Ruzious wrote:Um... what?
You're reasoning that DDV's going to have a better season is based on Milwaukee being a worse team than Washington? Based on... their regular season record - even with Milwaukee changing coaches during the season? That Milwaukee lost a great 7 game series to Boston? Just stop and admit this isn't worth arguing about.
Ehhhh... it's the offseason. What would you say
is worth arguing about? You clearly feel this topic is. As for the Bucks, I'll believe it when I see it. Kidd wasn't a very good coach, but he also got way too much blame for what was happening there. Beyond Giannis, and to a lesser extent Middleton (who would really be well served to ask to scale his role back and focus more on defense again), that team isn't very good. Neither are the Wizards, but I have a pretty hard time seeing how you can be more optimistic on the Bucks than on the Wizards. The promises of changes that never quite seem to happen, I suppose.
Brown was ranked as the #20 (high #18 / low #23) overall prospect if you go by aggregate mock draft rankings. That's the closest thing the public really has to a consensus unless you look at betting markets, which I'm too lazy to do right now. My point though is that you can assess a prospect's perceived value without having a particular opinion of that player just based on the market alone.
https://hoopshype.com/2018/06/20/nba-mock-draft-consensus-top-prospects-latest-update-rumors/My only argument regarding Zhaire is really about how Philly acquired him. While I happened to love Zhaire, the thing that gets me is how Philly was simply unwilling to take him six spots higher and was able to acquire an additional first round pick in the process of getting the guy they actually wanted.
If the Wizards had traded back to #20 to get Brown, I would actually probably love the pick. Of course it's possible there were other teams who were going to draft Brown that we don't know about, but Ernie Grunfeld has absolutely NOT earned the benefit of the doubt, and there is no universe in which EG masterfully trades back to get the guy he wanted all along while acquiring a significant asset along the way.
I think the problem is that people treat mock draft consensus as a representation of value over the actual draft. It's mock drafts that are trying to imitate the real draft, not the other way around. And while mock drafts have varying degrees of scouting ability, and are sometimes better than real NBA teams in any particular situation, that doesn't actually make them some harbinger of truthful value. Russell Westbrook was consistently mocked after 10 by pretty much every mock draft, until days before the draft when it became clear that the Thunder were going to pick him when the mock drafts jumped him up and dropped Jerryd Bayless, who had consistently been mocked higher until just before the draft. The reality is that this can work both ways.
As for your assertion of a trade down to get Brown, and not being too worried about if he isn't there because there were roughly comparable players, I don't necessarily disagree with that idea, but I think it's making a lot of rather massive assumptions. If you look at what actually happened on draft night, you saw a couple trades (for rather steep prices) to trade up or down within the top 16 picks. You didn't see any teams make a move up or down with in that range. If it were true that picks 15 through 20 or so were roughly the same, you wouldn't expect teams at 19 or 20 to be willing to take on unwanted salary or give up future draft picks just to move up a couple slots. And we didn't see any of those trades made. Forget the Wizards, why didn't the Spurs trade down to pick 20 with the Wolves and get Lonnie Walker there? Why didn't the Bucks trade with the Wolves and not worry about which of Okogie or Divincenzo is going to be better given that they aren't actually that far apart as prospects?
There were rumors out there suggesting the Wizards were trying to trade down but not out of the draft but didn't succeed in finding a trade partner. I know it's Ernie, but why assume something different than they looked and no other team was willing to bite? If other teams were simply offering a bit of cash or some future top 55-protected 2nd rounder to move up, then maybe it's better to just stick where you're at. Assuming you're going to get the kind of value you're hoping to get when no such trades are being made by other teams is a pretty major assumption - heck, absolutely no players under contract were traded on draft night by any team, which suggests that teams weren't willing to take on added salary. I agree, I'd like to see Ernie be a bit more forward-thinking in general, but for this particular case, if you assess the situation honestly, it's not out of the realm of imagination to suggest that the Wizards were stuck at 15, and if they were stuck at 15, you can certainly disagree with the idea of Brown being BPA, but he was, at worst, pretty close, and there is a credible argument to suggest he might have been BPA, too.
Or is the fact that they don't want that number worn anymore after Gil kind of disgraced it. 
