nate33 wrote:payitforward wrote:Lets start w/ Nikola Vucevic. But, no, in fact lets not. Lets please not find some other way to prove some unproveable point.
You got me there. Vucevic is definitely an exception.
I still maintain that it's extraordinarily rare. Typically, if a young player is traded 1 or 2 seasons into his contract, the player ends up being a journeyman. I'm thinking about guys like Thomas Robinson, Michael Beasley, Derrick Williams, Dion Waiters, Austin Rivers, MCW, Wesley Johnson, Cole Aldrich, Johnny Flynn, Terrence Williams, Hasheem Thabeet and Cole Aldrich. Indeed, pretty much every single lotto pick of the past 6 years who has been traded within the first 2 years has been a bust. MCW is the only possible exception because he hasn't quite proven that he's a bust just yet.
I guess the more that I think about it, the rule applies only to relatively high picks (including Vonleh). There are probably times when late 1st round picks just don't fit in very well on a certain team and the teams don't make developing the player a priority (because they're usually too busy winning). Those guys might be undervalued by current teams and could thrive in a change of scenery.
Two comments:
1. you could edit your first sentence to read "Typically, if a young player is traded 1 or 2 seasons into his contract,
or even he isn't, the player ends up being a journeyman." The list you gave above of guys who were traded -- I bet you could give me another list of guys who weren't traded who didn't turn out well. Or, put slightly differently, this is a list of bad draft picks.
Of course, if you have a good player on a rookie contract you usually don't want to trade him. And vice versa, of course if you have a bad player on a rookie contract or *any* contract, you usually do want to trade him -- and rookie contracts, because they're cheap, are reasonably easy to fit into trades.
2. The problem isn't on the factual side, however, not really on the empirical side. I.e. neither of these statements implies -- in any sense of the word -- the obverse claim, i.e. that if a guy is traded in his first two years, that means (or makes it likely) he's a bad player.
If something is bubble gum, I don't want to swallow it. But if I don't want to swallow something, that doesn't mean it's bubble gum.
Again, to square this circle interminably (sorry): "the player is bad, so they want to trade him" about Cole Aldrich does not imply "they want to trade him, so the player is bad" about Vonleh.
And, in fact, Vonleh had an incredibly good single college year -- & in a lot of minutes too. He was also very productive (but in only 250 minutes) for Charlotte as a rookie -- plus, the kid is younger than Bobby Portis.
I'd love to have Noah Vonleh! I don't know what Portland gave for him, but I bet they're happy to have gotten him. It's true that Charlotte must have given up on him -- maybe it was the same genius who let Biyombo walk for nothing?
