Ed Wood wrote:dangermouse wrote:Lets say, hypothetically, the age limit for draftees was taken away and highschoolers were eligible again, and Drummond was a highschooler this year.
Would that change anything?
He is often compared to Amar'e who was drafted out of highschool. So was Dwight, Garnett etc.
Could we be wrong about Drummond based on his college play? Could he be better in the NBA?
Could we be Wrong? We might be, sure. But it's not a point in his favor that if he were a high schooler this year and the volume of available data with which he could be evaluated was smaller he'd be more appealing. Whatever it's intended effects and the rationales used to defend it one of the most significant impacts of the age limit is to provide the opportunity to evaluate nearly every American-born prospect in a setting from which at least some data can be collected and some conclusions drawn (in fact this is probably one of the primary objectives of the age limit from the perspective of NBA owners).
The bottom line in the draft as in any process designed to select candidates to fill a highly specialized and extremely demanding role is that while the results are, to a certain extent, predictable, they cannot, strictly speaking, be predicted. We may conclude that Anthony Davis will be a very good player and Andre Drummond will not based on what we see, and what we are able to measure, and what we know of the past, but we may be wrong.
So we look to the past, and to what we see in the present that we recognize and we stack the deck as much in our favor as we can, and we hope. So hell, Andre Drummond may well be phenomenal as a professional, but if so it would run against the grain of what he has already done. I would therefore say that whatever might happen betting on Andre Drummond at current is a bad bet, and the best you can hope to do is avoid making many.
I would disagree with you sharply, and that's why he appears to be exceptionally high on every teams boards. If he was considered a bad bet, and if GM's and scouts were as convinced as most here that he would go full cancer, full baltche, and just be a slug, a Kwame who never "felt like it" and so didnt put the time in, he wouldn't be ranked nearly as high. Instead he has been consistently considered top 2-4 in the draft.
Where I do agree with you is that he really doesnt make sense for us because we already have a team filled with guys with his mental make up (or the seeming mental make up he has), and simply can't draft another guy who has huge motor and committment issues when we already have had starters at C, PF, and SG with the exact same concerns which is half the reason the team is as bad as it is.
All that being said, NBA teams appear to believe that he is an elite talent with some concerns but that he is an elite talent that can dominate at the next level with just a bit more work and a bit more effort on the work habits end.
To be fair, i agree with you completely in regards to our interests, but i think the eval goes completely against what league scouts and GM's seem to think which appears to acknowledge the risk, but also appears to believe fully in the worthiness of the bet, and the players upside. I don't think NBA scouts and GM's would be slotting him in this area if they were anywhere near as convinced as you (and for the record most of us) that he'd bust.
I think the odds are still on him being an elite player on the next level rather than a bust, but i also think a bet that he could be an elite player with a losers work habits and attitude, a sort of Derrick Coleman? Now that is a bet i think would be a solid bet at this point in time. But even taking that into account it is so freaking early in his career now that to bet against him to this degree is insane to me. For us? Reasonable, for his career period? Kind of excessive to me.
