2024 Draft Thread - Part II

[closg00]

At this point I would like to move-on from Corey and find a replacement who is more athletic, and better defensively, there should be someone in this draft that fits the bill.

[SUPERBALLMAN]

Vukcevic, Bagley, Holmes
Sarr, Vezenkov, Baldwin
Avdija, Kispert, Flowers
Coulibaly, Duarte, Christie
Poole, Butler, Carrington

I think I have a beef with this. Coulibaly is going to be a PF, IMO. Vuk isn't really a starting C at this point either. And Kispert has shown he is better off at SG.

Thoughts?

That was just a way to list the roster showing depth of 3 each spot. I earlier listed Kispert as SG/SF for example. Most of these guys are movable between at least 2 positions.

The starting lineup might be something more like Sarr, Avdija, Coulibaly, Kispert, Poole for example. But there are numerous ways you can rotate these guys around.

But I don’t know about Bilal being a PF. I mean maybe for spurts but he to me is more of a wing, long and agile. Unless he really bulks up like Giannis, which I wouldn’t count on.

[dckingsfan]

Vukcevic, Bagley, Holmes
Sarr, Vezenkov, Baldwin
Avdija, Kispert, Flowers
Coulibaly, Duarte, Christie
Poole, Butler, Carrington

I think I have a beef with this. Coulibaly is going to be a PF, IMO. Vuk isn't really a starting C at this point either. And Kispert has shown he is better off at SG.

Thoughts?

That was just a way to list the roster showing depth of 3 each spot. I earlier listed Kispert as SG/SF for example. Most of these guys are movable between at least 2 positions.

The starting lineup might be something more like Sarr, Avdija, Coulibaly, Kispert, Poole for example. But there are numerous ways you can rotate these guys around.

But I don’t know about Bilal being a PF. I mean maybe for spurts but he to me is more of a wing, long and agile. Unless he really bulks up like Giannis, which I wouldn’t count on.

I most certainly think he is going to bulk up and be quite a bit bigger than Deni. I see those two as the forwards unless we really hit in in '25. Not this year but certainly in the future. Give me a rim protector behind those two that can anchor the D and that part looks pretty good.

[dckingsfan]

At this point I would like to move-on from Corey and find a replacement who is more athletic, and better defensively, there should be someone in this draft that fits the bill.

His expiring contract should be attractive at the trade deadline I would think.

I would like other opinions (as well as yours) on if we should keep him on the roster going forward though.

[The Consiglieri]

Edey scored a pretty fair amount in regular time too, particularly at the beginning of the game. He definitely feasted on UConn's backups a bit in the second half though. I think Clingan played him pretty well but had too many situations where he allowed Edey to seal him off deep in the paint and that allowed Edey to get some easy buckets. Some simply impressive hooks in there too where I think Clingan defended him well but still gave up the points.

Scored the majority of his points at the beginning of the game when Clingan was trying to avoid early foul trouble, and at the end of the game in garbage time on wide open dunks that UConn was obviously content to give up with a 20 point lead.

First 8 minutes: 11 points 5-7 shooting
Next 23 minutes: 9 points on 3-10 shooting
Final 9 minutes: 17 points on 7-8 shooting

I already smashed this take by going game by game with his performances in every single NCAA tournament and every single game against an elite (ranked inside the top 5-20ish) team during the season. He killed it this year, period.

The idea that some 2nd 10, 3rd 10 dip is what matters, and not the thousand's of other minutes is patently absurd. I don't even want to draft him, but this is just straight up cherry picking nonsense. You don't like Edey, fine, neither do I (nor Clingan), but Edey carried Purdue to the final, did all the heavy lifting ALWAYS, and did it with the anvil that was the "choking dogs purdue" label. He did the business, PERIOD. Is he an NBA player woth much? Not to me. He seems like a classic, good to great college player, non-entity in the pros, just like I see Clingan, but worse so.

But picking out some middle 15 mins or whatever? Seriously. Just look at his season/NCAA tournament game log, and look at what his team asked him to do AND HE DID.

The argument your making here is a classic example of "I like this guy, I don't like that guy, I'm gonna start w/my premise and find some tiny window of evidence that backs it, and pretend that's what matters". Your way better than this bad take, I'm not 1/20th the basketball prospect analyst you are, but this take is weak sauce for you.

[NatP4]

Little research on the 107.9 defensive rating figure that was giving me pause on Sarr:

Perth ranked 7th out of 10 total NBL teams in team defense. Overall, poor defensive team. Sarr ranked 2nd on the roster in defensive rating, only behind Keanu Pinder, was a good defender relative to teammates.

Other notable defensive ratings from 1st round picks out of the NBL:

Giddey: 108.7
Lamelo: 113.8
Hampton: 111.3
Dieng: 111.8
Ferguson: 114.6

Don’t overthink it. Just take him if he’s there at 2.

[payitforward]

Do we want to pick at 2?
Or do we want to trade down?

If Sarr is there at 2, I think we'll take him.

But, what if Sarr goes to the Hawks?
In that case, do we want to trade down?

Well... I think we might well prefer to trade down instead of taking any of Rissacher or Castle or Topic. Not to say that 1 or more of them won't become outstanding NBA players. But, neither they nor Dillingham looks like he'll provide value we couldn't get further down. Sheppard maybe stands out a bit more.

But... tho I could be wrong... I sense an increasing focus on Clingan over the last weeks. More teams seeming to wish they had a shot at him.

& if that's so, if he's gathering steam, as it were, I wonder whether the fact will help make a trade down easier to arrange & more profitable -- bringing a return worth making a trade for. I hope so!

What do you think? Is there anything to this? Does Clingan's rising profile make it easier to profit from a trade down?

[Dat2U]

I like this dude Hoop Intellect, he does a really nice job breaking down all of the prospects.

Watch on YouTube

I like this guy’s short, rapid-fire analysis of players. Found it interesting that he has Holland and Dillingham at 2 & 3 respectively. Sarr at #1

Great minds think alike.

[dckingsfan]

Do we want to pick at 2?
Or do we want to trade down?

My 1/2 cent.

This is going to depend on if the FO has a player they really want. If not, this is the perfect draft to trade down.

Let's say they have 5, 6 or 7 players that they see as having the same ceilings & floors. Well then, heck yeah. But if they have 2 players with a significantly higher ceiling... doubt they trade.

And then you have the trading partners, one of them needs to have their guy rated significantly higher.

This is going to be fascinating - 13 days to go.

[Endless Loop]

My top 3 are Sheppard, Holland and Sarr, in that order.

Maybe I'm wrong on Sheppard. If so, it's probably because of my tennis bias. Both of my kids play tennis competitively, so I've had the good fortune to see quite a few top tennis players up close. I'll never forget, for instance, walking right by Nikolay Navydenko at the US Open when he was on his way to the Grandstand for a match. The guy was #5 in the world at the time. And he was tiny! He's listed at 5/10, but there's no way he was much over 5'7. And his frame was tiny. He looked like an accountant. And yet... (For that matter, Fed isn't anywhere near as impressive in person as Nadal- or a lot of other players.)

I remember also when the Redskins under Gibbs developed special aptitude tests for evaluating different types of player pre-draft. They had a special test for running backs that measured their "visual intelligence".

I like Sheppard because his "shooting intelligence" seems to be one of the highest in many years. His steal rate means that he processes and anticipates quickly. And his 42 inch vertical means he's not a slouch physically. IMO people focus on standing reach, etc, way too much, so much so that an inch here or there is the difference between top 10 and out of the lottery. Other physical attributes that are real but less easy to measure, matter just as much.

If I'm wrong, I'm blaming it on Davydenko!

[DCZards]

Do we want to pick at 2?
Or do we want to trade down?

My 1/2 cent.

This is going to depend on if the FO has a player they really want. If not, this is the perfect draft to trade down.

Let's say they have 5, 6 or 7 players that they see as having the same ceilings & floors. Well then, heck yeah. But if they have 2 players with a significantly higher ceiling... doubt they trade.

And then you have the trading partners, one of them needs to have their guy rated significantly higher.

This is going to be fascinating - 13 days to go.

Agree with this take. If there’s a player (or two) you really want at #2 then draft him. If not, consider a trading with a team that wants the second pick. I probably wouldn’t trade beyond the 5th or 6th pick though.

[dckingsfan]

Do we want to pick at 2?
Or do we want to trade down?

My 1/2 cent.

This is going to depend on if the FO has a player they really want. If not, this is the perfect draft to trade down.

Let's say they have 5, 6 or 7 players that they see as having the same ceilings & floors. Well then, heck yeah. But if they have 2 players with a significantly higher ceiling... doubt they trade.

And then you have the trading partners, one of them needs to have their guy rated significantly higher.

This is going to be fascinating - 13 days to go.

Agree with this take. If there’s a player (or two) you really want at #2 then draft him. If not, consider a trade a team with a team that wants the second pick. I probably wouldn’t trade beyond the 5th or 6th pick though.

Yep. But I guess that would depend on the FO list as well. Maybe they think their guy is going to go 7 and then trade with Portland (for example).

[payitforward]

This regime clearly believes in Poole and the only way to make it work with him is to protect him defensively and free him up so he has more off-ball opportunities off movement. Stephon Castle is the perfect player to do so. Let Coulibaly keep developing into a 3 and D Klay/Mikal at SF. Let Avdija have his sets as the offensive initiator and also playing off-ball as he's earned it and he starts at PF.

Now here's where the fun begins. You send Kuzma and #25 to CLE for Allen and #20. This addresses huge needs for both teams as they can't run it back with Allen and Mobley and Kuzma shouldn't be getting minutes on a rebuilding team over Avdija and Vukcevic. With the #20 pick you draft Dadiet to give Coulibaly a french buddy.

Seriously, is this not a potentially fun team to look forward to? And let's say none of these players develops. Well, now you've got a high pick in a loaded draft! But honestly, I think if the young guys get a little better and Castle is the real deal, you could be flirting with a play-in.

Castle
Poole-Kispert
Coulibaly-Dadiet
Avdija-Vukcevic
Allen-Bagley

i don't know whether they "believe in" Poole, but it's true that we're stuck with him for the moment. Anything that allows him to regain his form of '21-22 would help the team & also make him tradable.

I'm a big fan of Jarrett Allen, but I doubt there'd be much support for acquiring as he enters his 8th season. Plus, I don't think we want to get anywhere near the play-in given the general optimism about likely high picks in next yeara's draft (not that I actually think we could improve that radically in any case).

All that said, you've come up with some very imaginative ideas! Stay around & stay at it!

[payitforward]

I like this dude Hoop Intellect, he does a really nice job breaking down all of the prospects.

Watch on YouTube

I like this guy’s short, rapid-fire analysis of players. Found it interesting that he has Holland and Dillingham at 2 & 3 respectively. Sarr at #1

Great minds think alike.

Well, yeah, Dat. But, if "great" minds do, well... so do....

[The Consiglieri]

Btw, in his analysis for the 2022 draft, Kevin describes Johnny Davis as an "impressive looking prospect." He's 10 spots above Jalen Duren in Kevin's ranking.

Andrew Nembhard, on the other hand, you might want to "select in the latter part of the second round or pursue as undrafted," while Kennedy Chandler is his 15th highest ranking prospect, & Vince Williams (Memphis' starting pg while Ja was out) was on "don't bother" list.

To be fair ... no one or no stat module had Johnny Davis being this bad especially considering his character & work ethic coming in. He's just a complete flame out.

Kinda one of the reasons why I give a half mulligan. This board was spot on in hating him, but he was consensus in that, <trying to remember> 9-12 area in every mock I saw, scout based, and not scout based.

He's just a mega bust, they happen. We shouldn't have drafted him, as anyone on this board seemed to think and we're right to think, but him being this bad, this totally unplayable is a tremendous outlier result, and in it's own way, kind of doubled the pain of the stupid total mishandling of the reboot, and trade of Beal that should have happened earlier. Botching the pick, the contract, and the asset, so we tanked in the wrong season ('23-'24 instead of '22-'23) insured we had no locked in assets to start our rebuild with other than hopes that Deni would hit (and he did), and that we could get value from a non-tanking '22-'23 (which we did). But man, getting NOTHING out of the miserable '21-'22 season was just well and truly awful. Not even an asset to flip. Just brutal. At least it helps the tank though, blowing that pick made our ceiling this past year, and next fundamentally lower than it could have been if we hadn't blown it, but geeze was it bad, especially coming after meh's and misses in every draft from '18-'22 other than Deni' in '20.

[The Consiglieri]

In fairness, Kevin did a later run on the 2020 draft, which isn't quite as insanely bad: https://www.bulletsforever.com/2020/11/18/21571471/wizards-2020-nba-draft-according-to-yoda

Don't get me wrong, however: it's still just awful!

Even here, for example, Tyrese Maxey, Desmond Bane, Cole Anthony & Jaden McDaniels all get DO NOT DRAFT grades.

OTOH, Nate Hinton is the 6th best prospect in the entire draft class, while Malachi Flynn is the 7th best. Waaay better than the lowly Immanuel Quickley all the way down at 32.

Naturally, Hinton & Flynn are both better draft choices than Deni Avdija! But, hey, that's ok, b/c they're also better than Anthony Edwards.

Daniel Otoru ("a lot to like here..."), while not as good as Vernon Carey Jr., is of course much better than... oh forget it.

Anthony Edwards is a case study in why stats based analysis does not always work. A guy who for all accounts and purposes ... treated NCAA games as extended practice. Who's effort and focus clearly came and went his one season at Georgia. Multiple stories of him not learning plays ... but of course he gets to league and suddenly the work ethic and leadership are top notch.

I don't know how you can know how a guy like that will turn out without those in person interviews and background checks.

I'm pretty sure I had him solidly in the teens based on what he did in college despite recognizing he was one of the best athletes at the SG I had seen at the time.

The draft always has a good lesson to teach every single year.

But what's the lesson there? We all know what's going on between the ears is critical, but there's only so much you can know, and so much you can learn about how someone handles adversity, how much their grit and leadership matters. Hell, I just heard a podcast praise the WFT/Commanders '24 class for the captain heavy supply of prospects they just drafted and how critical that is, but we also had "captain heavy" classes in prior years that did ---- all.

The biggest problem is kind of like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Invasion of Iraq. The BIG lesson of 1962 (and hell, the Bay of Pigs too) was don't listen and simply do what the Generals tell you, but the big take away from the invasion of Iraq 41 years later was to better respect the insights of your generals (who warned against an invasion, and especially a Diet/Discount Invasion on the cheap)....When it comes to these classes and these players, each player and each draft is its own lesson on approaches and insights that are sometimes critically important, and will direct you the right way, and other times when they'll direct you the wrong way. Sometimes leadership and captainship matters, sometimes it's irrelevant, sometimes athleticism matters, sometimes it isn't as important, sometimes grit is everything, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's Kawhi's got a broken shot, don't draft him, and you're wrong and lost out on a generational talent, and then a year later it's MKG's got a broken shot, learn from Kawhi, and you end up with a bust with a broken shot.....

It just kind of feels like there is no perfect or even very good way to do this, and I've come to thinking of it as analogous to drafting QB's in the NFL. The NFL has figured out the position enough to give you a template of warning signs (and Jayden Daniels checked nearly every one of those boxes) for QB prospects, but has not put together any kind of template for actually hitting. The best you can do is basically look at profiles and compare how many warning signs there are, and maybe eschew prospects because of them (that's why long term, I like Maye better than Daniels, even though Daniels should probably look better in the short term, I hope anyway at the very least)...Feels like in the NBA it's kind of like that: You've got key production boxes you need checked, athleticism you need checked, measurements you need checked, and then interviews and background checks to box check off the field concerns and mental make up work ups....and then you just, well, pray, cross your fingers, or both.....

[The Consiglieri]

Regarding discussion about Poole and Vuk…

Poole needs the ball in his hands and he needs to play with plus defenders. If he’s part of our future he’s an on ball PG

Vuk’s only path forward is at center. His foot speed doesn’t allow him to defend on the perimeter. There’s hope he can get stronger and become a quality rebounder/drop coverage guy

f

He's not, he was a roll of the dice on upside potential, with the downside being he was salary to eat. Looks like the latter. No sane team would make any tanking season draft decisions based on his presence on the roster. It's clinically insane.

[payitforward]

Btw, in his analysis for the 2022 draft, Kevin describes Johnny Davis as an "impressive looking prospect." He's 10 spots above Jalen Duren in Kevin's ranking.

Andrew Nembhard, on the other hand, you might want to "select in the latter part of the second round or pursue as undrafted," while Kennedy Chandler is his 15th highest ranking prospect, & Vince Williams (Memphis' starting pg while Ja was out) was on "don't bother" list.

To be fair ... no one or no stat module had Johnny Davis being this bad especially considering his character & work ethic coming in. He's just a complete flame out.

Kinda one of the reasons why I give a half mulligan. This board was spot on in hating him, but he was consensus in that, <trying to remember> 9-12 area in every mock I saw, scout based, and not scout based.

He's just a mega bust, they happen. We shouldn't have drafted him, as anyone on this board seemed to think and we're right to think, but him being this bad, this totally unplayable is a tremendous outlier result, and in it's own way, kind of doubled the pain of the stupid total mishandling of the reboot, and trade of Beal that should have happened earlier. Botching the pick, the contract, and the asset, so we tanked in the wrong season ('23-'24 instead of '22-'23) insured we had no locked in assets to start our rebuild with other than hopes that Deni would hit (and he did), and that we could get value from a non-tanking '22-'23 (which we did). But man, getting NOTHING out of the miserable '21-'22 season was just well and truly awful. Not even an asset to flip. Just brutal. At least it helps the tank though, blowing that pick made our ceiling this past year, and next fundamentally lower than it could have been if we hadn't blown it, but geeze was it bad, especially coming after meh's and misses in every draft from '18-'22 other than Deni' in '20.

Agree with every word of the above.

The only thing I'll add is that, one way or another, we really needed to reboot the FO. No matter how much I wanted Tommy to succeed, he had simply screwed up too many drafts for the team ever to get anywhere with him at the head.

Since his disastrous decision to draft Johnny Davis was a big part of what caused him to be fired (the other part, presumably, being the idiotic contract he gave Brad), at least it had some kind of positive result.

[nate33]

This regime clearly believes in Poole and the only way to make it work with him is to protect him defensively and free him up so he has more off-ball opportunities off movement. Stephon Castle is the perfect player to do so. Let Coulibaly keep developing into a 3 and D Klay/Mikal at SF. Let Avdija have his sets as the offensive initiator and also playing off-ball as he's earned it and he starts at PF.

Now here's where the fun begins. You send Kuzma and #25 to CLE for Allen and #20. This addresses huge needs for both teams as they can't run it back with Allen and Mobley and Kuzma shouldn't be getting minutes on a rebuilding team over Avdija and Vukcevic. With the #20 pick you draft Dadiet to give Coulibaly a french buddy.

Seriously, is this not a potentially fun team to look forward to? And let's say none of these players develops. Well, now you've got a high pick in a loaded draft! But honestly, I think if the young guys get a little better and Castle is the real deal, you could be flirting with a play-in.

Castle
Poole-Kispert
Coulibaly-Dadiet
Avdija-Vukcevic
Allen-Bagley

You seem to have the mistaken impression that the Wizards are trying to win next year.

Next year is another tank year because next year's draft class has some actual star-caliber prospects. The last thing the Wizards need to do is trade for a center in his prime. The Wizards need to tank and accumulate a lot more young talent before making "win-now" trades and free agency acquisitions. They won 15 games last season.

[closg00]

I missed that Risacher is supposedly an excellent defender, hence the discussion of him going 1st, CBS discusses it here.

Watch on YouTube