lilfishi22 wrote:Ghost of Kleine wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:I'd move down 15 and a future first. I wouldn't put all my eggs into this one draft basket. Especially next year when we probably won't have a good pick.
I understand your thought process man! But we have a lot of holes to fill throughout our roster, and we're still really low on talent and developmental assets that we could showcase to replenish our asset cache that's currently pretty empty.
Not only those considerations, but given our cap situation, and little to no control over the Beal outcome, and due to taking back equivalent salary from the KD trade, we need all the cost controlled young talent ( on 4 yr rookie scale contracts that we can get yo balance out our bigger salaries in Booker, Beal and now Green too.
Without any guarantees of being able to even move off of Allen and O'neale for much cheaper options, this premise is only exacerbated in importance.
This isn’t a particularly deep draft, and I’d rather potentially have a pick in the late lottery or mid-1st next season as well than trade down for 2 shots outside of the lotto this draft and hope we hit on two players when even landing one solid contributor is a gamble. Personally, I’ve always believed in drafting the BPA over drafting for need and if we weren’t already short on draft capital, I’d be more open to using picks to address specific gaps. But given how few picks we have, it doesn’t make sense to use them for holes. I mean, it's great if the BPA also happened to fit a need but I wouldn't preference a lesser talent because they happened to meet a short term need.
Looking at the bigger picture, I’d rather have a pick next year and address immediate needs with minimum contracts. Developmental capacity is also a factor. We already have #29 and two second-rounders. You can’t realistically bring in four or five rookies and expect to develop them all properly. I’d much prefer we draft no more than two players this year and try to trade down to secure an additional pick for next season.
To each their own I suppose for the best strategy to implement man!
Sure it's not as much of a deep draft due to so many players withdrawing, and the results of that pushing a plethora of lesser known one or 5wo trick ponies ( in early stage development) higher than they'd normally go).
But what there still is in this draft is outlier tier groupings of legitimate high end talent scattered sporadically at different stages throughout this draft! And when you consider exactly how many various holes and weaknesses we actually have throughout our roster at multiple positions, and exactly how many players we're either trading or not bringing back too.
And then consider our befo delicate cap situation, and having significantly less flexibility and cap resources than 80-90% of the other teams out there,
it just makes no logical sense to consolidate our picks into even less/fewer assets and cumupatively trade out of the draft for the option of low ceiling vet mins who've repeatedly underperformed (as established by the minimum status over years in the league), and also for an unknown commodity in the future, when we could already be setting a new foundation!
We need assets/ talent ( cost controlled)/ size/ positional versatility and an athletic youth injection now, not another year down the road man! We need to be starting to infuse our roster with young, hungry athletic talent, size, athleticism and physicality now!
Not a year from now. Because we need to quickly he trending in the right direction (with actual youth development already in progress around our core to mitigate the value exchange we'll be giving up for the 27' and 29' 1sts to Houston.
What we don't need is to be kicking the can down the road (on young, athletic talent that is cost controlled) another year for an unknown outcome that inhibits our competitive trajectory by another year of needing playing time and further development.
I of course understand the allure and appeal of a loaded 26' draft class man. But obviously we already added multiple 2nds in that draft and when you look at the logistics and climate of many current trades in the NBA under this very punitive CBA, it speaks to the benefit of cost control and cap flexibility.
Because clearly teams are fashing in on draft picks and big name players by sheer virtue of having cap flexibility to absorb contracts and are getting picks and impact players for doing so!
So honestly, it's not at all like we couldn't acquire draft picks for the 26' draft not only by virtue of the cap reduction and cost controlled roster balance that these prospects would afford us in balancing our books more.
But these prospects added now (because we're low key not seriously competing in the next two seasons), would have a chance to develop and showcase themselves into premium value as assets that we could then move for bigger value exchanges/ picks in that specific draft or future drafts.
Lastly, we desperately need an infusion of both! when it comes to young players and key cost controlled vets. But I'll tell you right now man, were in a very limited outcome scenario when it comes to competitively bidding/ attracting key free agents or even quality free agents, even suggested vet minimum options.
I mean can you honestly tell me even one rumor of a key free agent being linked to us. Because the other underlying / inherent value of draft pick prospects is in that you don't have to bid contractually or situationally for them.
As long as you do your due diligence to establish range and then also put yourselves in that pick range to select them, your odds of successful acquisition and 4 yrs of contractual control are greatly increased vs bidding in an open market scenario.
But most of all, as I've previously pointed out, we need legitimate size, athleticism youth injection, young, physical and hungry players now! Not another year from now. Our front office understands this " bird in hand" benefit and us trying to accommodate this expedited strategy, not push things out further and wait longer to transition gradually.
