Pax's Worst Draft Day Decision

[Ugly Duckling]

You guys have made some good cases for several of these and I'm a little surprised the Valentine pick didn't get more hate given 4 eventual starters (2 of them All Stars) were still on the board, but mine is probably the Snell pick. I remember being really high on Gobert before the draft. I mean his shot blocking, his length. He seemed like he had a really good feel for the game. And we really needed a C, although that should really factor into the decision. I'm surprised Gobert went so low, so obviously our FO wasn't the only one who missed it. They was hoping that Snell would turn into Kawhi because he went to the same high school

They were drafting for the depature of Luol Deng. Joakim won DPOY for Gobert's rookie season.

Hmm I don't remember why I thought we needed a center then. Maybe I wasn't quite sold on Jo yet and he made a big leap that season?

[wickywack]

I think Pax's record overall was pretty good. The draft is a crapshoot, and Pax had a really good hit rate of productive players - at least till through 2011 (Mirotic and Butler post 20th pick). After that, not so much. I don't know if that was a change in responsibility or reversion to the mean or whatever.

That said, I'd go with McDermott for a few reasons:

(1) I think it was a predictable reach for a late lotto pick. His nbadraft.net profile at the time: "Can be rebounded and shot over a bit too often … Makes no impact whatsoever on the defensive end of the ball … Has posted alarmingly low steal and block numbers throughout his career for a projected frontcourt player, and that does not figure to improve at all in the NBA … Will his coaches ever look past the fact that he is a fringe defender? … Doesn’t pass the ball often …"

(2) Player/coach mismatch. Would the above ever play for Thibs?

(3) Harris and Nurkic. Perhaps unfair to index on guys the Bulls might not of drafted, but those two would made nice core with Butler and Mirotic going forward. Maybe good enough to not trade those guys and build around them instead.

(4) Timing. This was Thibs' last hurrah. The last trip to the second round. A real talent infusion might have made an outsized impact at this time.

[Ugly Duckling]

Having Jrue Holiday might have made a huge difference in 2011. We badly needed a second ball handler, and having someone who could guard Wade would let Rose rest on defense. That could have been the difference between winning the title that year or at least getting to the Finals. We debated for months in 2011 about going after OJ Mayo or Courtney Lee -- but Jrue would have been a better option than both.

Might not be the worst decision, full-stop -- probably the Doug trade was worse. But that might have been the most impactful. If we think that Rose's injuries were a result of overworking him, we could have rested him a lot more with Jrue around. Thibs would have loved him as well.

Yeah I think they were drafting for need (thinking yeah we already have Rose), when that goes against their philosophy of always taking the best player available

[dougthonus]

I disagree with this assertion. Sure, I mean even the best scout in the world would miss on picks. It's just too hard to accurately predict how a prospect's skills would translate on the big stage, along with his work ethic and development every time. Mindset is notoriously hard to evaluate because it's invisible. All that being said, these guys get paid millions of dollars to do this and spare no expense when it comes to evaluating players (travel, analytics, etc.). They have no other jobs like we do. So they have the time to really drill down on potential prospects that aren't being projected in the range that they're going to pick in. They also have more intel on these players, having scouted some of them since high school and knowing them personally. Some of us, with full-time jobs, have made better calls without ever seeing a prospect in person and just going off of the tape

*Also, I made it a point not to include picks that were way off, like drops in a pond, but to say they had to be just a few picks after to be considered a miss is silly imo

Everyone has those same advantages compared to us, so they aren't advantages. The data of differential in draft success over a long period of time more or less shows that no GM has ever had a consistent sustained advantage in the draft.

[Dominator83]

If a guy isn't within 2-3 picks of the guy taken, then its silly to call it a blunder. It's an unrealistic expectation and just opportunistic bashing that you could literally apply to any GM that's made more then 3-4 picks. That eliminates more than half this list. We can go through that same mental gymnastics and ask why the Warriors made such a huge blunder taking Festus Ezeeli over Draymond Green.

Of the things left, I voted McDermott trade, but taking it back, I'll say Aldridge trade. We forget how bad it was, because has we actually gotten Aldridge we probably wouldn't have ended up with Derrick Rose, but that's probably the biggest value swing. The Butler trade got us more value than Butler received in trade either of the next two times he was traded, so it doesn't look like there was likely to be a better offer in the future, so the decision to move on may or may not have been good, but the trade value wasn't bad relative to what the Wolves/76ers got.

Jrue Holiday is a reasonable comparison to James Johnson since he was the next pick. I was super high on Johnson, and with Rose, PG wasn't really a big concern, but man that would have been nice in retrospect. If you had Holiday filling in with Rose hurt this team could have really made some hey for a couple years and had a reasonable post Rose rebuild plan around Butler.

I disagree with this assertion. Sure, I mean even the best scout in the world would miss on picks. It's just too hard to accurately predict how a prospect's skills would translate on the big stage, along with his work ethic and development every time. Mindset is notoriously hard to evaluate because it's invisible. All that being said, these guys get paid millions of dollars to do this and spare no expense when it comes to evaluating players (travel, analytics, etc.). They have no other jobs like we do. So they have the time to really drill down on potential prospects that aren't being projected in the range that they're going to pick in. They also have more intel on these players, having scouted some of them since high school and knowing them personally. Some of us, with full-time jobs, have made better calls without ever seeing a prospect in person and just going off of the tape

*Also, I made it a point not to include picks that were way off, like drops in a pond, but to say they had to be just a few picks after to be considered a miss is silly imo

Exactly. GMs need to quit following the mocks and look at a wider range of prospects. ESPECIALLY this year. I've mentioned in the draft thread, i don't care how far back guys like Hali and Kira are being "mocked". If AK thinks they may very well be the best players to come from this draft 2-3 years from now, you take them even at #4

[dougthonus]

Exactly. GMs need to quit following the mocks and look at a wider range of prospects. ESPECIALLY this year. I've mentioned in the draft thread, i don't care how far back guys like Hali and Kira are being "mocked". If AK thinks they may very well be the best players to come from this draft 2-3 years from now, you take them even at #4

I don't think GMs follow mocks. It's just that the people who do the mocks have access to a lot of the similar tools and also spend massive amounts of time on this, so the mocks are pretty reasonable. I used to co-own draftexpress.com (I did IT, Jonathan Givony did the basketball stuff). His mock/rankings was based on:

- Attendance of major basketball summits/tournaments in both the US and Europe
- Close relationships with most agents/coaches/NBA scouts to get their opinions on players
- Use of the same video scouting tool (synergy sports) that all the NBA teams used
- Watching every play of every draft prospect in the draft
- Personal interviews with all the major prospects
- Attendance of private workouts / training sessions of major prospects

I personally think that most mocks copied from ours and then moved guys up and down, but at least started with our base of prospects.

Either way, the reason that the "mocks" look like they are being followed is that at least a couple people are creating them with similar resources and effort of an NBA team. We had turned down the opportunity to be bought by a team and go work there a couple times.

[Chicagoat]

We wouldn't have traded Butler or went rebuilding if we just drafted Nurkic and Harris.

Although, hindsight is 20/20 and it's hard to tell if GarPax would have drafted those two instead if we stood pad. Those Butler years would have looked a lot less ugly if we had good young talent on the team. Valentine, Grant, MCW, Portis, Payne, and Zipser were our young "talent". Portis was not that bad and was our best young one but that really speaks on how bad our drafting got those years.

[dougthonus]

We wouldn't have traded Butler or went rebuilding if we just drafted Nurkic and Harris.

Although, hindsight is 20/20 and it's hard to tell if GarPax would have drafted those two instead if we stood pad. Those Butler years would have looked a lot less ugly if we had good young talent on the team. Valentine, Grant, MCW, Portis, Payne, and Zipser were our young "talent". Portis was not that bad and was our best young one but that really speaks on how bad our drafting got those years.

Would have been a really interesting rebuild if we had taken those guys instead of Doug. Those 2 plus Mirotic is a competent point guard away from having a 50 win type team.

[Fastbrk4brkfast]

You guys have made some good cases for several of these and I'm a little surprised the Valentine pick didn't get more hate given 4 eventual starters (2 of them All Stars) were still on the board, but mine is probably the Snell pick. I remember being really high on Gobert before the draft. I mean his shot blocking, his length. He seemed like he had a really good feel for the game. And we really needed a C, although that should really factor into the decision. I'm surprised Gobert went so low, so obviously our FO wasn't the only one who missed it. They was hoping that Snell would turn into Kawhi because he went to the same high school

They were drafting for the depature of Luol Deng. Joakim won DPOY for Gobert's rookie season.

Hmm I don't remember why I thought we needed a center then. Maybe I wasn't quite sold on Jo yet and he made a big leap that season?

It does demonstrate a bad pattern with Gar/Pax though. They made some of their worst decisions when they were drafting for need. Similar situations for Marquis Teague and Chandler Hutchison. I don't know if that was a pattern particular to them or if filling gaping roster holes is just a bad use of draft picks in general.

[RoseTheFuture22]

Tyrus for Aldridge was really awful. We lost out on the much better player, moved back, got nothing in return. BUT I do still kinda respect the gamble and think Tyrus had a chance to be special so I kind of get it. Plus maybe with Aldridge we are too good to get Rose.

The McDermott trade was the worst though. There is a chance Doug could have been there at 16 anyway and we gave up way too much value to move up 5 spots. Doug was supposed to be the missing piece but instead it was the nail in the coffin for the Rose era and squandered a chance for us to add 2 young talent like Harris and Nurkic ( both better than Doug anyway) to start to build around Jimmy.

Snell is a lowkey personal 3rd choice for me that I hated from the time it was made. We lost Asik who was really important to those teams so it would have been nice to have any one really of Dieng/Plumlee/Gobert to back up Noah at the time who was frequently hurt. Hardaway who has had a solid career would have been a really good fit too. Snell was just a bad, obvious miss to me.

[dice]

You guys have made some good cases for several of these and I'm a little surprised the Valentine pick didn't get more hate given 4 eventual starters (2 of them All Stars) were still on the board, but mine is probably the Snell pick. I remember being really high on Gobert before the draft. I mean his shot blocking, his length. He seemed like he had a really good feel for the game. And we really needed a C, although that should really factor into the decision. I'm surprised Gobert went so low, so obviously our FO wasn't the only one who missed it. They was hoping that Snell would turn into Kawhi because he went to the same high school

They were drafting for the depature of Luol Deng. Joakim won DPOY for Gobert's rookie season.

Hmm I don't remember why I thought we needed a center then. Maybe I wasn't quite sold on Jo yet and he made a big leap that season?

the team lost asik and took teague over draymond the same summer. they were forced to make nazr the 4th big. they repeated the mistake the following summer by taking snell over dieng/plumlee/gobert

[dice]

My hot take is that the Tyrus selection wasn't that bad. He had an absolutely incredible freshman year.

It was more a failure in scouting the non-basketball things like work ethic/commitment rather than a misevaluation of his basketball talents.

tyrus's team knocked off LMA's in the elite 8, too. tyrus had a huge game (21p 13r) and LMA was awful (4p 10r). not sure the trade would've ever happened if not for this game:

Watch on YouTube

note the absurdly long shorts

big highlights taking down 1 seed duke in the sweet 16, too:

Watch on YouTube

[prolific passer]

Do you think Deng and Butler could have played together?

[dice]

The Butler trade got us more value than Butler received in trade either of the next two times he was traded, so it doesn't look like there was likely to be a better offer in the future, so the decision to move on may or may not have been good, but the trade value wasn't bad relative to what the Wolves/76ers got.

The Wolves had to trade him and everybody knew it. That always makes things way more complicated, so it's not really a fair comparison since the Bulls just decided to deal him although he showed no signs of wanting out.

The Sixers situation is also different because they decided to let him go (to keep Harris and sign Horford instead, yikes) and got value via a sign and trade, but you always get less value then in a "normal" trade. That's like saying the Warriors traded Durant for Russell, when really Durant leaving was going to happen anyway and the Warriors just got at least some value back.

again, the sixers did not "decide to let him go." and certainly not in favor of tobias harris or horford. he had issues with management so took less money to go to miami and run the show

[Am2626]

Wow. That's rough.

I voted for Tyrus over Aldridge because the Bulls had a nice core and Aldridge would have been perfect, and he didn't have low upside (as shown by his subsequent all-pro career). Reaching for an athlete who was the 2nd best big on his team (behind big Baby) and wanted to be a SF rather than a PF despite lacking SF skills...

At the same time, had the Bulls drafted Aldridge, probably no Derrick Rose... so - a fail that worked out, by accident.

The biggest two fails that didn't work out were:

(1) the trade for Doug McDermott which was idiotic at the time (and maybe Thibs was pushing for it, maybe he wasn't) - a very deep draft through the early 20s and you trade two picks for a guy whose has questions about whether his athleticism is good enough for the NBA.... AND (obviously, and relatedly)

(2) the Jimmy Butler trade, where you never actually made a real effort to have team that would fit around him - rather than non-fitting (and not-good-shooting) names like Rondo and Wade, actually creating spacing with the players around him (and not just the "stretch 4"), to include another strong (but not ball-dominant) handler/creator.

We don’t know this for sure. I don’t think Aldridge makes that big of a difference in wins / losses that early in his career. Also the Bulls beat the lottery odds to get Rose. I think they win about the same number games replacing Tyrus Thomas with Aldridge. Now add Rose to a team that already has Aldridge makes the Bulls future even brighter. Everything still comes back to Roses injury but with Aldridge the Bulls would have been able to retool better even with an injured Rose. It’s a missed opportunity and in my opinion one of Parson’s worst decisions as a GM.

[PlayerUp]

Jordan Bell for $$$

This is the worst trade because we received 0 positive value in return, nothing just sold out for cash to Gar/Pax/Dorfs pocket and received negative feedback around the NBA instantaneously because of this trade. At least in the Tyrus trade, we received something back in return being Tyrus who didn't pan out.

Yes Jordan Bell hasn't performed well in the NBA but this was the "Kings Pick" which we had been waiting for years to receive and what did we do with it? Sold it for $. Gar/Pax reasoning behind it was they didn't see a player they liked and our roster was full which was a garbage reason. Prospects like Monte Morris were available which Fred coached and possibly advocated Gar/Pax to select were passed on that went after the Jordan Bell pick. Didn't even try to find a gem or add a piece that could have been an useful trade piece in the future, just sold out for $ when this team is making 8 figures in profit every season and the net worth grows 9 figures every year.

Not only that but the negative rep you get around the NBA for doing these type of trades. Bulls were already considered cheap and this trade really put the nail in the coffin along with Gar/Pax making 3 trade deadline trades moving 2nd Rd Picks (protected ones) for cash and making no additional moves to improve this roster (Melo + Cash to the Bulls for a 2nd Rd Pick).

This trade sparked the entire "Cash Considerations" endless jokes with the Bulls front office and damaged the Bulls reputation. It was a complete slap in the face to fans in a rebuild which Gar/Pax started that same day with the Jimmy Butler trade. Big market rebuilding teams should never sell their picks for $.

[ThreeMileAllan]

Tyrus for Aldridge was really awful. We lost out on the much better player, moved back, got nothing in return. BUT I do still kinda respect the gamble and think Tyrus had a chance to be special so I kind of get it. Plus maybe with Aldridge we are too good to get Rose.

The McDermott trade was the worst though. There is a chance Doug could have been there at 16 anyway and we gave up way too much value to move up 5 spots. Doug was supposed to be the missing piece but instead it was the nail in the coffin for the Rose era and squandered a chance for us to add 2 young talent like Harris and Nurkic ( both better than Doug anyway) to start to build around Jimmy.

Snell is a lowkey personal 3rd choice for me that I hated from the time it was made. We lost Asik who was really important to those teams so it would have been nice to have any one really of Dieng/Plumlee/Gobert to back up Noah at the time who was frequently hurt. Hardaway who has had a solid career would have been a really good fit too. Snell was just a bad, obvious miss to me.

Imagine if we roll into the 2014 season with

Rose, Hinrich, Butler, Pau, Noah....

Off the bench
Brooks, Lavine, Dunleavy, Taj, Niko

Moore and Snell as 11th and 12th dudes.


Wtf that team was so loaded



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[Michael Jackson]

IMO, the biggest mistake was to not trade and move up a couple of years ago when I really wanted 1 of Doncic/Trae Young.

That was IMO a no brainer.

The close 2nd is the trade for McDermott and not picking up better players when we were still at contending level.

The problem with that is both of those teams were in better position than us and got the guys they targeted. They had a perfect scenario and it is hard to wedge into that. I can not fault that one. Now not tanking better so that we were in position to be involved I can see that.

[Michael Jackson]

Exactly. GMs need to quit following the mocks and look at a wider range of prospects. ESPECIALLY this year. I've mentioned in the draft thread, i don't care how far back guys like Hali and Kira are being "mocked". If AK thinks they may very well be the best players to come from this draft 2-3 years from now, you take them even at #4

I don't think GMs follow mocks. It's just that the people who do the mocks have access to a lot of the similar tools and also spend massive amounts of time on this, so the mocks are pretty reasonable. I used to co-own draftexpress.com (I did IT, Jonathan Givony did the basketball stuff).

Was that post his partnership with Prerak?

[dougthonus]

Exactly. GMs need to quit following the mocks and look at a wider range of prospects. ESPECIALLY this year. I've mentioned in the draft thread, i don't care how far back guys like Hali and Kira are being "mocked". If AK thinks they may very well be the best players to come from this draft 2-3 years from now, you take them even at #4

I don't think GMs follow mocks. It's just that the people who do the mocks have access to a lot of the similar tools and also spend massive amounts of time on this, so the mocks are pretty reasonable. I used to co-own draftexpress.com (I did IT, Jonathan Givony did the basketball stuff).

Was that post his partnership with Prerak?

Never knew he had a partnership with Prerak, but yeah probably. There was someone who did the IT Stuff before me, but I forgot his name and maybe that was Prerak.