HotelVitale wrote:BBallFreak wrote:HotelVitale wrote: Do you really think it's because of some kind of special formula or secret the Heat have for drafting that other teams don't? Or that other teams don't spend massive amounts of resources and time into developing their picks? This isn't a knock at all on the Heat, who seem like one of the best run teams in the league. It's just that being well run doesn't magically produce draft success, just means you're making slightly better bets than other teams (which again means that, like with most bets, it's still mostly up to unknowns). I think we all look a little naive and slow on these boards by constantly judging FO's based on the outcomes rather than talking about these things like they do, which is in terms of bets made based on potential and developing guys step by step in competent realistic ways.
If one team consistently does things better than a lot of other teams, it stands to reason that they're pretty good at it. No one is saying Miami has a special formula. What we're saying is that Miami seems to understand what it's doing as does it better than most.
My point was that's actually poor reasoning, and that the link between getting good results and being well run isn't that straightforward. Let's start with the opposite POV that scouts are all basically equal and the draft is luck, i.e. that the general scouting consensus on picks is reliable about who's the best prospect and it's all just fate who determines what happens after that. Imagine that each player was given a number based on upside and one based on likelihood of reaching it, and that most scouts generally agreed on that: Giannis had a 10 for upside but a 2 for confidence he would get there, so his total 12 was lower than say Trey Burke's 7+7. Scouts would be happy to tell you that they just couldn't know how good Giannis was beyond that, that all they could do was calculate that upside and that possibility of getting there. Being 'good' at drafting is really just luck then: drafting higher tends to get you better odds but it's not at all mathematically unusual for a 40% chance to beat a 55% one, and it's only a little less mathematically likely for it to win multiple times in a row--i.e. it's perfectly within the realm of probability that a team drafting in the late 1st has better draft outcomes than a team drafting in the lotto, and it has nothing to do with skill.
There's some decent reasons/evidence to follow that line of thought: a majority of players get picked roughly where they're mock drafted at, and it's quite rare that reaching for someone outside of that consensus succeeds. In other words, if some scouting staffs were genuinely much better than others, we'd see a lot more evidence of teams breaking with consensus to correctly identify steals and avoid busts, and we'd see a lot less evidence of those 'good' staffs missing out on steals or just very good picks that dropped past them. Giannis is an obvious example, and Paul George was seen as a risky pick but one everyone agreed was good to take outside the top-7 or so and wouldn't have gone much higher or fallen much further than a few picks, which was the same story for high upside guys that busted like McLemore or Exum (or a million raw athletic bigs). And the reaches way out of consensus we've seen--guys like Caboclo or Yabusele--don't tend to do better than the norm, suggesting that the consensus has it right. Hence picks like Bam and Herro and others picked about where the consensus pegged them aren't good picks because of draft skill, and any idiot could've just followed the draft board and put their names in--and looked like a genius if those bets came back winners 3 years in a row.
I think that's obviously too extreme, but to skip some steps my own view is that being a good drafter is about finding advantages that are WAY more subtle than just 'we draft good players because we're smart and know who will be good.' But I'll shut up for now about that.
But of course, you're missing three key points, here.
First, there is no universal draft board that you can just follow. That has to be developed. Most teams don't share there's with other teams. That's why scouts have jobs. As an example, most draft experts expected Bol Bol and KZ Okpala to be first round picks, and a lot expected them to land in the lottery.
Second, both Bam and Herro were considered reaches. Hell, if you could have seen the Heat board after both those players were drafted, you'd have thought neither player ever had the chance of playing an NBA game. People were screaming about Riley and how he needed to just retire already.
Finally, none of that takes into account the development program that Miami has clearly used to its advantage. Since Riley brought that system to Miami, the Heat have developed Isaac Austin, Bruce Bowen, Hassan Whiteside, Voshon Lenard, Udonis Haslem, etc., etc.. Now, Miami seems to be following it up with Derrick Jones Jr. and Kendrick Nunn, both players that other teams overlooked. I'm not saying no team is better at it than Miami, but very few are. And Riley's done this before. As was pointed out, Jon Starks and Anthony Mason were Riley developmental players, as well.
So no, not all scouting departments are created equal, not everyone follows the same draft board, and most teams aren't able to eschew draft picks and still acquire good young players. Miami's front office isn't perfect. Tyler Johnson's (a player who the Heat developed), James Johnson's, Dion Waiters', and in retrospect Hassan Whiteside's deal were not good moves. Riley got caught up in the second half of a season. That said, in his long career, that's one of the few blemishes...
