Countdown to Ernie Grunfeld Firing (Part 2)

[payitforward]

I just want to trade down and take two of Plumlee, Dieng, Olynyk and Adams in that order. I also understood that wanted Noel. I didn't understand Porter.

I don't remember you writing anything like that -- tho of course if you say you did, I'm sure you did.

Could you link to the post where you said you wanted to trade down and take two of those four in that order? I'd like to read that.

OOh can I play? On the thread where I was pimping Gorgui to any who would listen:

Unread post#1345 Re: Official 2013 Draft Thread - Part II
Tue Apr 2, 2013 6:20 pm by doclinkin

nate33 wrote:
Dieng has very good but not particularly eye-popping numbers in the sexy defensive stats: rebounds and blocks. But what I like the most about him are his sneaky good numbers in steals, assists, TOV% and fouls. Those numbers really support doc's praise of his basketball IQ. It's possible that he might pan out to be a bit more like a Joakim Noah/Ben Wallace type of defensive quarterback, rather than merely a Theo Ratliff/Robin Lopez type of rebounding/shot blocking grunt.

After looking at the numbers, I think I'd place Dieng ahead of Withey among the polished ready-for-NBA defensive bigs. Our only problem is that we are currently chock full of young, athletic defensive minded front court players. We need a few more guys who know how to put the ball in the basket. It's tough to contemplate using our #10ish pick on Dieng, but if we can trade down with Atlanta or Utah, pick up 2 picks, and use one of them on Dieng and the other on an offensive player, I'd be pretty happy.

That's where I am as well. In a draft with a wide array of talents and no cluster of superlative stars at the top I prefer to get more bites at the apple -- to get lucky with a late pick, and also get better value-for-pick later on. I like Dieng + McDermott or whomever more than I like KellyO and his Kurt Rambis hairdo. But it takes a seller who is willing to trade up, so not really much of a plan unless somebody else is in love with a guy at #10.

Plus I think Dieng's stock will rise in the mocks following his tourney run.

That was when we were due a later pic though. At 3 I was okay with Porter, not giddy, but would have been happy with a trade down for Len plus a shooter, or a shooter plus Dieng. I was giddy though when Nerlens fell. Then distraught, then rationalizing, and by virtue of necessity okay with Porter, I guess. Still okay with him.

Rafael122 wrote:
I agree with Indu, Zeller is going to be horrible. I believe it was Nate who said if he developed a jumper, he could be alright but the kid is getting manhandled by college kids. Imagine what's going to happen when he's up against grown men. With the 10th pick, MAYBE he wouldn't be so bad. At this point I think getting a guy like Burke or Porter is out of the question, but Zeller wouldn't be too bad.

I'd rather have Gorgui Dieng.

But, Here's how nutso I am: For the money or picks or unborn children or whatever it would take to get Kevin Love, say. I would rather have Gorgui Dieng and the picks (money, etc). You can win the champs with a solid defensive lynchpin, not sure you can it all with a stretch 4 who's an iffy defender, despite the bloated rebounding totals. I dunno.

Dieng had a great rookie season (tho in only 800 minutes). He's a keeper and will clearly have a solid NBA career. On the other hand, he was about to turn 24 when he came in the league. Hard to compare a guy like him w/ a more typical rookie prospect who's maybe 20.

For perspective, Kevin Love is all of 16 months older than Dieng. If you see what I mean.

[doclinkin]

Dieng had a great rookie season (tho in only 800 minutes). He's a keeper and will clearly have a solid NBA career. On the other hand, he was about to turn 24 when he came in the league. Hard to compare a guy like him w/ a more typical rookie prospect who's maybe 20.

For perspective, Kevin Love is all of 16 months older than Dieng. If you see what I mean.

Well you know I've thought about this some before. I'm not sure it makes sense to fetishize youth. I'd love to see the numbers on it ( I suspect Kev has access to a study or two that I'd trust more than I've seen) but I'm unconvinced that you get the best value-for-pick from a young player who still has a ton of developing to do.

The mystery cow is always the sexy pick, the excitement coming from the idea that you might get a superstar, that upside is far more precious than reliability, but it seems to me the majority of the time young talent is wasted unless it finds an organization with the skill to temper them properly. We haven't had that here, in my memory. Granted nowadays young talents are more likely to be selected early in their college career, simply because the rules allow them to be taken then. But what makes them good and desirable is not their youth, but their talent. The youth often spoils the talent, and the talent prevents them from learning to play a role and tough it out and learn how to to do the underappreciated unglamorous work. Reasons why teams like the Spurs do well with seasoned players who have to kill themselves in 2-a-days in the Euro leagues where they play at most twice a week and practice even on game day: you are not paying a guy to learn the game, you take him when he is already ready. Except for the rare Kawai Leonard who comes in with a mature understanding of defense, and a natural motor and zero ego.

Me, I'm the guy who looks at a player who has developed. I prefer to see more than one year of stats. I'm more hit and miss with the top lotto hypertalents where I do better with late rounders because I can see development in guys like Napier or McDermott or Stef Curry and so on. You can see the sort of player who identifies his own weaknesses and fixes them, learns to adjust in the case of say Patrick Patterson who added a jumper once Boogie was filling up the entire front court.

My point being, while talent wins in the NBA I think more teams would succeed if they paid attention to the Spurs model and selected players who already knew their role and knew how to play the damn game. But that takes balls or dedication to pass up possibility potential and promise and win by walks, hitting doubles and getting on base instead of swinging for the fences all the time. To mix and mangle a few metaphors.

[Illuminaire]

It's easier to start hitting for those singles and doubles when you already have an all-world clean up hitter waiting to belt those guys home.

Which is a mixed metaphorical way of saying, I think swinging for the fences makes sense when your talent level is low, but once you have the core of a contender you want to start filling in with the smart/qualified roleplayers on cheap salaries.

[montestewart]

It's easier to start hitting for those singles and doubles when you already have an all-world clean up hitter waiting to belt those guys home.

Which is a mixed metaphorical way of saying, I think swinging for the fences makes sense when your talent level is low, but once you have the core of a contender you want to start filling in with the smart/qualified roleplayers on cheap salaries.

For some teams, the best plan is hoping to get hit by a pitch.

[closg00]

#soWizards

No bigger critic of Ernie than me. Still... can you two point to the posts where you each said we should draft Leonard? Thanks. Look forward to reading your analysis.

Wasn't there a poll where "Anyone but Vesely" was the hands down winner?

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1114842&start=15

Leonard got 9 votes also.

[payitforward]

Dieng had a great rookie season (tho in only 800 minutes). He's a keeper and will clearly have a solid NBA career. On the other hand, he was about to turn 24 when he came in the league. Hard to compare a guy like him w/ a more typical rookie prospect who's maybe 20.

For perspective, Kevin Love is all of 16 months older than Dieng. If you see what I mean.

Well you know I've thought about this some before. I'm not sure it makes sense to fetishize youth. I'd love to see the numbers on it ( I suspect Kev has access to a study or two that I'd trust more than I've seen) but I'm unconvinced that you get the best value-for-pick from a young player who still has a ton of developing to do.

The mystery cow is always the sexy pick, the excitement coming from the idea that you might get a superstar, that upside is far more precious than reliability, but it seems to me the majority of the time young talent is wasted unless it finds an organization with the skill to temper them properly. We haven't had that here, in my memory. Granted nowadays young talents are more likely to be selected early in their college career, simply because the rules allow them to be taken then. But what makes them good and desirable is not their youth, but their talent. The youth often spoils the talent, and the talent prevents them from learning to play a role and tough it out and learn how to to do the underappreciated unglamorous work. Reasons why teams like the Spurs do well with seasoned players who have to kill themselves in 2-a-days in the Euro leagues where they play at most twice a week and practice even on game day: you are not paying a guy to learn the game, you take him when he is already ready. Except for the rare Kawai Leonard who comes in with a mature understanding of defense, and a natural motor and zero ego.

Me, I'm the guy who looks at a player who has developed. I prefer to see more than one year of stats. I'm more hit and miss with the top lotto hypertalents where I do better with late rounders because I can see development in guys like Napier or McDermott or Stef Curry and so on. You can see the sort of player who identifies his own weaknesses and fixes them, learns to adjust in the case of say Patrick Patterson who added a jumper once Boogie was filling up the entire front court.

My point being, while talent wins in the NBA I think more teams would succeed if they paid attention to the Spurs model and selected players who already knew their role and knew how to play the damn game. But that takes balls or dedication to pass up possibility potential and promise and win by walks, hitting doubles and getting on base instead of swinging for the fences all the time. To mix and mangle a few metaphors.

I agree, doc -- and this is especially true in the 2d half of R1. After everyone swings for the fences, you get a cluster of guys who are easier to predict, represent if not a sure thing then at least... you hope that's true!

The more data ("another year of stats") the better prediction you can make of a player's future. The top of the most recent draft in particular, where Dieng was taken #21, is chock full of rolls of the dice. But, I don't think you mean that you'd have passed on e.g. Anthony Davis in 2012, because he came out w/ only one year of college under his belt.

One implication of what you say is that GMs under-value the strategy of trading down in the draft. Unless you *really* have a can't miss guy like Anthony Davis, or a unique prospect (even if w/ some risk) like Drummond, you can supercharge a rebuild by trading down.

[dckingsfan]

fetishize - nice doc!

[fishercob]

No bigger critic of Ernie than me. Still... can you two point to the posts where you each said we should draft Leonard? Thanks. Look forward to reading your analysis.

hehehe - I have no such post. My comment is meant to convey the pitifully sadness of the overall moves that Ernie has made. Sadly on was on another board (since shutdown) - so I can't retrieve my previous posts.

But some of the ones that I had were - Trade Blatche, McGee and Young early for assets. Anything but Vesely. And trade down in this years draft to grab a couple of bigs.

Even with that, I wouldn't make a competent GM. If EG is bottom 5 GM, I would probably be a bottom 2 GM - but that really isn't saying much in defense of our GM.

I agree, he is a terrible GM, and even if we were to agree that he's only "bottom 5" -- rather than maybe the worst or 2d worst -- the key point is that he's kept his job for 11 years based on awful performance!

In 2011 I wanted either Leonard or Biyombo (because he was such an out of the blue story!) but decided in the end that Biyombo was too much of a risk and settled on Leonard -- but kind of with a sigh! I had no idea how good he'd be. So, although I was right, I wasn't prescient. At #18, however, there was no question -- Faried was the guy! Ditto at #34 it was Parsons for me.

Let's not confuse the fact that some of us advocated picking Leonard in 2011 with anyone foreseeing him being this good.

Mike Prada's predraft analysis on Leonard, Singleton, Tristan Thompson and Markieff Morris

Kawhi Leonard

Two-point percentage: 47.8%. That's just dreadful. Some of it can be explained by increased usage (Leonard's rate went from 25.6% to 27.5% from his first to his second year), but no lottery pick should ever be that low without a good reason.
Wingspan/Reach: This is Leonard's biggest asset. His 7'3'' wingspan is freakish and his 8'10'' standing reach is very good too. He also has insanely big hands.
TS%: 51.2%. Again, that's dreadful for a top prospect. It was only 51.5% the year before, so this isn't simply a function of increased usage.
Defensive Rebound Rate: 26.6%, 13th in the country. That's phenomenal, but...
3PT%: 29.1%.
Conclusion: And therein lies the problem. Leonard will have to become a passable three-point shooter, because he is so dreadfully inefficient as a two-point shooter. To do that, he will have to play further away from the basket, which negates his rebounding advantage. This is why I'm down on Leonard as a prospect. He's a great workout guy and has great measurables, but he doesn't have enough scoring ability to be anything more than a self-check as a 4, and even if he develops a three-point shot and becomes a 3/D type, it takes away his biggest on-court asset (rebounding). There are a lot of interesting things to the Leonard package, but they just don't add up to me.

Mostly, I'm doing this to illustrate that taking Kawhi Leonard at 6 is a bad idea. The other three guys, right now, are projected behind him, and all are comparable or better than him in several key measurables. I'd consider putting all three ahead of Leonard on my draft board, to be honest. There's nothing wrong with trading back and nabbing one of these three guys instead if Ernie Grunfeld decides he wants a guy like Leonard.

Credit to the Spurs for seeing something in Leonard that they could develop. Credit to Leonard for putting in work to remake his jumper. But -- without data handy to back me up -- I believe there are precious few examples of players being as bad shooters as Leonard was in 2 years of college who became proficient shooters in the pro's. It's certainly strikes me as unusual.

[Dat2U]

Let's not confuse the fact that some of us advocated picking Leonard in 2011 with anyone foreseeing him being this good.

Mike Prada's predraft analysis on Leonard, Singleton, Tristan Thompson and Markieff Morris

Kawhi Leonard

Two-point percentage: 47.8%. That's just dreadful. Some of it can be explained by increased usage (Leonard's rate went from 25.6% to 27.5% from his first to his second year), but no lottery pick should ever be that low without a good reason.
Wingspan/Reach: This is Leonard's biggest asset. His 7'3'' wingspan is freakish and his 8'10'' standing reach is very good too. He also has insanely big hands.
TS%: 51.2%. Again, that's dreadful for a top prospect. It was only 51.5% the year before, so this isn't simply a function of increased usage.
Defensive Rebound Rate: 26.6%, 13th in the country. That's phenomenal, but...
3PT%: 29.1%.
Conclusion: And therein lies the problem. Leonard will have to become a passable three-point shooter, because he is so dreadfully inefficient as a two-point shooter. To do that, he will have to play further away from the basket, which negates his rebounding advantage. This is why I'm down on Leonard as a prospect. He's a great workout guy and has great measurables, but he doesn't have enough scoring ability to be anything more than a self-check as a 4, and even if he develops a three-point shot and becomes a 3/D type, it takes away his biggest on-court asset (rebounding). There are a lot of interesting things to the Leonard package, but they just don't add up to me.

Mostly, I'm doing this to illustrate that taking Kawhi Leonard at 6 is a bad idea. The other three guys, right now, are projected behind him, and all are comparable or better than him in several key measurables. I'd consider putting all three ahead of Leonard on my draft board, to be honest. There's nothing wrong with trading back and nabbing one of these three guys instead if Ernie Grunfeld decides he wants a guy like Leonard.

Credit to the Spurs for seeing something in Leonard that they could develop. Credit to Leonard for putting in work to remake his jumper. But -- without data handy to back me up -- I believe there are precious few examples of players being as bad shooters as Leonard was in 2 years of college who became proficient shooters in the pro's. It's certainly strikes me as unusual.

Yep, Kawhi's offense is why I didn't like him as a prospect. I had the very same concerns Prada had. I have little confidence under Ernie & Witt that Leonard would have become the player he is today. I'm sure he would have worked hard on his game, but there's no doubt in my mind, the Spurs made an incredibly tough transition as easy as possible for Leonard by giving him a clear direction on what they wanted from him and giving him the tools to work on his game when they couldn't be there to help him (re: the lockout).

Had the Spurs drafted Vesely, he may have become a somewhat useful player... or they probably would have dumped him so quickly that he wouldn't have had a chance to show the rest of the league how bad he was.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

I liked Faried and Leonard that draft. I felt convinced about Faried but I was also high on Leonard because Leonard was a tremendous rebounder from a successful NCAA team.

[DCZards]

Yep, Kawhi's offense is why I didn't like him as a prospect. I had the very same concerns Prada had. I have little confidence under Ernie & Witt that Leonard would have become the player he is today. I'm sure he would have worked hard on his game, but there's no doubt in my mind, the Spurs made an incredibly tough transition as easy as possible for Leonard by giving him a clear direction on what they wanted from him and giving him the tools to work on his game when they couldn't be there to help him (re: the lockout).

Had the Spurs drafted Vesely, he may have become a somewhat useful player... or they probably would have dumped him so quickly that he wouldn't have had a chance to show the rest of the league how bad he was.

It also helped that Kawhi had Duncan, Parker and Manu as teammates and role models. I believe that's been a big factor in his development. It's made it possible for Leonard to ease into his role as the Spurs lead dog rather than being asked to do too much, too soon.

[dckingsfan]

Yep, Kawhi's offense is why I didn't like him as a prospect. I had the very same concerns Prada had. I have little confidence under Ernie & Witt that Leonard would have become the player he is today. I'm sure he would have worked hard on his game, but there's no doubt in my mind, the Spurs made an incredibly tough transition as easy as possible for Leonard by giving him a clear direction on what they wanted from him and giving him the tools to work on his game when they couldn't be there to help him (re: the lockout).

Had the Spurs drafted Vesely, he may have become a somewhat useful player... or they probably would have dumped him so quickly that he wouldn't have had a chance to show the rest of the league how bad he was.

It also helped that Kawhi had Duncan, Parker and Manu as teammates and role models. I believe that's been a big factor in his development. It's made it possible for Leonard to ease into his role as the Spurs lead dog rather than being asked to do too much, too soon.

Like Beal dominating the ball?

[DCZards]

^^^No....like a 19 year old Wall being asked to be the leader of a team whose core is McGee, Blatche and N. Young.

[montestewart]

I liked Faried and Leonard that draft. I felt convinced about Faried but I was also high on Leonard because Leonard was a tremendous rebounder from a successful NCAA team.

You weren't the only one, but your comments about these two helped persuade me that they were potential added value picks, along with Biyombo, Vucavic, Singleton (missed the boat on that one), Shumpert (I thought he might slip to the 2nd round). I mostly base my picks on what other people on the board say, so maybe if PIF had been around back then, I might have noticed Chandler Parsons more.

[queridiculo]

My personal preference for the sixth pick were Leonard and Vucevic. The sixth was probably too high for both, but given the dearth of talent in that draft it's not like there were any feasible trade down scenarios that would have netted Washington much more.

The Vesely pick was just awful, no hindsight required for that one.

[dckingsfan]

My personal preference for the sixth pick were Leonard and Vucevic. The sixth was probably too high for both, but given the dearth of talent in that draft it's not like there were any feasible trade down scenarios that would have netted Washington much more.

The Vesely pick was just awful, no hindsight required for that one.

#soEG

[hands11]

^^^No....like a 19 year old Wall being asked to be the leader of a team whose core is McGee, Blatche and N. Young.

Exactly.

And with Gil still on it.

But the Wizards did well to clean that up for Wall and get him his Beal running mate. And some bigs. And two wing shooters.

The team really went through a ton of change his first two years. Then year three he got injured.

Last year was the first sane year for him where he had a legit team and he was healthy. And even then they were short handed to start the year without a viable back up PG. But Wall did log 82 games.

Now its Beals turn to get his body right so he can log a full season. 73 games last year was better then the 56 the year before but he needs to get that up in the 80 range now.

And we all know Otto started off injured so hopefully next year we get at least 60 from him if not more.

So the young core should be getting stronger. But absolutely. Great talent and potential is much better served when it lands in a place where they can develop with solid coaching and vets to teach them. And if there is already a winning tradition, that helps a lot as well.

The thing people keep calling players development. Well that is how you do it. Mentoring from stars in a stable system with found defensive coaching and team ball sharing offense.

[closg00]

Poorly written, but posting because it is a slow news day.
http://m.bleacherreport.com/articles/21 ... rd/page/31



Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[TGW]

Poorly written, but posting because it is a slow news day.
http://m.bleacherreport.com/articles/21 ... rd/page/31



Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

That was poorly written and simplistic. They were also being very gracious with their "moderate" grade.

Grunfeld hasn't cancelled out the bad with good. He's had two good picks (which were top 3 picks) and a handful of average to horrible draft picks. What's even more sucky is that the Wizards will be a middling Eastern Conference team for the forseeable future, with picks ranging in the mid teens to early twenties...and we all know Grunfeld's track record with these picks have been an abysmal failure.

Hopefully, if Grunfeld is retained, Ted hires someone else to take care of scouting and the draft.

[payitforward]

hehehe - I have no such post. My comment is meant to convey the pitifully sadness of the overall moves that Ernie has made. Sadly on was on another board (since shutdown) - so I can't retrieve my previous posts.

But some of the ones that I had were - Trade Blatche, McGee and Young early for assets. Anything but Vesely. And trade down in this years draft to grab a couple of bigs.

Even with that, I wouldn't make a competent GM. If EG is bottom 5 GM, I would probably be a bottom 2 GM - but that really isn't saying much in defense of our GM.

I agree, he is a terrible GM, and even if we were to agree that he's only "bottom 5" -- rather than maybe the worst or 2d worst -- the key point is that he's kept his job for 11 years based on awful performance!

In 2011 I wanted either Leonard or Biyombo (because he was such an out of the blue story!) but decided in the end that Biyombo was too much of a risk and settled on Leonard -- but kind of with a sigh! I had no idea how good he'd be. So, although I was right, I wasn't prescient. At #18, however, there was no question -- Faried was the guy! Ditto at #34 it was Parsons for me.

Let's not confuse the fact that some of us advocated picking Leonard in 2011 with anyone foreseeing him being this good.

Mike Prada's predraft analysis on Leonard, Singleton, Tristan Thompson and Markieff Morris

Kawhi Leonard

Two-point percentage: 47.8%. That's just dreadful. Some of it can be explained by increased usage (Leonard's rate went from 25.6% to 27.5% from his first to his second year), but no lottery pick should ever be that low without a good reason.
Wingspan/Reach: This is Leonard's biggest asset. His 7'3'' wingspan is freakish and his 8'10'' standing reach is very good too. He also has insanely big hands.
TS%: 51.2%. Again, that's dreadful for a top prospect. It was only 51.5% the year before, so this isn't simply a function of increased usage.
Defensive Rebound Rate: 26.6%, 13th in the country. That's phenomenal, but...
3PT%: 29.1%.
Conclusion: And therein lies the problem. Leonard will have to become a passable three-point shooter, because he is so dreadfully inefficient as a two-point shooter. To do that, he will have to play further away from the basket, which negates his rebounding advantage. This is why I'm down on Leonard as a prospect. He's a great workout guy and has great measurables, but he doesn't have enough scoring ability to be anything more than a self-check as a 4, and even if he develops a three-point shot and becomes a 3/D type, it takes away his biggest on-court asset (rebounding). There are a lot of interesting things to the Leonard package, but they just don't add up to me.

Mostly, I'm doing this to illustrate that taking Kawhi Leonard at 6 is a bad idea. The other three guys, right now, are projected behind him, and all are comparable or better than him in several key measurables. I'd consider putting all three ahead of Leonard on my draft board, to be honest. There's nothing wrong with trading back and nabbing one of these three guys instead if Ernie Grunfeld decides he wants a guy like Leonard.

Credit to the Spurs for seeing something in Leonard that they could develop. Credit to Leonard for putting in work to remake his jumper. But -- without data handy to back me up -- I believe there are precious few examples of players being as bad shooters as Leonard was in 2 years of college who became proficient shooters in the pro's. It's certainly strikes me as unusual.

Thing is... in a million years I'd never have ranked Morris w/ Leonard as a prospect -- and certainly not Singleton! Nor Thompson (who unaccountably went before him!) -- tho admittedly, Prada talks about trading back to get one of them.

Above all, the kind of narrative analysis Prada does -- "to be better at X he'll be ruining his Y, etc." -- is never never never an accurate way to project a player.

Leonard put up terrific numbers both years in college and was well worth the #6 pick based on them. At #15... wow!