Squigglepuffin wrote:DarkAzcura wrote:Squigglepuffin wrote:
In 2019 we had #14, #20, #22 and...
In 2020 we had #14, #26, and #30.
And yet our bench is weak. Really weak.
Out of SIX first rounders we have:
- Langford
- Grant Williams (I will never understand why we even considered drafting him)
- Edwards (again even at the time of the draft it was obvious he wasn't a good player)
- Nesmith
- Pritchard
- Two future second rounders
If Langford, Nesmith, and Payton all turn into role players who can consistently contribute on winning teams legitimately,
50/50 is actually really good to be honest.Gonna take a while to know though, and Payton may be the only one who turns out for all we know.
Do you mean if only three of those six first rounders work out?
The commonly accepted narrative that late first round picks and all second round picks are difficult to hit on (although I understand the logic) is a frustrating narrative bc every year during the draft it's annoying to see in real time players who are pretty obviously going to be good start falling, getting passed over again and again by teams - then usually a few years later they get regarded as "steals".
Imo it's actually easier to hit on late first rounders and most second rounders than it is to hit on high lottery picks because most of the time the difference in talent in players is very obvious. It's like seeing Shaq standing in a room of average sized people. Most of the time it's really obvious.
I give Danny credit for trying to select Reggie Jackson in the 2011 draft. I hate the fact that we didn't draft Jimmy Butler or Chandler Parsons (both of whom at the time I believed were obviously going to be good and the best available instead of JuJuan Johnson).
I give him credit in 2012 for selecting Sullinger (who I also would have selected). At the time I hated (and still do now) that we selected Fab Melo over two players I thought were the easiest selections to make in both Draymond Green and Jae Crowder.
When we selected James Young I was soooooooooo disappointed and exasperated because I knew before the draft, before he even put on a Celtics jersey, that he was 110% without question going to bust. I wanted Clint Capela believe it or not (Jokic was not really on my radar - I'm not perfect
).
2015 I remember specifically, as it was happening, being so frustrated that we didn't choose Montrezl Harrell in the late 1st and then being more annoyed when he was selected just before the early 2nd rounder we had - because it was glaringly obvious he was the BPA.
Credit where credit is due though, I didn't like the Pritchard pick. I'm okay with it now. I didn't watch enough of him. I still think Tyler Bey and especially Nate Hinton will, barring injury, have good NBA careers.
Personally I think 5 out of the 6 first rounders would have been pretty easy to hit on. The only exception I make is the 2020 #14 pick.
If we have a bunch of
really good player development coaches on the Celtics staff (who knows if we do) I would have selected Zeke Nnaji (I think he can be good but as of yet just hasn't been taught how to play basketball properly) but if the player development staff are just average (who knows) then I would have probably selected Nesmith too so I can't truly hate on the front office for that pick
Forgive me for the wall of text but I am a passionate Celtics fan
Honestly don’t think it is a narrative. Based on data, it is kinda just true. If it were easier to hit on first rounders, we would have a lot more players in this league and a lot more teams because we would have an overload of talent.
Anyway, I would just point to this link:
https://towardsdatascience.com/which-nba-teams-are-best-at-drafting-4131eb843dc1Looks at the past 10 NBA drafts and ranks the best drafting teams based on data. Boston is 9. I don’t think Ainge is an incredible drafter, never really went there, but I have always felt he was well above average. I remember in the past people used to be obsessed with how “good” the Spurs were at drafting, but I always wondered if people ever pulled up their draft record year to year. So much trash and so much waste. Sometimes it is just perception.
I will say, though, that if Payton ends up being the only one that works out of the 6, then that’s not a great look. I would like to see at least 2 of them work out. 3 out of 6 would be amazing and a higher success rate than 90% of the league at that point of the draft.
https://sportsanalytics.berkeley.edu/articles/trash-or-treasure.html This graph looks at how many players drafted between 5 and 10 years ago are still actively playing in the NBA. More than 75% of lottery picks are still on an NBA roster, although it’s important to note that there are still many high draft picks that don’t pan out in the NBA. Even recent top-2 picks like Anthony Bennett (1st overall in 2013), Derrick Williams (2nd overall in 2011), and Hasheem Thabeet (2nd overall in 2009) have busted spectacularly and found themselves out of the league.
Slightly less than half of non-lottery firsts are still in the league, while approximately one-fifth of second round picks from the specified timeframe are still playing. So while second round picks sometimes get tossed around as if they have no value, teams still have a chance of finding decent contributors, and a small chance of finding a star.
Then take a look at this analysis, which looked to see how many non-lottery first rounders are even actively in the league after 5-10 years. Only around ~45% of non-lottery first round picks were even in the league anymore. We aren’t even talking about “good” players. This is a low bar here. We are talking about are they active in the league or not, which includes deep bench players so of these 45%, the percentage of actual solid contributors would be even lower. If this looked at players drafted 20-30, that would probably be much lower as only 20% of second round picks were still actively in the league.
So in any given draft, on average, only ~7 of the players drafted 15-30 will still be in the league after 5 years, and a much smaller number of those are probably actually contributing night in, night out as high level role players or in a rarer circumstance, all star level. For second rounders, if only 20% survive, then that is 6 out of 30 players drafted, and again, how many of those 6 are actually high level contributors. Probably not a lot.
So if only 7 of 16 players are
surviving in the league let alone actually heavily contributing, I would say it is incredibly difficult and would be amazing statistically to hit on 5 of 6 late first rounders. Overall, based on this data, only ~13 of the 46 players drafted after 14 survive as “active” NBA players in any given year. I would estimate, generously, that only 70% of those 13 are actually solid contributors. That would mean your average hit rate outside the lottery is 28%, and if you assume only 70-80% of those 13 actually end up as good contributors, then your hit rate is closer to 20%.