J-Ves wrote:The Consiglieri wrote:Dat2U wrote:
Webber would be a 5 in today's game. Howard who masqueraded as a 3 would be a 4 and shooting 3s.
The PF position as we knew it doesn't exist anymore. Yestersday's 4s are today's 5s. Yesterday's 3s are today's 4s. A guy who's a throwback 4 is probably in the NBL or similar foreign league nowadays.
Queen is a 5 in this era. I don't think he's a terrible defender like Okafor was but he has extended moments where he's not fully engaged defensively. It's sorta like Jokic. At times he can look invested, moves well for his size and can be in the right place at the right time, other times he's a day late and a dollar short. With Jokic, the greatest offensive center in history, Denver still struggles to contend when he's not exerting extreme effort defensively. He can put up 30 & 20 with 10 assists and they still lose because he is not moving is feet on defense leading to the team defense breaking down every rime there are multiple passes leading to either a wide open layup or wide open 3.
This is my consternation with Queen. He could be all NBA level good offensively but based on his defensive responsibilities, he has to be just as good defensively for the offensive impact to be fully valued. Having an elite defensive PF next to him helps, but long term success is still dependent on high level defensive quarterbacking from the C position.
I know you've already spoken to it, but it doubles my interest. What guys around 1-10 or 1-15, really make sense for this FO's interest and that prerogative:
Length, athleticism, youth, takes defense seriously, BBIQ? What players fit these tags beyond Flagg.
I’d like to push back on the athleticism take. Of their 5 draft picks Bilal is a uber athlete, Sarr is a decent athlete, Bub is a poor athlete, and Kyshawn and Vuk are abysmal athletes. Overall athleticism is something our FO is not too high on relative to other aspects like length, youth, and varied offensive skillsets
Does this tell us that they transition to other priorities the farther down in slotting the pick falls? Is it merely a coincidence that their lowest picks have all been lesser athletes? Are they just going after positional size/length etc?
Interesting question. I actually do think Sarr is a good athlete, but I also guess it depends upon which part of his game your looking at, in transition he plays like a Guard, with pace, and aggression, he's fast and smooth in a way I simply don't associate with most 7 footers. So from that perspective, i do see him as an explosive athlete, but in other areas, honestly I have no idea. Not sure.
I feel like Bilal and Sarr are both legit athletes, particularly Bilal, Bub and the others are middling and worse basically.
So what does that tell us? Is the sample size too low to be meaningful, or is the targeting of guys with very specific traits a "tell" so to speak?
Not sure.
I do know, for me anyway, I have no interest in role players, and floor guys with picks. To me, those guys come cheap and are easy to find. I view picks as an opportunity to go fishing for guys with high end potential, it's where I want to take my big swings, and when you add two critical factors about '26:
#1 '26 is top heavy with mega stud prospects (3 for now, maybe 4, we'll see how it plays out, supposedly the Euro Contingent sucks)
#2 Our pick is top 8 protected, to ensure we own the pick 100%, with no risk whatsoever of loss, we have to be bottom 4 again, it would be unusually bad luck to lose the pick at slot 5 and have our pick drop below 8 (less than 1%), but 7th worst and the odds change from about 1 in 50, to 1 in 30ish, to nearly 1 in 9 at slot 7. Yikes. Drafting guys that either could stay in Europe, or be raw enough to not be super impactful next year, would assist in locking in that top 8 pick next year (preferably top 3, of course).
Granted I don't think there's a huge risk of us falling out of the top 3 or 4 next year, this roster is still easily the worst performing in the league by a number of metrics. Something as simple as SRS over at basketball reference puts us at -11.99, the next worst teams are Charlotte at -8.58, and then Utah at -8.55, then you get a separate tier with New Orleans at -7.94, and then a pair of -6 squads before another tier drop until -4 (Toronto) and then some -2 squads.
This illustrates that basically Utah was just more effective at sucking this year down the stretch, and has simply tanked better despite having a clearly better team, it's also suggestive that there's essentially a core group, pre-'25 draft, of 4 teams far worse than any other in the league, for now. There is some risk: Phoenix could blow up their roster, so could Milwaukee, so could Philly etc.
But for my interests, when it comes to our Memphis first (if it holds at a first), I'm prioritizing the tank, and aiming for ceiling, not role players, not floors. The team otoh? Not quite sure they are motivated the same way, we'll probably know better after this draft, otoh, with '26 such a big deal, it wouldn't surprise me if they just roll the dice on upside, but it will be interesting to see. Even w/a guy like Bub or George, you could see the upside in both picks, now you see the acquisitions of AJ, and Colby, and if you add them to the other selections, it does feel like they're looking for particular things:
AJ
Colby
Bub
Kyshawn
Vukcevic
What do we think of these guys in terms of commonalities? Seems like, ideal size and length for their positions, athleticism is a part of it sometimes but not others, some sort of go to skill or off the charts piece: AJ's is size/length/athleticism, Bub's is size, and I'm guessing his 3 and his ball security, Kyshawn is his shooting and his size/length, Vukcevic is his offensive potential I'm guessing?
What is interesting, at least to me, is its hard to see a pattern, AJ is the uber athlete, Colby sounds like just a really good all around prospect, Bub is a size/length/smarts/shooting/BBIQ etc guy, Ky is funnily a good shooter like Bub, good size like Bub, but none of the ball secure mega BBIQ traits Bub seems to have. So what are they doing here? What are they after? They clearly loved Bub so much, they were willing to trade Deni to get a package that included the pick they needed for him....what was George about?
Looking at all of this, I tend to think the only thing we can for sure bet on is offensive skill set (all of these guys had an offensive selling point) and as others have mentioned, great length/size for their position.
Last Notes:
Age at draft:
Colby Jones: 21.1
T. Vukcevic:20.3
Bub: 18.11
Bilal: 18.11
Alex Sarr: 19.2
AJ Johnson:19.6
Ky George: 20.5
Only thing you can tell from this, is to this point, they haven't come close to drafting or trading for a prospect older than a 21, or 22 or 23 year old prospect other than the trade for Colby and other pieces. All of these guys (except Colby) have ranged from age 18 when drafted to at the very oldest, 20.
Do I think we can thus scratch out, 21-24 year old prospects? No, there's just what, 7 guys I'm looking at above in 2 draft classes, but I do think the fact that 4 of the 7 were 18 or 19, and the guys drafted 20th or later, other than AJ Johnson, were all the oldest prospects in the cohort, probably matters.
So, it may be worth focusing a bit more on 18-20 year old prospects, then on older dudes. Only Colby Jones was older than 20 when drafted, and of course of the guys we drafted ourselves, the oldest was George, still about 6 months away from his 21st birthday when acquired.
Of course there's a possibility that we open up older prospects to consideration as we get closer to the end of the rebuild attempt (I have always guessed they'd stop tanking either after the '26 or '27 class, at this point, I think we probably stop actively tanking by fall '26, but I expect us to be sub 35 wins that season too, unless we land back to back top 2 picks in the next two classes).
