2020 Draft

[pcbothwel]

what player has the most star potential at wizards range of picking?

Pokusevski

Couldnt agree more. I want Okongwu, Poku, or Vassell.
Precious, Green, Nesmith, or S. Bey would be my nightmare.

[TGW]

what player has the most star potential at wizards range of picking?

Pokusevski

Couldnt agree more. I want Okongwu, Poku, or Vassell.
Precious, Green, Nesmith, or S. Bey would be my nightmare.

Nightmare is a strong word, but get ready to be disappointed. My gut right now says the pick is going to be Nesmith, because he is a deadeye shooter, and the current Wizards GM has pretty much made it clear that he loves gunners who don't do much else.

Honestly, even if Okongwu was there, I don't think they would take him. He doesn't fit into what this FO values in players. Poku is too young and needs seasoning, and Vassell doesn't bring enough offense. I think they avoid Haliburton as to not throw shade at Wall. Nesmith can step in right away, and get minutes next to Wall, Beal, Bertains/Rui, and Bryant.

My pick would be the guys you mentioned, with Haliburton in the mix. The Wizards are going to pick Nesmith.

[pcbothwel]

Pokusevski

Couldnt agree more. I want Okongwu, Poku, or Vassell.
Precious, Green, Nesmith, or S. Bey would be my nightmare.

Nightmare is a strong word, but get ready to be disappointed. My gut right now says the pick is going to be Nesmith, because he is a deadeye shooter, and the current Wizards GM has pretty much made it clear that he loves gunners who don't do much else.

Honestly, even if Okongwu was there, I don't think they would take him. He doesn't fit into what this FO values in players. Poku is too young and needs seasoning, and Vassell doesn't bring enough offense. I think they avoid Haliburton as to not throw shade at Wall. Nesmith can step in right away, and get minutes next to Wall, Beal, Rui, and Bryant.

My pick would be the guys you mentioned, with Haliburton in the mix. The Wizards are going to pick Nesmith.

Actually... Ill amend my thoughts. Nesmith would be okay with me. A little high for my taste, but I love his offball movement and deadeye shooting while being at least passable on defense. I worry about his knee, but getting Danny Green at 9 in this draft isnt the worst thing.
We have Wall, Beal, Bonga, Brown, etc. who can handle / create, so that deficiency doesnt bother me too much.

[Ruzious]

Pokusevski

Couldnt agree more. I want Okongwu, Poku, or Vassell.
Precious, Green, Nesmith, or S. Bey would be my nightmare.

Nightmare is a strong word, but get ready to be disappointed. My gut right now says the pick is going to be Nesmith, because he is a deadeye shooter, and the current Wizards GM has pretty much made it clear that he loves gunners who don't do much else.

Honestly, even if Okongwu was there, I don't think they would take him. He doesn't fit into what this FO values in players. Poku is too young and needs seasoning, and Vassell doesn't bring enough offense. I think they avoid Haliburton as to not throw shade at Wall. Nesmith can step in right away, and get minutes next to Wall, Beal, Rui, and Bryant.

My pick would be the guys you mentioned, with Haliburton in the mix. The Wizards are going to pick Nesmith.

I certainly wouldn't complain about Haliburton - though I'm hoping for Okongwu.

Nesmith would be a possible trade-down target - if they think he's big enough to play the 3 on a regular basis.

[No-Man]

I think Okongwu will be there unless Charlotte or Cleveland take him, which would surprise me, Detroit and NY are going Guard

So I would pencil in Onyeka really

[doclinkin]

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OOh Okongwu here we come. . Get it done Tommy! This would make me very happy. Unless it's Wisemen, in which case I'll have mixed feelings and shrug and try to be hopeful at his potential and learning curve.

[doclinkin]

Even if he's lying or telling half-truths, I don't think I've ever heard a Wizards/Bullets GM speak so openly before the draft.

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For Tommy he counteracts the need for trickery with having friends throughout the league who appreciate him. He seems to trade favors freely back and forth. I literally have never heard anyone say a negative word about Tommy in any front office. When he was hired many execs on other teams said effusive and positive things about his character and work ethic and their appreciation for him.

This is how we raided LA. It sounds like he was given a heads up by their staff that these guys were going to be available, and jumped on the offer as soon as they were free.

[doclinkin]

Lol, it sure sounds like Tommy is letting everyone know he wants to trade up for a big who can defend. The only one who really fits that description is Okongwu. The 37th pick isn't going to move them up more than 1 - if that. Tbh, I don't trust Tommy to make a trade-up that'll make any sense.

I'm just relieved they didn't fall to 10 or 11.

Here's how it goes (if we get lucky):
1. Minn - Edwards
2. GS - Wiseman
3. Char - Toppin
4. Chi - Avdija
5. Cle - Ball
6. Atl - Hayes
7. Det - Haliburton
8. NY - Okoro
9. Wash - Okongwu

I think Tommy is working under some pressure to get immediate help for Beal and Wall. I fully expect he would package a protected future 1st (or option to flip picks) with this years pick to move up for the Wu. But he may be looking at Wiseman who is both bouncy and big and laterally quick even if he doesn't know how to use it. Still I think Okongwu is likely his target.

On the other hand the Nix already have a billion bigs. If Okongwu falls to them then sure they may switch. On the other other hand they are the Nix. Still Thibs is now coach and will have input on the draft. I expect Thibs would prefer to take a defensive anchor if he gets a chance. His defense works best with a player underneath who can do exactly what Okongwu does.

As to the rest of your draft order, I personally will be unsurprised if GSW takes Halliburton. And can't see them taking a project Big like Wiseman. Kerr is from the Spurs school, he likes polished players who understand the game.

[Ruzious]

Lol, it sure sounds like Tommy is letting everyone know he wants to trade up for a big who can defend. The only one who really fits that description is Okongwu. The 37th pick isn't going to move them up more than 1 - if that. Tbh, I don't trust Tommy to make a trade-up that'll make any sense.

I'm just relieved they didn't fall to 10 or 11.

Here's how it goes (if we get lucky):
1. Minn - Edwards
2. GS - Wiseman
3. Char - Toppin
4. Chi - Avdija
5. Cle - Ball
6. Atl - Hayes
7. Det - Haliburton
8. NY - Okoro
9. Wash - Okongwu

I think Tommy is working under some pressure to get immediate help for Beal and Wall. I fully expect he would package a protected future 1st (or option to flip picks) with this years pick to move up for the Wu. But he may be looking at Wiseman who is both bouncy and big and laterally quick even if he doesn't know how to use it. Still I think Okongwu is likely his target.

On the other hand the Nix already have a billion bigs. If Okongwu falls to them then sure they may switch. On the other other hand they are the Nix. Still Thibs is now coach and will have input on the draft. I expect Thibs would prefer to take a defensive anchor if he gets a chance. His defense works best with a player underneath who can do exactly what Okongwu does.

As to the rest of your draft order, I personally will be unsurprised if GSW takes Halliburton. And can't see them taking a project Big like Wiseman. Kerr is from the Spurs school, he likes polished players who understand the game.

What GS does might be the most interesting thing in the draft. If it was me running their team, I'd take Wiseman in a heart beat. They need a big, and he can be molded to be a great fit for them - and he's got excellent physical tools. But what you say about Kerr makes sense. When it comes down to it, I really want to know what they decide to do.

[No-Man]

Most NBA people I talked to believe Okongwu will be there at 9th and so do I (Cleveland only realistic team before that may take him and I doubt it), question is if the Wiz do take him

I'd take Vassell before him but he is a fine selection too

[DCZards]

Okongwu is my pick for the Zards at 9, assuming he's there. The Zards need to get much better on D, on the boards and protecting the rim. Okongwu brings all of that.

(I prefer Wiseman but I expect him to go in the top 3 picks.)

After Okongwu, I'd want Vassell for his D and solid 3 pt shooting. Okuru is another possibility.

I agree that taking Precious Achiuwa at 9 is a stretch. But he's an intriguing talent and prospect. Precious is raw as hell on offense but I expect his outstanding shotblocking and rebounding, and his ability to guard 3-4 positions, to carry over into the NBA. And his ability to run the court will result in a lot of easy baskets.

I'm high on Precious and wouldn't be disappointed if he ended up in a Zards uni.

[TGW]

Sheppard saying small guards like Ish and Napier (and Thomas) put them at a disadvantage is hilarious. He's acting like he wasn't the one who brought them in.

"We need some size to help Thomas Bryant down low. Either through the draft or free agency. We need to get more bouncy and we need to add defense."

Yea, no ****. Headscratching statement from a guy who brought in undersized, non-defensive bigs in Rui and Bertans, and literally made the team smaller and defensively challenged at almost every position.

And trading up in this crapshoot draft is a horrible idea. This reeks of EFG's lingering stench.

[The Consiglieri]

I'm curious about how people see a couple of factors:

#1: What's the tier of players we're most likely looking at (ignoring coach/GM speak, then considering it):

#2:
>What player that might drop would be an auto-draft for you individually (Michael Porter Jr two years ago was a heartbreaker for me in the same way that Pierce and Caron Butler were 20 years ago, where I saw them falling and was smacking my head in frustration, I can say that I liked the sound of Gilgeous-Alexander, but it wasn't based on any sense he'd become the stud he's become, just thought he had a lot of upside compared to others in that zone)

>What player that might drop and should be an auto-draft would we be colossally stupid and not pick (a la LA Clippers not taking Michael Porter Jr two years ago, reminding me of the Twolves managing to miss Steph Curry twice while drafting incredibly inferior options instead)?

#3:
What's your top 2-3 targets at positions of needs, why?

I'd love to hear what people think w/regards to questions like these. I'm very informed and knowledgable when it comes to things like football, soccer, and to a lesser extent baseball and hockey, basketball was always the one sport I just played seasonally and was not as into which is why I was unfamiliar w/the bullets until '86-'87 whereas I was on the Redskins and Caps circa 1980 and about 1983 respectively. I have opinions on team building strategies just because I feel familiar w/what works and what doesn't being a DC sports fan/draft obsessive tendencies going back to 1988 for the NFL and '89 for other sports (Tom Hammonds was the first Bullets pick I saw live). Which is why I'm distrustful of PIF's view on trading down (though now that I see his caveat w/top 3 picks, I may be more interested in it as I don't have data on how that goes, and PIF clearly does). My major concern w/it, and it's probably too nebulous to suss out whether or not we can get data on it, is how and why certain prospects hit outside the blue chip and lottery zones. Do they have commonalities? What are the commonalties? What are the clear risk red flags (athlete over tangible skill set, tangible skill set over athlete etc). I'm super curious about that. Analytics groups in fantasy have managed to unearth tons of usable data on certain positions going across draft classes to learn real lessons:

In terms of hit rate, the most common traits:
WR's:
Most Relevant Data: Draft slotting (still trumps everything else), Breakout Age
Lease Relevant Data: Workout #'s as long as they are within certain thresholds, heavy production senior year.

RB's:
Most Relevant Data: Draft Slotting, 40 yard dash time, Breakout age
Least Relevant Data: Market Share Senior Year
Unknown: Market share data seems to be still unclear, 3 cone seems to be relevant to some degree.

TE''s:
Most Relevant Data: Draft Slotting, 40 yard dash time and other combine data, Breakout age
Least Relevant Data: Market Share #'s Senior year

One truism seems to be:
Athleticsm is most important for TE and least important for WR's (especially if WR's hit 40 yard dash in the 4.6 or faster zone), RB production seems to be closely connected to athleticism, especially speed and production at a young age. With WR's, if you don't breakout early in college, you are highly likely to bust (basically in any given year, about 5-10 of the top 50 WR's have late breakout ages and 40-45 out of the top 50 broke out early in college), additionally one of the weirdest pieces of information was that WR's who had slower 40's and good bench presses hit more when taken in round 2 than faster WR's with crappy bench presses. This was taken to suggest that speed and strength drills at the combine were largely totally irrelevant in projecting chances for future success.

Anyway, just looking at some pseudo draft aggregator's (I looked at the 7 most recent mocks other than the ringer which feels like an outlier), it feels like this:

Haliburton:
Average: 7.1
Median: 7

Okoro:
Average: 8.12
Median: 7

Okongwu:
Average: 8.25
Median: 8

Vassell:
Average: 10.87
Median: 11

Nesmith:
Average: 11.625
Median: 13

Achiuwa:
Average: 13.57
Median: 13


Looking at Poku, whom many are talking about, the top 7 most recently updated sites I saw had him going 17th, 25th, 2nd round, 24th, 16th, 21st, 39th.

Just looking at the list, feels like the guys we'll be looking at most commonly slotted to us are Okoro, Okongwu, and then a bunch of guys with incredibly volatile projections (Vassell, Achiuwa, Nesmith etc), and depending upon what our F.O. is targeting and what players they're most enamored with.

Guys I think are gone when we pick:
Edwards, Ball, Wiseman, Avdjia, Toppin, Hayes, Haliburton, and then the 8th pick, which seems to be Okongwu or Okoro typically. One of those two guys nearly always is the eighth guy off the board.

[Shoe]

Sheppard saying small guards like Ish and Napier (and Thomas) put them at a disadvantage is hilarious. He's acting like he wasn't the one who brought them in.

"We need some size to help Thomas Bryant down low. Either through the draft or free agency. We need to get more bouncy and we need to add defense."

Yea, no ****. Headscratching statement from a guy who brought in undersized, non-defensive bigs in Rui and Bertans, and literally made the team smaller and defensively challenged at almost every position.

And trading up in this crapshoot draft is a horrible idea. This reeks of EFG's lingering stench.

This is a hell of a stretch. There's no way you can complain about the Bertans trade when EG would've just re-signed Portis.

[The Consiglieri]

Sheppard saying small guards like Ish and Napier (and Thomas) put them at a disadvantage is hilarious. He's acting like he wasn't the one who brought them in.

"We need some size to help Thomas Bryant down low. Either through the draft or free agency. We need to get more bouncy and we need to add defense."

Yea, no ****. Headscratching statement from a guy who brought in undersized, non-defensive bigs in Rui and Bertans, and literally made the team smaller and defensively challenged at almost every position.

And trading up in this crapshoot draft is a horrible idea. This reeks of EFG's lingering stench.

I'd like to think it's just GMspeak for interviews. What possible purpose does it serve to be honest about things? Smokescreens yes, give away exactly what the priority is seems strange bordering on nuts. Then again people can look at our roster and think, they need virtually everything which would be true. I also wouldn't hit too hard on him, the team was screwed period w/the Wall deal, no chance to contend and almost a bare cupboard other than draft picks going forward, so whatever direction they went forward with this past year had to be part of a long term plan w/lots of hope attached. I hope and pray decisions aren't based on Beal/Wall because that strikes me as a mistake, unless we steal a guy like Michael Porter Jr two years ago (that was really our one chance to short circuit the mega long term rebuild, a top 3 blue chipper who fell just one spot above us, and could have given us elite lottery talent in the middle of round 1, alas, our GM was a dip---- and didn't trade up (actually SGA also fell and could've helped us the same way). Hopefully TBJR is a nice consolation prize. Regardless I think looking at a draft like this, the objective is sniffing out long term upside, and deciding whether this talent is so low in terms of upside you just want a guy w/tools and a high floor, or whether you want to level a giant swing for the fences w/a low floor, or just do PIF's roll the dice with sheer quantity of picks strategy. Heck, I'd consider trying to trade down/out for a '22 or '23 pick when supposedly high school players get dumped into the lottery, that to me is great long term planning because I don't see any possibility of contending for anything worthy of note for years plural, so why not try to add assets a few years from now when that story may be different and go PIF's way while we're doing it?

If not that, I'm just hoping for Okongwu, or Vassell, or a Porter JR scenario where a Wiseman or Ball or someone falls like crazy (no chance I know, and none of those guys are Porter Jr/SGA level prospects in my view anyway). Lastly what the hell happened to RJ Hampton's stock, and should we care? Guy was a top 2-5 prospect everywhere a year ago, and is now generally outside the lottery zone entirely, I actually like rolling the dice on guys like that, especially if we get more picks, in a trade down, then again, it may be for a very good reason.

I don't know, all in all, this is the kind of draft I'd just try to trade the pick for multiple future 1st's, or at least a '22 or '23 first from a team we think might fall off, and some 2nds this year. Milwauke post-Gianni, that kind of thing. I just don't like this draft, and if ever there was a time to go full PIF, trade down/out, this is that kind of draft, especially if it gives us nice ammo later.

[TGW]

^^^100% agree. In a crapshoot draft like this, multiple picks is better than one, regardless of how high that one pick is.

[doclinkin]

This is my favorite part of the season every year. Probably says a lot about wizards history that this is true for many fans.

[payitforward]

The overly obvious way in which Tommy Shepherd is telegraphing that we want Okongwu makes me think that we actually don't want him and, in fact, Shepherd wants to pick a guard.

It's really odd to see him discuss this with such openness, huh?!

Along the lines of what you write, nate, the fact that he talks about what we "need" -- as if we were intending to draft on need rather than bpa -- makes me think that he's just blowing smoke of every kind in every direction & intends to take the BPA.

[payitforward]

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Interesting that would be Tillman, Azubuike, Reed, Tillie as most likely with #37.

Don’t forget my current obsession: Diakite

Reggie Perry, Vernon Carey.

[payitforward]

"Need to help Thomas Bryant" -- a hint that he'd like to trade Wagner?