nate33 wrote:The Consiglieri wrote:Until this draft, where if we'd tanked as I'd suggested, a falling Ace would have fallen in our laps at 5, w/zero trade cost to acquire, and your strategy was fine at 6. Tre may end up being better, but the way this lottery process played out proved us both right: #1 that the flattened odds make it so much harder to land a top pick, but #2 that avoiding falling an extra slot can and often will be a huge deal when that slot moves you 2 down from the consensus big 4, instead of 1.
It's not a huge deal because we don't know who is better between the #5 pick and the #6 pick. You speak as if it is a certainty that there was a well defined tier where Ace Bailey was above it and Tre Johnson was below it. That's simply not the case. We have NO IDEA which player will be better.
My argument about tanking isn't merely that the flat odds mean that a few spots higher in the seedings doesn't make all that much difference in the lottery odds. The other half of the argument is that one's position in the lottery doesn't really matter all that much, outside of the top 3 anyway. Historically, the difference between pick 4 and pick 13 is negligible, so it's not really worth all the belly-aching if you land 6th instead of 5th or 4th. For example, picks 8, 9, and 10 have historically resulted in All-NBA talent about twice as often as pick #6 has. And pick #5 has been quite a bit better than pick #4.
I think I've seen enough the past decade (haven't bothered to look further in the past, so that is a sample size issue) to find that with great regularity, a surprise Kon K type pick often happens in the middle of the top tier of prospects, and it happened again this year, which I predicted was possible the past couple of months. That's why I want us to maximize our positioning: so we choose, not Utah, us, whether or not Bailey and the circus around him is worth the trouble, or if we prefer Tre and his ready brought skill set and work ethic instead. I want us to have control of that choice, if a player falls, not freaking Danny Ainge.
I do agree w/you that both: sometimes this isn't happening and it doesn't matter anyway, and also, that historically, you've got those hit rates, but I also think the biggest priority always is to max the highest we can pick in best and worst case scenarios, which means being the worst team in the league.
We may have dodged a bullet in Bailey, I just don't know, but I would rather our FO been in position to make that choice themselves, than been at the mercy of Danny Ainge. Same thing next year if its between say Boozer and Ament or whatever, give me the higher pick always, it's always worth it, this is about every inch, centimeter, and millimeter of advantage, and clearly, w/our miserable lottery luck, we need it, even w/the flattened odds. The Suns in particular will make '26 interesting if they stink, it's shocking to see just how much higher our odds would be of a top 2, 3 and 4 pick if the Suns continue to fall apart and finish in the bottom 5 to 10 zone of the league.
