Wizards 2019 Draft Thread - Part II

[nuposse04]

I'm going to wait a bit and see if Hachimura sucks before I complain too much. Right now, I see a guy with significant strengths and significant weaknesses. We'll see if those weaknesses can be corrected.

How dare you take a leveled approach

[The Consiglieri]

Those consensus boards were and usually are mostly right. Hachimura was viewed as a back of the lottery (12-13) to late teens talent, and in some communities worse. You trade down if you've got an evaluation that isn't meshing with consensus and you sure as hell better have a board made up of tiers so if he does get selected by a team like the Suns that appears to be working with a. blindfold on so you can get your next best guy. Hachimura wasn't a make or break selection, and he was tiered out lower than where we had him by a ton. Trade down. Get value. Don't reach for a guy everyone else disagrees w/you about, get some value by moving down a touch (and if it doesn't work out, so what, you'll accidentally get a better guy w/o realizing it).

In other words, follow the crowd. Go with the groupthink.That's how a guy like the Greek Freak ends up being the 15th pick in the draft. Right about where the "smart" guys doing the "mocks" had him.

You’re missing on me from both directions.

#1 I wasn’t married to any prospect. My complaints are based on a desire for good process. This isn’t “wahh they didn’t pick my guy” bitching. Hell I warned people not to get any player based attachedments (Brandon Clarke anyone?) because you’re rarely fulfilled. There are dozens of “other guys” and only one “your guy”. I’ve been watching drafts sine 1988 and it’s a fools errand to get emotionally attached to particular prospects. My concern, again, is good process which leads me too...

2. You don’t draft following the crowd you use the crowd to creat value. My take isn’t follow boards, it’s follow value. I’m not asking the wizards to be clones or zombies I’m asking them to play chess w/value like the pelicans did, not play checkers.

We played checkers.

[DCZards]

I'm going to wait a bit and see if Hachimura sucks before I complain too much. Right now, I see a guy with significant strengths and significant weaknesses. We'll see if those weaknesses can be corrected.

How dare you take a leveled approach

Yeah...that's kinda who Nate is. Always looking to be thoughtful, fair and thorough before jumping to conclusions. The nerve of him.

[DCZards]

Those consensus boards were and usually are mostly right. Hachimura was viewed as a back of the lottery (12-13) to late teens talent, and in some communities worse. You trade down if you've got an evaluation that isn't meshing with consensus and you sure as hell better have a board made up of tiers so if he does get selected by a team like the Suns that appears to be working with a. blindfold on so you can get your next best guy. Hachimura wasn't a make or break selection, and he was tiered out lower than where we had him by a ton. Trade down. Get value. Don't reach for a guy everyone else disagrees w/you about, get some value by moving down a touch (and if it doesn't work out, so what, you'll accidentally get a better guy w/o realizing it).

In other words, follow the crowd. Go with the groupthink.That's how a guy like the Greek Freak ends up being the 15th pick in the draft. Right about where the "smart" guys doing the "mocks" had him.

You’re missing on me from both directions.

#1 I wasn’t married to any prospect. My complaints are based on a desire for good process. This isn’t “wahh they didn’t pick my guy” bitching. Hell I warned people not to get any player based attachedments (Brandon Clarke anyone?) because you’re rarely fulfilled. There are dozens of “other guys” and only one “your guy”. I’ve been watching drafts sine 1988 and it’s a fools errand to get emotionally attached to particular prospects. My concern, again, is good process which leads me too...

2. You don’t draft following the crowd you use the crowd to creat value. My take isn’t follow boards, it’s follow value. I’m not asking the wizards to be clones or zombies I’m asking them to play chess w/value like the pelicans did, not play checkers.

We played checkers.

I don’t disagree that it may have been better to trade down and still draft Hachimura and get another pick as well. But you’re making 2 assumptions. One, that there was a trading partner and, two, that other teams weren’t as high on Rui as the Zards. As far as we know, the Hawks or Minny might have drafted him with the 10th or 11th pick.

It may have been wrong for the Zards to fall in love with a flawed player like Hachimura. But, at this point, we don’t know that for sure. (Unless, of course, if you have a crystal ball.)

[closg00]

If I was GM last night I would have came away with Goga, Clarke & Ponds at minimum.

I was right about Shep and the old guard EG left behind. Rui was 4th on their board! If we had the 4 pick, Rui still would have been their choice! These guys have no business running a team.

Gotta agree with you - particularly on your call for Goga and Clarke.

Goga would have been the chess move IMO, but Rui appears to be a hard worker and coachable, let's see how he manages with the big boys.

[Illuminaire]

Wizards: States that they loved Rui, ranked him 4th, had a chance to trade down but didn't want to risk missing on their one true love, declare they got the players they wanted most.

DCZards: You can't know any of that, you don't have a crystal ball.

The Board: No, we have functioning ears.

[The Consiglieri]

Not sure how you can label the drafting of Hachimura an "idiotic reach." Most mocks had him in the top 15. The consensus mock had him at 11 or 12. Our own Secret Weapon (Kevin Broom) had Rui top 10 in his YODA rankings.

The drafting of Hiamuchi came as a surprise. At least to me. He wasn’t on my radar screen. But nor was Troy Brown and it looks to me like he’s going to turn out to be a good player and an excellent 15th pick.

Rui has great size and length, and above average physical skills. He’s also reportedly a smart kid with a great motor and work ethic. He definitely needs to improve his court awareness, but there’s no reason why he can’t.

Fans freak out when the player(s) they like or the player(s) they had highly-ranked are passed over by their favorite team. But, outside of maybe the top 4-5 picks, no one here knows for sure who of the next 15 or so picks in this draft will turn out to be the better NBA players. (College #s and performance can tell you some things but they can’t tell you everything.)

So, while some here might rant and rave like they know the future, they really don’t.

Those consensus boards were and usually are mostly right. Hachimura was viewed as a back of the lottery (12-13) to late teens talent, and in some communities worse. You trade down if you've got an evaluation that isn't meshing with consensus and you sure as hell better have a board made up of tiers so if he does get selected by a team like the Suns that appears to be working with a. blindfold on so you can get your next best guy. Hachimura wasn't a make or break selection, and he was tiered out lower than where we had him by a ton. Trade down. Get value. Don't reach for a guy everyone else disagrees w/you about, get some value by moving down a touch (and if it doesn't work out, so what, you'll accidentally get a better guy w/o realizing it).

Ehhh, makes sense abstractly. But if you believe in a guy you believe in a guy. They had him rated 4th. Is the ideal situation to trade down? Of course. But you can't knock a team for drafting a guy that they believe can be a stud. If it doesn't work out, the problem isn't with the draft logic, it's with the scouting department.

No you don't. Rich Hribar does a beautiful job of eviscerating this theory of drafting here:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/rotounderworld-radio-stereo/e/60076370

Worth digging into as there are also interviews with Matthew Freedman and Josh Hermsmyer, two of the smartest analytics guys you'll see in the fantasy/betting world (N'Keal Harry Checkmate, and A.J. Brown Bust Repellant episodes from late April/early May).

Anyway their point is this. F.O.'s are objectively bad at drafting. So bad, that basically the only way to improve your hit rate over time for a franchise is to increase your sheer number of picks. Through any metric utilized, even the best, most successful teams in the draft even out over time and a big enough sample size into averageness. Essentially the only way to do a better job is to incorporate all the tools possible, dump all the biases still ingrained from the tape scouting approach, and just add more picks whenever and wherever possible because nothing else improves your hit rate.

So the whole, "get your guy," theory? It's bunk. A much better theory is, "Own your own foibles, and inherent failure rates, trade down." As another poster said, humility is the key. More often than not you're going to be wrong about your guy so the best thing you can do, is trade down to add bullets to your weapon so you have more chances to land certifiable hits, because nothing else consistently improves that hit rate. If you're in the top of the blue chip zone and are targeting a blue chip guy, then sure, I can see sticking at slot for a Zion, Morant or Barrett, maybe Garland, but other than them, hell no (and there's an argument to be made to trade out of some of those players as well, though not all of them).

[DCZards]

Wizards: States that they loved Rui, ranked him 4th, had a chance to trade down but didn't want to risk missing on their one true love, declare they got the players they wanted most.

DCZards: You can't know any of that, you don't have a crystal ball.

The Board: No, we have functioning ears.

I'm still waiting for someone to post the quote from Sheppard where he states that the Zards "had a chance to trade down." It may be out there but I haven't seen or heard it.

Heck, I haven't even seen the quote where TS says they had Rui "ranked 4th."

[The Consiglieri]

I'm going to wait a bit and see if Hachimura sucks before I complain too much. Right now, I see a guy with significant strengths and significant weaknesses. We'll see if those weaknesses can be corrected.

I don't hate the player personally, I just hated the process behind the pick. I have hopes for him, he's a low floor, moderately high ceiling guy, but that ceiling is really hard to reach in terms of probabilities, I have hopes for him, but he's gonna bother people because even if he does make it, it will take a while and we'll hear a lot of bitching while we wait (remember when Beal was a slow starter as a rookie and in his early years, much like at Florida? Even w/Beal there were concerns, and Beal was WAY WAY WAY more polished).

[The Consiglieri]

In other words, follow the crowd. Go with the groupthink.That's how a guy like the Greek Freak ends up being the 15th pick in the draft. Right about where the "smart" guys doing the "mocks" had him.

You’re missing on me from both directions.

#1 I wasn’t married to any prospect. My complaints are based on a desire for good process. This isn’t “wahh they didn’t pick my guy” bitching. Hell I warned people not to get any player based attachedments (Brandon Clarke anyone?) because you’re rarely fulfilled. There are dozens of “other guys” and only one “your guy”. I’ve been watching drafts sine 1988 and it’s a fools errand to get emotionally attached to particular prospects. My concern, again, is good process which leads me too...

2. You don’t draft following the crowd you use the crowd to creat value. My take isn’t follow boards, it’s follow value. I’m not asking the wizards to be clones or zombies I’m asking them to play chess w/value like the pelicans did, not play checkers.

We played checkers.

I don’t disagree that it may have been better to trade down and still draft Hachimura and get another pick as well. But you’re making 2 assumptions. One, that there was a trading partner and, two, that other teams weren’t as high on Rui as the Zards. As far as we know, the Hawks or Minny might have drafted him with the 10th or 11th pick.

It may have been wrong for the Zards to fall in love with a flawed player like Hachimura. But, at this point, we don’t know that for sure. (Unless, of course, if you have a crystal ball.)

There are always opportunities to trade down, the question is whether you're willing to take the heat for getting less than fair value in a move down, generally you can get value, but sometimes maybe not fair value. Loads of teams trying to trade around, rumors that there would be a gazillion trades before hand. While I can't guarantee there were fair value move downs, the odds are, hell the almost certainty is that there was opportunity. We just wanted Rui. Didn't somebody quote Shepard saying there was interest, but he was afraid Rui would be gone (again, so what, Rui is one of many prospects, where are your tiers Shepard, if you're that married to one prospect AT NINE, you're doing this wrong).

[Illuminaire]

I'm still waiting for someone to post the quote from Sheppard where he states that the Zards "had a chance to trade down." It may be out there but I haven't seen or heard it.

Heck, I haven't even seen the quote where TS says they had Rui "ranked 4th."

[Kanyewest]

Wizards: States that they loved Rui, ranked him 4th, had a chance to trade down but didn't want to risk missing on their one true love, declare they got the players they wanted most.

DCZards: You can't know any of that, you don't have a crystal ball.

The Board: No, we have functioning ears.

I'm still waiting for someone to post the quote from Sheppard where he states that the Zards "had a chance to trade down." It may be out there but I haven't seen or heard it.

Heck, I haven't even seen the quote where TS says they had Rui "ranked 4th."

Chris Miller stated that his sources told him that Rui was 4th on their board on the Wizards Talk podcast at around the 35 minute.
Not sure why Miller would be lie about that. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wizards-draft-rui-hachimura/id1206090007?i=1000442254115

[doclinkin]

As for Rui. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt. ...his 3FG% improved with higher usage. ...

Rui played 37 games his last season. He took a total of 36 3 point FGAs.

What higher usage?

Meaning as the focal point offensive player. Rui started 37 games this year. 2 last year. Played 400 more minutes teams knew he was the primary point of attack and first target of every pass. So teams keyed up to stop him. And he still followed through with efficient scoring in traffic and Hitting the open three.

All players available at 9 showed flaws. But adding a Big who wants to score and has shown efficiency doing so is a positive for this squad.

His fouls have decreased despite increased minutes. His offensive and defensive rating have both improved. Granted I wanted other players. But I think it’s going to be pretty easy to cheer for this kid. He seems bright and eager and athletic with good character and athleticism.

Japan and Benin. Interesting combination. Makes me curious about his backstory.

[rl25g]

Schofield reminds me of Alan Anderson

[nate33]

I'm tempted to start a thread on Justin Robinson, but I should probably wait to see if he actually graduates from the Go-Go and manages to get minutes with the Wizards.

Looking at his college numbers, he seems like a really good under-the-radar find:



The kid averaged 18 points, 7 boards, 4 assists and 2 steals while shooting 47%, 42% and 81%. He showed steady progression every year in nearly all categories. He gets to the line a good amount.

His numbers in conference play are even better:


Sports-reference lists him as 6-2, 195 lbs. I can't find any official measurements.

Here is the obligatory highlight reel:

Watch on YouTube

[Ruzious]

One thing (out of probably 1,000) I gotta eat crow on... Somewhere in this forum, I said Cam Johnson wouldn't be a 1st rounder, and Nate said he should be. Not only was he a 1st rounder, but Phoenix made him the 11th pick. You could have knocked me over with a crow feather. it's like "they" say; the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

[nuposse04]

I'm tempted to start a thread on Justin Robinson, but I should probably wait to see if he actually graduates from the Go-Go and manages to get minutes with the Wizards.

Looking at his college numbers, he seems like a really good under-the-radar find:



The kid averaged 18 points, 7 boards, 4 assists and 2 steals while shooting 47%, 42% and 81%. He showed steady progression every year in nearly all categories. He gets to the line a good amount.

His numbers in conference play are even better:


Sports-reference lists him as 6-2, 195 lbs. I can't find any official measurements.

Here is the obligatory highlight reel:

Watch on YouTube

The optimist in me wants to say he isn't too far off from Monte Morris who has turned into a nice backup PG. Morris got one more reb a game and turned the ball over less (their senior years) but Robinson is a better shooter on more volume per 40. That and better competition in the ACC.

Hopefully he does't get trapped in the G-league, might as well give him some floor time here and there. I wasn't too enamored with Chasson last year.

I just hope they didn't sign JUST cause he has "local" ties with virginia tech, although my guess it does play some factor with how this FO operates cause of Ted. He seems like a decent UDFA prospect in his own right.

[Kanyewest]

One thing (out of probably 1,000) I gotta eat crow on... Somewhere in this forum, I said Cam Johnson wouldn't be a 1st rounder, and Nate said he should be. Not only was he a 1st rounder, but Phoenix made him the 11th pick. You could have knocked me over with a crow feather. it's like "they" say; the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

https://streamable.com/9lf7q

[Ruzious]

One thing (out of probably 1,000) I gotta eat crow on... Somewhere in this forum, I said Cam Johnson wouldn't be a 1st rounder, and Nate said he should be. Not only was he a 1st rounder, but Phoenix made him the 11th pick. You could have knocked me over with a crow feather. it's like "they" say; the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

https://streamable.com/9lf7q

Coby White... I get the impression he's a really good kid who's been through some tough times, but... wow, he's a little out there. And no hat can truly contain that hair.

[NatP4]

I'm tempted to start a thread on Justin Robinson, but I should probably wait to see if he actually graduates from the Go-Go and manages to get minutes with the Wizards.

Looking at his college numbers, he seems like a really good under-the-radar find:



The kid averaged 18 points, 7 boards, 4 assists and 2 steals while shooting 47%, 42% and 81%. He showed steady progression every year in nearly all categories. He gets to the line a good amount.

His numbers in conference play are even better:


Sports-reference lists him as 6-2, 195 lbs. I can't find any official measurements.

Here is the obligatory highlight reel:

Watch on YouTube

Great numbers, doesn’t pass the eye test at all for me. I could barely get through the highlight reel. Weird athlete