daleface wrote:Scott Carefoot wrote:
If this was actually true, then the seven GMs who passed on him after Davis went first are all morons. Are you going to tell me that all seven of those GMs are morons? You'd be a better GM than all of them?
It was not obvious that he would be an impact player.
Well you couldn't be any worse than them, I mean they're the GM's of the worst teams in the NBA. Teams that have been either bottom dwellers or mediocre teams for years (excluding maybe Portland). These GMs haven't been doing a great job so....
Well most people didn't think Drummond was going to be an impact player right away but most knew his potential could be an impact player and more further down the road.
Fact is though we don't know what goes through these GM's minds. Are they drafting out of need, recommendation from their scouting staff, going by stats, etc. Whatever the case is, some of them made a mistake in not picking him.
If you actually watched UCONN, you could see that the team was an utter mess with an absentee coach and idiotic Kemba-wannabe PG in Napier, who abandoned his chip game for a lousy Kemba impression, and what Drummond could take to the next level. Advanced stats did exist which supported him. Nobody could score on him in the post.
Some GMs are just too close to the situation and so fearful of repeating past mistakes to see what they're looking at. Some civilians put up better draft rankings than the draft results every year. It's not GMs never knowing Drummond would be special, it's them kicking themselves because they DID know better until they over-thought things.
Every year, bad GMs get caught up in the herd and draft the past. It was so easy to assume that a big guy would not work out and believe that guards are the wave of the future, so Drummond got passed on. GMs still haven't learned the no-position tweener lesson yet, that they dominate a different game in college but usually don't matter on the NBA, but at least Robinson didn't go #2 as he would have in years past. You can bet that for the next few years, any tweener slips and athletic bigs go higher. Until, of course, a couple bigs bust again and a tweener drafted later provides good value.
Jordan could point to MKG's role in their chip and say, 'see'? Beal, Waiters, Lillard represented the perimeter revolution. Lillard was a home run, but looking back, do they take Drummond? They had a franchise guy in LmA and Lillard was ready, so I can't blame them. Petrie could always say point to the college dominance of T-Rob and not take any blame from the public- and in the Kings' obviously tenuous position, he couldn't afford a project. GSW thought they were a SF away, assuming Bogut came back on time, and Barnes was supposed to be ready. Physically, he was, and he exploited the arcane pre-draft combine exercises- also, he was a former prodigy who could be sold as a slippee who filled a need.
Bryan Colangelo was the first guy to make a true WTF mistake. We had Jonas, a guy who had never played a game? Well, we also had Demar, a guy who was (correctly) thought to be part of the plan no matter what. Drummond and Jonas would have at least as good of a chance of effectively playing together as Ross and Demar, and Drummond/Jonas would always have a higher trade value. Waaaay higher. Drummond would have been given chance after chance if he stunk, now he's untouchable. Jonas is a fine prospect who could net a big haul via trade.
Nash? Please. Fields was part of the stupid $66M Nash plan, to sign the same length of contract, and Ross was/is a twig, nowhere near ready for big minutes as he claimed, and BC would be drafting a bench shooter over Drummond, who was physically ready and looked to be able to contribute on defense sooner rather than later. Ridiculous. Bryan Colangelo had no excuse for making such a, yes, obvious mistake. In
ruling out Drummond, not just passing on him, he followed the herd and poor evaluators, on his payroll, like a terrible GM. It wasn't even up in the air, it was between Ross and Rivers, a bad basketball player. Stefanski gets a cookie for not choosing the non-player.
GTFO, Colangelo.