for nothing. I really hope they were traded for $$/business reasons b/c for basketball reasons it really makes no sense.

+1. I think what was overlooked with the Fesenko deal is that I believe BK owed Utah a favor. Since he couldn't squeeze Webber for a little more money, he was still over the luxury tax & had to pawn off Alan Henderson to Utah to get under the cap. My guess is that the price was a swap of second rounders. One more example of BK at his finest.

[freshie2]

Thad just may be the reason why Iggy is traded. Thad has the potential to be a great rebounder at the SF position and he loves playing close to the basket with his high shooting percentage and crafty moves. Iggy is a cross between a SF and a SG. He will never be a great rebounder for a SG/SF and his preference is not to play close to the basket but hang out just short of the 3 point line. Iggy is 24, Thad is 19 and Thad still has the potential to develop into a better driver than Iggy. Iggy might just be shipped out this summer.

Yes...if Iggy is moved, you would think they like Thad, and can get pieces for Iguodala that improve the team. If they decide to move Iguodala, there would be no shortage of interest in him, so they should be able to get young pieces and draft picks to help them move forward.

Remember, when Iguodala was in a lesser role on the team, he was viewed very similarly to Iguodala...kind of like the back up quarterback. Iguodala has continued to improve, and I think as Thad grows, they are going to be a very nice swing combo as the team moves forward.

Given that he averages 5.6 RPG, I don't know that for a perimeter player (as you describe) that's such a bad number. How many SG's average more? 3 I believe, and about 10 SF's. So in a 30 team league, it's safe to say he's in the top 10 in rebounding for his position.

To meet your expectations, where does Thad need to end up? Top 3, averaging 8+ RPG for a SF?

[Hewy29]

Thad just may be the reason why Iggy is traded. Thad has the potential to be a great rebounder at the SF position and he loves playing close to the basket with his high shooting percentage and crafty moves. Iggy is a cross between a SF and a SG. He will never be a great rebounder for a SG/SF and his preference is not to play close to the basket but hang out just short of the 3 point line. Iggy is 24, Thad is 19 and Thad still has the potential to develop into a better driver than Iggy. Iggy might just be shipped out this summer.

I hope we never tried Igg just off of the possibility Thad look like he will be better. Losing Igg would set us back unless we get something great for him in return. Im not a big fan of searching for who is the next "superstar." I hope we create a team with a bunch of guys who can get it done as a unit instead of individuals. We look a lot closer to having a team like that instead of relying on one guy to take over. And Igg is rebounding fine for his position. We just need another good starter to go along with these guys to allow igg to start playing hard nose defense like he use to.

[Youseff]

Thanks for the good read, even though it was irrelevant to your above statement

Not really. It linked directly to data on the end of the first round, too. Here's the data:
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And yes, we are now arguing semantics. Let's look at this stat:
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That says 66% of those drafted in the top of the second round will be out of the league. about 19% will be a "top of the bench or better" player.

We currently got a top of the bench player in jason smith, at least according to stefanski, who said he could be a definite top 8 guy. We got 1 guy who's out of the league (Byars), and one guy who looked pretty damn good to me before his injury (Hill). Seems we're doing actually a little better than league average in that regard (which gives us about a 34% chance that one of those 3 will provide a better than top of the bench guy). Certainly not enough to get upset about the draft, and most definitely not enough to take away from the great positive that drafting Thaddeus Young has provided.

In my mind, they found solid contributors in two out of those 3 picks. They've had some bad luck with Herbert Hill, but that was out of the Sixers control as it's injury related and happened after the draft. Getting 2 guys who can contribute out of those 3 picks seems like a pretty good job to me.

From a team that has consistently gotten production out of second round picks (going all the way back to Todd MacCulloch, and including recent contributors Kyle Korver, Willie Green and Louis Williams), Billy King certainly did above league average. With Thaddeus Young having been drafted being a great positive on this franchise, why would the fact that we're not getting production out of the 30th and 38th pick put you up in arms? Are we the first team to not get production out of second round picks? Do we historically do terrible on second round picks? Do you expect a 100% hit rate on second round picks? I'm just trying to figure out where the disgust comes from.

They had 4 picks. One lottery, and that player seems like a potential star. One bottom 3rd of the first round, and that player seems like a top bench player. Two second round picks, one of which they missed on, and one of which they had bad luck due to injury. When looking at the big picture and how these picks generally do in the NBA, I think the draft turned out pretty darned well. Hitting at 12 (and to a lesser extent 20) has a much more profound importance than missing on a pair of second round picks, especially since one of those misses is injury related, and that we've hit on them in the past.

If it's your belief that Jason Smith is a top bench player, that's not what I interpreted your comment declaring him a marginal bench player at best as saying. I'm not really one to get into these drawn out internet arguments - so to cut to the chase - if you're basing your comment on him being a top bench player, then I agree. Being pleased with getting a top bench player with the 20th pick is certainly reasonable. I'm pleased with Thaddeus, obviously. My original contention was that if we get 1 marginal player (read: 10-15 minutes a game) from three picks from 20th on, and an the most an educated Philly fan can do is kinda shrug their shoulders, then it really is a sad state of affairs.

[ojr107]

I'm real excited about him, but the reason why he rebounds so well compared to small forwards is because he is plays power forward so much.