doclinkin wrote:NatP4 wrote:The weak 2013 class produced: Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cj McCollum, Giannis, KCP, Nerlens Noel, Alex Len, Steven Adams, Kelly Olynyk, Dennis Schroeder, Tony Snell, Tim Hardaway, Rudy Gobert, Dieng, Roberson, Muscala, Neto, Rob Covington, Seth Curry, Dedmon.
So. With the notable exception of the Freak (1st ballot HOF) and one-time all-star Gobert (arguably HOF as well) you ended up with a bunch of role-players and journeymen. I'd say that seems pretty weak compared to the better drafts.
Giannis breaks the curve of course. And any team would love to draft a 3xDPOY in Gobert. But those two took a while to grow into their success, with Giannis earning MIP in his 4th year, and Gobert not even reaching double digit scoring until year 4. No obvious standouts who produced big numbers early in their careers.
Fair to say compared to many drafts that one was ID'ed as weak for a reason. The stronger drafts have both a high hit rate of successful players, obvious all-stars coming in, or a few guys at the top who produce early in their careers and improve on that rate. You won't find a draft that had zero players. But in that above group only Giannis was the key player on a winning team with the team that drafted him. (Otto and KCP have rings as roleplayers, but only after they bounced around a bit).
There's a fundamental misunderstanding when some of us (definitely me) mention 2013 sucking, 2001, or 2020 or 2024 and you nail it down. You can build a winner in this league with Giannis, literally every single other player mentioned in Nat's list is not a first or second piece on a winner, period, and if you're trying to build a winner, you usually are only likely to be dipping into the top of the lottery 1-3 times (1 if your those lucky scumbag spurs), so on your trips to the lottery, Oladipo's mean ---- all. You have to have multiple top 15-20 or 25 players in the league and most of those guys are either found top 3ish, or purely blind luck, randomness like Giannis. It is damn hard to land them, and telling me the '13 class, or '00 or whatever was fine because it had 11 role players that were a grat 4th man on a 3rd place team in a conference is utterly meaningless. The list above is a list of guys who had careers in the league, but who actually mattered? Who actually influenced the direction of the league from '13? Giannis. Nobody else (unless your counting Gobert as the physical embodiment of the national understanding of the spread of covid).
Thats why I find this so silly. '13 was bad period. The top of the draft was a mix of total ---, and role players. The elite talent in the draft was largely blind randomness (Giannis) and a guy a lot of us felt slipped too far even at the time (Gobert) inbetween, yeah, you could get a good third or fourth guy like McCcollum or Oladipo the healthy version, but they weren't needle movers at all.
Good Drafts are made of guys like Doncic, Tatum, Wenbanyama, Edwards, Morant, Zion if he gave a ----, Anthony Davis, LeBron, Durant etc. Those guys are franchise moving talents. When somebody lists a bunch of complimentary guys like the above in '13, its silly. That's literally an example of exactly what a finished build needs, not a dumpster fire like ours. We've mastered the art of once a decade landing Rip Hamilton's like that, inbetween the piles of busts, and floor picks, but getting transformative talent? We've done that literally never in my time of watching the wizards and bullets (wall and beal are close, but they were at their peak, like 4th team NBA guys, never top 10-15 ever) other than via trade and that's what makes you a contender. Getting the Garnett, Jordan, Hakeem, Duncan, Robinson, Barkley, Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Durant and the newer iterations...The rest is just elements of the sauce of a champion.
There's no evidence the 2024 class has that guy at all, and if it does (which is definitely possible) nobody has any clue who he is, so somebody's gonna get him through blind luck, like Milwaukee got Giannis, not by genius team building. It can happen, the Niners got a QBR #1 guy in round 7, the Patriots found Brady in round 5, the Cowboys found Romo as an undrafted free agent. Exceptions exist, but they are acquired through a mix of blind luck, and scouting (with the emphasis on luck, as the team would have taken them round 1 up top, if they were as big a believer as they later like to pretend).