Grade the Wizards Draft

[The Consiglieri]

Who are all these people that are now saying Faried was their unequivocal pick at the time? Most people thought he was good value for around that pick, few would have been upset had he been the choice, and most now probably wish he had been. There wasn't (that I recall) the level of upset evident when the Wizards passed on Blair (except maybe with CCJ) or traded the #5 for Miller/Foye. Are so many people now really recalling it so differently, rearranging the past? Besides, if everyone on this board got it wrong, that doesn't help EG any, because he's paid millions of dollars to be better.

I think Dat and I both went into immediate mourning when EG traded for Miller/Foye. On that one, sadly, most on this board were happy.

I think trading the fifth pick in that draft for two expiring players is EGs worst move ever.

Yep. A little part of me died that day. I was CCJ times infinity on the board at that time.

I spent about an hour evicerating fellow redskins on a different board for supporting the trade at the time, just as I'd do 10 months later when the redskins made the brain dead McNabb trade. Bashing D.C. GM's trades in those days was like shooting fish in a barrell, so many teams, so many morons running them (Bowden, E.G., Dumb and Dumber). Now we only have one idiot at the at the controls of D.C.'s sports teams thank God (I give Shanny half a mulligan because he wanted a bridge QB, and couldn't swing a trade up for Sam Bradford, so he dealt value for McNabb as a stop gap, I credit him w/acting decisively to cut bait when he realized his mistake, and tanking in '11 to land his franchise QB in '12. At least he ran the rebuild properly after screwing up his start out of the blocks).

[The Consiglieri]

You can dig up the Singleton pick thread to see what people said at that time.

Dat and most others loved the pick. I hated the pick and thought Singleton could not shoot.

He actually has surprised me by sticking the three better than I imagined and by not being a jacker. Still, I don't think Singleton is anything special at all. He can hit the three better than I thought he would, but his defense is not nearly as good as billed when Chris came out of FSU.

The Consensus on the board was that Faried and Singleton were huge value at slot and either would do, we needed help at the 3, and better defense so a guy who could defend a ton of positions, and could be a 3 and D type sounded good (we kind of glossed over the fact that his shooting was crap till his senior year, and none of us could have expected he'd struggle so badly defending), while Faried duplicated what we did with our top pick. It's just a reminder that at the end of the day, you draft the best guy on the board, if he fills a need, all the better, but get a great player, because the great player always beats the guy who fits a need, but can only execute it at the Euro or Developmental League level.

The frustrating thing for me is that nearly all the guys I liked beyond Singleton and Faried that were available at 18, would have been better than Singleton too , guys like Tobias Harris, Motiejunas, Mirotic, Brooks, and hell even Norris Cole.

Its funny, this board collectively have a rather strange talent for finding guys that can play at the NBA level in that 15-45 slot level, a real uncanny talent for it. Normally id think such a statement was nonsense, but the NBA as a whole generally sucks at this, and is nowhere near as good as this board which is really, really, really bizarre.

[The Consiglieri]

You can dig up the Singleton pick thread to see what people said at that time.

Dat and most others loved the pick. I hated the pick and thought Singleton could not shoot.

He actually has surprised me by sticking the three better than I imagined and by not being a jacker. Still, I don't think Singleton is anything special at all. He can hit the three better than I thought he would, but his defense is not nearly as good as billed when Chris came out of FSU.

Yeah, I would have been happy with either Singleton or Faried. I actually preferred Singleton to Faried throughout the draft process due to need but did backtrack by draft day and was leaning Faried, and I didn't like Leonard b/c I didn't think he'd be passable on offense. And I also would have taken Kemba at 6. So it's not like I nailed that draft lol. But my poor choices don't absolve EG of anything.

Understandable though, most thought Leonards quality shooting in workouts was a fluke, and that he'd be drafted based on his athletic upside. He ended up in San Antonio and ended up becoming a flat out stud, if people could have seen that coming though, he never would have gone anywhere near that low, most of us liked Leonard, and I think he was the consensus guy wanted if we'd just move down a little (there were some that liked one or both Morris twins, I hated both as I thought Marcus would never be better than a top bench big, while his brother was too limited, was wrong about Markieff, but I think im right about Marcus).

I ended up excusing the Vesely pick because he was athletic and interesting and I couldn't imagine he'd end up being so hopeless shooting (couldnt seeing it being possible), plus at the 6 slot, figured if we didnt trade up which i wanted, or move down for Leonard, nobody else could justify the 6 pick. In retrospect, we should have moved up for Valunciunas, or moved down for Leonard, or Faried. Staying put and making our pick was a big mistake. Sadly, it was a horrible time for us to be hosed by the lottery gods, much like '09, and having little from 2 of our 4 rebuild lottery drafts to show is massively disappointing, doubly frustrating is that im pretty sure idiot E.G. was high on Leonard, but not at 6. crap .

[payitforward]

The Consensus on the board was that Faried and Singleton were huge value at slot and either would do....

Except that the numbers said that Faried was off the charts, and Singleton was average or a little worse. And although there are false positives (i.e. Faried might not have turned out as great as he has), there are really not any false negatives, or none that I can find. Hence Singleton had no chance.

Tobias Harris would have been a much better pick than Singleton -- that was obvious -- tho not as good as Faried. Except that Harris is 2.5 years younger than Faried, so we can't be as sure about him.