Post#636 » by nate33 » Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:00 pm
Overall, I'm very pleased with Tommy Sheppard's process, even if I'm a bit ambivalent about the results.
Sheppard was not worried about winning now. His goal was long term - to acquire the highest upside talent for the future. I'm happy with that. I especially love that we traded the #37 pick for a future pick. (Presumably that future pick is an OKC 2nd rounder, hopefully next year when they will miss the playoffs.) That shows patience and a focus on long term upside over short term gain. Once Tillman and Bey were off the board, I didn't really like anyone left at #37 anyhow.
On the actual picks, I have no strong reaction. Like most others, I'm a bit nervous about Avdija because he can't shoot (yet), and it's always hard to predict how players will fare in the NBA when most of their highlights were against second-tier competition. But I don't profess to be an expert on him so I'm not going to confidently state it was a bad pick either. All I really know is that he was a consensus top 5 pick that slipped to us at #9. That suggests that it was a good value pick relative to the consensus, whatever that's worth. I preferred Halliburton, but was surprised as everyone else that he fell past Phoenix and San Antonio too. Maybe there was a medical issue?
I don't really care about the Cassius Winston selection. Maybe he'll be able to fill in as a 3rd string PG who costs only $900K rather than the $1.7M that a vet-minimum guy would cost. So, that's useful I guess. In the long run, picks in the 50's never pan out to be anything more than journeymen, so it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. There's always a Chris Chiozza available in the G-League.