BostonCouchGM wrote:Gomes3PC wrote:Andrew McCeltic wrote:
The size is important, though - ultimately his ability to adapt to larger defenders (and to scoring from the perimeter) will decide how close he gets to the impact he had in college as a primary scorer.
Let's worry about what his ceiling is in a few years. In pretty much three pro games, Grant has proven that he is already capable of being a league-average rotation player. Just look at the track record of guys who are picked in the 21-23 range to understand how unusual that threshold is alone:
2018 - Grayson Allen, Chandler Hutchison, Aaron Holiday
2017 - Terrance Ferguson, Jarrett Allen, OG Anunoby
2016 - DeAndre Bembry, Malachi Richardson, Ante Zizic
2015 - Justin Anderson, Bobby Portis, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
2014 - Mitch McGary, Jordan Adams, Rodney Hood
2013 - Gorgui Dieng, Mason Plumlee, Solomon Hill
It is really freaking hard to find a starting-caliber player outside the top 15. You've got basically one of them (Anunoby) in that entire list, with an at-best 50% hit rate on finding a rotation player in that range of the draft.
people have made this bad argument and poor comparison for years. Those teams, with better drafting G.M.s, should have taken different players. It's not about who these teams chose but who was still on the board when they made their choices.
The following players could have been chosen picks 21-23 instead:
2014: Capela, Bogdanovic, Dinwiddie, Jokic
2015: Portis, Harrell, Osman
2016: Siakam, Murray, Brogdon
2017: Kuzma, Bryant, OG
2018: Simons, Robinson, Kurucs, Bonga, Nunn
and in a few years we'll look back at several better players that were still on the board when high floor low ceiling Grant Williams was chosen by atrocious drafting Danny Ainge, like we do every single draft.
Take the Kyrie trade for instance. It's not about Sexton, who they chose at #8. It's about a full career's worth of who was still available at that pick that we lost out on. Case in point: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Miles Bridges, Michael Porter Jr., Anfernee Simons, Mitchell Robinson, Bonga, Musa, Kurucs, Nunn. That's why the Kyrie trade was dumb from the beginning. We get a two year rental of a disgruntled moron and lost out on all those players we could have traded Crowder, IT and Zizic for (CLE ended up getting Nance, Hill and Clarkson) AND the opportunity to draft a Tatum level talent that could be here for a decade.
Thanks Danny!
This is a fallacy. There is little evidence in any sport that GMs have a sustainable ability to pick players meaningfully better than average. Just like stock-picking - an extremely small number of active managers can beat indexes.
This is why Belichick as a GM has been successful. Not because he's such a great drafter - he has TONS of busts. It's because he's realized that draft picks outside the top 2-3 guys in any sport are pretty much a crapshoot, so you are way better off maximizing the # of bullets you can fire vs. trying to get "your guy."
Every single GM in the NBA has huge busts on their draft resume. Saying "what an idiot Ainge was for not getting Pascal Siakam in 2016!" is the same nonsense as chastising all the teams that passed on Tom Brady for 6 rounds in the 2000 draft.