Official 2013 Draft Thread - Part VI

[queridiculo]

There's pretty much zero chance that Cousins will get traded during the offseason with the ownership change. The best we can hope for is that he doesn't sing an extension and tests free agency next year.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

I don't know about that, queridiculo. Mike Malone is the new coach. He might want a clean slate. Cousins might be traded IMO.

[dobrojim]

I somehow don't see your(ccj) guy DMC and Wittman (also your guy) being a good fit.

[popper]

Good golly. I've read and enjoyed "War and Peace" and the "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" but I fail to understand why we need six paragraphs (for those that even use paragraphs) to justify our draft preferences. I love reading every post but let's not take ourselves too seriously. After all, it's a stupid basketball game (which I love) with no impact on the world at large. I'm thinking Zeller or Tolstoy with the 3rd.

[dobrojim]

as per popper's comment, let me simply say
the 4 guys I would consider taking with the 3rd pick
barring a trade offer that really blows me away are:

Noel
Porter
Zeller
Oladipo

[AFM]

popper doesn't fully understand what a message board is

[montestewart]

Good golly. I've read and enjoyed "War and Peace" and the "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" but I fail to understand why we need six paragraphs (for those that even use paragraphs) to justify our draft preferences. I love reading every post but let's not take ourselves too seriously. After all, it's a stupid basketball game (which I love) with no impact on the world at large. I'm thinking Zeller or Tolstoy with the 3rd.

Think of it more as a collaborative early draft of À la recherche du temps perdu, trying to determine just how much detail to give that which a reader might find not particularly important.

But is it really so unimportant in this super-connected world? First the Wizards draft Vesely, then North Korea gets the bomb.

[Zonkerbl]

Good golly. I've read and enjoyed "War and Peace" and the "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" but I fail to understand why we need six paragraphs (for those that even use paragraphs) to justify our draft preferences. I love reading every post but let's not take ourselves too seriously. After all, it's a stupid basketball game (which I love) with no impact on the world at large. I'm thinking Zeller or Tolstoy with the 3rd.

+gazillion

Let me add that I assume people who don't use paragraphs are just spewing unprocessed random garbage and I don't read any of it, ever.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

I don't know about that, queridiculo. Mike Malone is the new coach. He might want a clean slate. Cousins might be traded IMO.

I think it would be the opposite. Randy has the team, the veterans especially, and both Wall and Beal's respect. He's the type of coach who won't mince words with Cousins. I don't think he'd be scared of Boogie. I think DC and this particular coach would be the right environment to get the best from DMC.

Calipari is an in- your-face coach. He got to the Final Four with freshman Cousins. In a contract year for Wall, Wittman, and Cousins I would expect all three would do well.

The key would be this group of veterans held it together at 4-28. One player would not undermine anything.

[rockymac52]

I don't know about that, queridiculo. Mike Malone is the new coach. He might want a clean slate. Cousins might be traded IMO.

I think it would be the opposite. Randy has the team, the veterans especially, and both Wall and Beal's respect. He's the type of coach who won't mince words with Cousins. I don't think he'd be scared of Boogie. I think DC and this particular coach would be the right environment to get the best from DMC.

Calipari is an in- your-face coach. He got to the Final Four with freshman Cousins. In a contract year for Wall, Wittman, and Cousins I would expect all three would do well.

The key would be this group of veterans held it together at 4-28. One player would not undermine anything.

Not saying you're wrong about the bold sentence, but just found it interesting considering the Wizards essentially traded away Jordan Crawford for nothing in return a few months ago, for what we can only assume to be chemistry/locker room issues.

[truwizfan4evr]

I don't know about that, queridiculo. Mike Malone is the new coach. He might want a clean slate. Cousins might be traded IMO.

I think it would be the opposite. Randy has the team, the veterans especially, and both Wall and Beal's respect. He's the type of coach who won't mince words with Cousins. I don't think he'd be scared of Boogie. I think DC and this particular coach would be the right environment to get the best from DMC.

Calipari is an in- your-face coach. He got to the Final Four with freshman Cousins. In a contract year for Wall, Wittman, and Cousins I would expect all three would do well.

The key would be this group of veterans held it together at 4-28. One player would not undermine anything.

Not saying you're wrong about the bold sentence, but just found it interesting considering the Wizards essentially traded away Jordan Crawford for nothing in return a few months ago, for what we can only assume to be chemistry/locker room issues.

Good point!

[Deeptu McPullup]

Consig, you make it sound like the whole point of college basketball is to showcase star players offensively to pro scouts.

Indiana's ORTG was the 2nd best in the NCAA's with the starting lineup having an aggregate TS% north of .60%. The best three long ball shooters (Dipo, Hulls and Watford) shot a combined 10.4 3's a game at about .46%.

I don't have exact stats for Indiana's transition baskets, much less for those scored just by the starters, but they were an outlier in this category with excellent efficiency too:

Indiana likes to run. The Hoosiers get over half of their initial shots after defensive rebounds within the first ten seconds of a possession, and shoot just under a quarter of their initial attempts early in the possession after an opponent score.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-basketb ... bers-hoops

There were a total of 40.8 FGA from the starting lineup, so you've got 10.4 3PA's at absurd efficiency and maybe another 10 shots or so early in the shot clock before the defense is set (not counting the transition 3's, which we already tallied).

So, Indiana was getting excellent shots most of the time and Zeller played core role in all of it.

You seem to be suggesting that Zeller putting up volume shots in the halfcourt at the expense of team success would mean that he "developed his game" and 'd be a big boost to his draft stock. What Zeller did or didn't do can't be removed from his being on the second most efficient offense in the country.

I'm not arguing anything of the kind. All I'm arguing is that the step up in production and growth as a player, whether statistically, or in terms of technique didn't happen. What scouts wanted to see from Zeller didn't occur. Indeed he was considered the best prospect in the '13 draft a year ago not named Noel or Muhammad, and at the time some even had him as the #1 rated prospect. By the middle of the college season, scouts had given up on him as a potential elite prospect. He wasn't the only one to suffer this fate. Muhammad dropped from #2, to #7-#9 by March, Mitchell dropped from #7, to #22-2nd round by the end of the season, Steven Adams dropped from #7, to out of the top 20 entirely before the combine.

While your post is reasonable, I don't see how those two bolded sentences are compatible with one another or how the second sentence isn't at odds with what I laid out about Indiana's offensive efficiency and Zeller's role. Again, what would it have meant if Zeller had shown a "step up in production...statistically, or in terms of technique" and Indiana's offense gotten worse?

What he did has to be viewed in context with every shot he takes being measured against the other excellent options available in what is ultimately a zero sum game with a more or less fixed number of field goal attempts. Mind, I'm not saying Zeller is a perfect prospect without flaws or even that my take is so different from yours (as listed below), but rather am just going over his offense production and the "flatline" point. That's pretty much our point of disagreement.

On that, I don't believe that it's even a question as to whether or not Zeller could have put up increased scoring at lower efficiency if he'd been green lighted for two or more 17 footers and one floater a game, but they weren't as good of shots as Indiana was going to get from their other options. So really, Zeller is being punished in this analysis for being a team player who served as a catalyst of an excellent offense. "He should have been more go-to in the clutch when Indiana was stalled out" would be a reasonable refrain, but his production the rest of the time should be seen contextually.

Anyway, I'm not sure if you are quite recognizing how efficient the Indiana offense was:
http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/sch ... /2013.html

Indiana ORTG: 2nd
Michigan ORTG: 3rd
Kansas ORTG: 33rd
UCLA ORTG: 89th
UNLV ORTG: 128th
Georgetown ORTG: 158th

It's one thing to say "I want to see more varied offense out of Peter Prospect here" when they're on an team that has lots of room for improvement in scoring. But when they're on literally the second most efficient scoring team in the country? Now we're flirting with giving someone credit for being selfish and disruptive.

One other thing: I don't know if it's appropriate to take the impressions of professional scouts so seriously. Are they presumably the most qualified talent evaluators on the planet? Probably, but in an age where even the second pick in the draft is almost routinely blown, it's not like these guys have a success rate commensurate with experts in typical professions. A scout saying "this guy's gonna be good" isn't the same thing as a dentist saying "looks like you've got a cavity". You don't second guess a dentist with X-Rays in hand. It's not that the scouts are incompetent, it's just that it's a tough racket they're in.

On that note, Zeller's obviously going to be tasked with showing other facets of his game in workouts, but with his situation in particular, I wouldn't be cynical if he's viewed as more of a shooter or if there are "he showed us a lot of things he didn't show in games" reports coming out.

I fluctuate on Zeller myself, just like Otto, although more dramatically. The test scores make me happy, ditto the outstanding shooting #'s in workouts. In the past, guys that have ----'ed the bed shooting the ball in workouts have usually sucked at the next level (looking at you Singleton), killing it, even playing against a chair in a gym shows something in his game he didn't get to show at Indiana, and honestly, I've gone from not considering Cody worthy of drafting top 10, to a guy I'd prefer to draft if we couldn't get Noel, or Bennett, in a trade down. My understanding in watching Zeller, and digging into anything and everything draft about him since the winter of '11-'12 has been that what separated him from so many of the "big white stiff" labeled bigs throughout the past 25 years. Elite footwork, elite understanding of the game, outstanding decision maker, good to great hands, great passer, great jump shot, outstanding speed for a big, athletic. I didn't see so much of the athleticism with Indiana, but I did see just about everything else, and moving him out to the #4 could really provide us with an answer at that position for the forseeable future, as others have said, half-erasing the mistake that was Vesely.

I think he may have a future in this league as something other than a bench big, but there's not a chance in hell I'd take him at #3, and I probably wouldn't take him ahead of Len. If we could move down to #7-#9 or so and get a '14 #1 somewhat protected for it and maybe a 2nd rounder and some other booty I'd consider it, especially if we weren't drafting Bennett, and Porter and Noel were gone. That would be preferable to me to Len at #3, which is what I fear we might do at #3 if we can't get Porter (I believe our board is probably #1 Noel #2 Porter #3 Len or Bennett, this team has done a bad job of keeping secrets in house, they leak like the West Wing on steroids).

Yeah, my point above wasn't to say we should take Zeller with the 3rd pick and I'm comfortable with the rationale here aside from getting a bad vibe on Bennet who I view as a major project. I'm jittery that his tools - even offensively - might well be undone by poor awareness, effort and endurance. That discussion is basically religion by now and I'm the first to admit I could be wrong there, though unfortunately, there isn't much UNLV game film online. Philosophically, I prefer the high risk swing too, but I'm just feeling very "Brandon Bass with ball skills" here.

I would have to put Zeller over Len as a skill over size thing too, but otherwise I'm pretty well on board with all this.

However, as an aside, I would add that every single team picking from 7-11 this year is ineligible to trade their 2014 1st rounder as they've already got protected picks that won't be conferred out (well, Detroit's 2014 pick probably will make it to Charlotte). So, a trade back south of the seventh pick is going to need to find sweetener other than a 2014 pick.

Uh, oh, looks like this turned into a rather long post....

Spoiler:

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news."

[DANNYLANDOVER]

Good golly. I've read and enjoyed "War and Peace" and the "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" but I fail to understand why we need six paragraphs (for those that even use paragraphs) to justify our draft preferences. I love reading every post but let's not take ourselves too seriously. After all, it's a stupid basketball game (which I love) with no impact on the world at large. I'm thinking Zeller or Tolstoy with the 3rd.

+1
haha I definitely skip those essays...

[hands11]

No, no, no. There's one poster here that I know of that would have done that, but most of us would never have been so insane. I always had Wall #1 in that class, w/Cousins and Favors a close 2nd (Cousins actually might have been a better prospect, but his hideous mental make up made him seem a lock to be a guy who'd play on five or six teams in his career because he'd be constantly wearing out his welcome, he's the penultimate one contract guy, while Favors offered a tantalizing combo of defense, rebounding and athleticism), but still at best 2nd. There certainly were people that were worried about Wall, me among them (I posted the grantland write up on him 18 months ago), but I never felt, and I don't think most felt, he'd ever ben given the proper situation. His entire career w/the Boulez, in my view, and as I argued repeatedly last year and previous to that, was basically him being saddled with dumb (Young), dumber (McGee), and dumbest (Baltche), and the biggest collection of bricklayers and hacks the NBA had ever seen assembled this side of the Bobcats throughout his first two seasons.

Mea culpas when due, I would have entertained Greg Monroe trades up until January.

Hell, I'd pull the trigger on #3 + Nene + filler for Monroe + 8 trades right now. I really liked Monroe going into the draft and even moreso now.

Great job calling Monroe. He was super underrated in that draft. I missed on him and Hibbert to some extent (I had them rated, but never in a million years thought they'd be as good as they were).

Yeah, reading the old threads is interesting. As many hits as busts predictions.

Richard Hendrix ?

In the same post someone will talk about Serge Ibaka and how good he could be and then also say they want Joe Alexander

Bill Walker was getting some love.

Its like reading your horoscope. There is enough there to pick out as home runs if you ignore some stuff.

A professional GM has to do all of that on the record. There are no, oh I didn't really mean that post, only pay attention to this one. And then their moves have to play in real games with other players. And those teams have records that then determine the next draft position.

It is a little different with you are doing all this stuff with live bullets.

[hands11]

popper doesn't fully understand what a message board is

I think he understands just fine.

[Deivy202]

I think Noel will be our pick i can see it.

Cavs pick up a bigman in free agency and draft Porter

the Magic pick up Mclemore who is probably the best scorer in the draft with tons of potential as well as the Magic picking up a scorer.


So than theres us and Noel.

Thats what will probably happem but I would not be surprised for a moment if the Magic trade down in which they possibly can get two firsts int he draft barring what the teams is trading for . They need a big man and a SG.

[hands11]

I don't know about that, queridiculo. Mike Malone is the new coach. He might want a clean slate. Cousins might be traded IMO.

I think it would be the opposite. Randy has the team, the veterans especially, and both Wall and Beal's respect. He's the type of coach who won't mince words with Cousins. I don't think he'd be scared of Boogie. I think DC and this particular coach would be the right environment to get the best from DMC.

Calipari is an in- your-face coach. He got to the Final Four with freshman Cousins. In a contract year for Wall, Wittman, and Cousins I would expect all three would do well.

The key would be this group of veterans held it together at 4-28. One player would not undermine anything.

I agree I think Randy would be a good coach for Cousins. But I don't feel now is the time to bring him here.

[truwizfan4evr]

What could the wizards offer for Cousins if its not wall or Beal involved in the package?

[rockymac52]

What could the wizards offer for Cousins if its not wall or Beal involved in the package?

The 3rd overall pick is a pretty good start. Or the 2014 1st round pick. Then take on a bad contract maybe with Salmons. And then maybe give them Okafor as well, since he'd be useless to us now that we have Cousins, and he's expiring so they'd like that.

[No-Man]

3rd+Ariza+Vesely for Thornton+Cousins+Outlaw would do it I think.