RealGM

pineappleheadindc wrote:.
I predict the Wizards get lucky and draw the #3 pick in the lottery.

Ted, believing that this is a sign from God, extends Ernie Grunfeld and Randy Wittman for five addtional years before the draft is even conducted.

Then, in a draft-day move, Ernie trades away our #1 for Marcus Morris and "cash considerations".

FAH1223 wrote:#1 pick and we draft a bust. Calling it. #FireGrunfeld

RussellandFlow wrote:Considering many now have Ingram as the #1 pick not seeing what the issue is taking him over Simmons who is without a position, is a poor defender who cannot shoot and has a questionable work ethic. The true Ernie move would be passing on both of those guys for Dragan Bender.

Chad Ford: Not really, and I spoke with a number of general managers for teams projected to be in the lottery.

I chose GMs instead of scouts because in most cases the GM is the final decision-maker. Most GMs by now have a very good handle on the top prospects.

Most of them acknowledged that they had concerns about Simmons. They had a lot of questions. He is no longer the lock that he was in say, November or December.

But I couldn't get any of them to go so far as to say that they have replaced Simmons as the No. 1 player on the board. The closest I got? "Too early to tell" from one GM, and "Hung jury inside our group" from another.

A couple were adamant that Simmons was the only player in this draft who was worthy of the No. 1 pick.

"Sure, I've been disappointed," one said. "We have some concerns about him. But if it's not Simmons, who is it? I don't feel like there's a strong No. 2 option in this draft. There's no obvious guy that is clearly ahead of him."

So maybe that's a question we should tackle, Kevin. If Simmons were not the No. 1 pick, who would be? What do the numbers say?

Pelton: It's probably Ingram, but I don't see him as a No. 1-caliber prospect. In fact, only once in the past nine drafts would he qualify as the second-best prospect, according to my projections. (That would be in 2012, when there was a huge drop-off after Anthony Davis.)

In terms of my statistical projections, Ingram is not far ahead of Jamal Murray.

Some of the discrepancy may be that I'm putting a lot less stock in Ingram's 41.3 percent 3-point shooting than many scouts. As we've discussed, 179 attempts just doesn't tell us that much about Ingram's ability to shoot the NBA 3. Furthermore, his sub-70 percent free throw shooting is worrisome given that college foul shooting tends to predict NBA 3-point shooting about as well as college 3-point shooting.

Ironically, in this case I'm paying less attention to the numbers because of the tendency of 3-point field goal percentage to be a bit random.