Ell Curry wrote:Jerry Lucas wrote:Ell Curry wrote:
That sounds like a pretty arbitrary distinction. Better to look at the 2nd rounders and the UDFAs even (as I said, Van Vleet was very probably a stats-based decision. Tolzman says "it was a gut feeling" but also another Athletic article says Webster and Tolzman were debating pursuing (we offered 50K guaranteed, 2nd to another team offering 75K that Fred felt was a bad fit (I have no idea who this was or if Fred has ever said, but we had Delon Wright and Cory Joseph backing up Lowry so couldn't have been depth chart based) Fred vs another UDFA, and I imagine Bobby's analysis was at least somewhat stats influenced.
But yeah, I think the best analysis means not cutting off somewhere arbitrary. If you wanna parse it, probably the better distinction is when Weltman left maybe?
I'd like to know why you think it's arbitrary, because to me I don't think it is. A lot of 2nd round picks, especially the ones later on in the 40s and 50s, enter the league on not-fully guaranteed deals and/or two-way contracts. Teams including the Raptors are more willing to take chances on riskier player and/or production archetypes, because a lot of the time these guys aren't getting guaranteed money after their rookie year.
With FRPs (plus very early SRPs like the Koloko pick from the FRP trade down which the FO felt they would get a guy from the same tier anyway, and Mogbo was literally the pick after Round 1 Pick 30), teams are trying to extract the most value possible from the prospect's 4 year rookie-scale contract. As a result teams are less willing to take risks that they would otherwise be willing to take later in the draft.
Example: Ulrich Chomche. He is someone I was talking about as a possible Masai-type last year, but not in a FRP context because he wasn't NCAA. And ever since the Bruno mistake, Masai never strays from the extremely projectable prospect pool of NCAA players. Projecting NCAA production forward to the NBA level is safer than doing so with a prospect from any other type of prospect pool.
It's arbitrary because there isn't a clear line where a draft goes from "we expect a rotation player" to "we probably aren't getting it one." It's not a binary. Also every draft has a different strength of depth.
You could definitely weigh the higher picks more, but I don't think you can just draw a line at say the 40th pick and act like our #39 pick counts in terms of evaluating if someone is a "Masai/Bobby approved guy" but the #40 pick doesn't, for instance. There are surely some scientists or people who are trained to work in data who can weigh in here (though not sure they'll see this post) but my understanding is that you wanna be careful when just choosing to cut out data points, particularly in a study like this when you're already dealing with a small sample size.
I agree with your general conclusions. I don't see Masai looking past Bailey's weak advanced stats and having him say #3 or #4 like some GMs might. But I don't think you learn more by throwing out late picks. We don't know if the Raptors weight their scouts view higher with picks in the 2nd half of the 2nd round more than the 2nd half of the 2nd round. The whole decision making process is a black box that you're trying to see if you can determine trends for. I'd start with all the data and go from there, you can always parse it, not start by cutting out picks that we know for certain the Raptors decided on making.
I think this is all naval gazing.
If we end up with the 3rd pick and Masai drafts Ace, I will be very excited.
I don't think any analysis on advanced stats on RealGM would temper my expectations.
Has Masai ever really done anything egregious in the draft? If anything, he bucks consensus and picks gems.
That said, I have no idea what Masai will do. He picks the guy I expect maybe 30% of the time. He's been right way more than he's been wrong.
