We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?

[mmmmm]

We make the playoffs ... get knocked out.

Then we wait for Danny to trade half our roster and some handful of picks for the next big thing.

When that will happen?  Who knows?

The players we have on our roster will have more trade value if we make the playoffs than if we suck our way into the deep lottery.

And conversely, our own pick will have less value if we make the playoffs than if we suck our way into the deep lottery.

So basically we are trading off the value of one draft pick versus the trade value of multiple players on the roster.

[PhoSita]

You're going to have to be patient if you're just waiting around until the Celtics have a superstar / franchise player. 

There's just no way of knowing how they will acquire the next guy who fits that description, and even when they do, it will probably be a few years (at least) before it becomes clear that said player is of that caliber.

Just be thankful that the team we have now, though still early in the process, is reasonably entertaining.  I'm glad that Ainge traded for a guy who can score in bunches and who is generally an entertaining player to watch.  We've got that, at least.

I think there's significant indication that at least a healthy portion of the current roster (7-8 players) are being treated as a modest foundation of young talent, although none of them qualifies as a must-keep core piece.

So while you probably shouldn't get too attached to any one player, I think we can be thankful this isn't a Sixers-style situation where the deck chairs are going to get shuffled a lot every year as the ship goes down, over and over.

[D.o.s.]

we get the 12-15th pick, then what?
i'd rather play in the playoffs, ever for 4-5 games than tremble while the ping pong balls disappoint us again
right now i love this team, thomas is a total game changer for us, getting to the FT line and everything. It would be a great learning experience for our young players, and when you put that against a slim posibility of getting a top 10 pick AND THEN making a good choice, i'll take the 4-5 games thank you. we got enough picks anyway.

Picks dont matter unless  they are top 6-7. If you want us to win a playoff game, get bounced and draft a team full of Kelly Olynyks than godspeed.

1998: Pick 10 -  Paul Pierce

1998:  Pick 9 - Dirk Nowitzki

1996: Pick 13 - Kobe Bryant

Three players in the last 20 years.

We've had posters go into exhaustive detail about the likelihood of an NBA superstar coming in the later round of the lottery. It happens, but it happens rarely.

[BleedGreen1989]

You're going to have to be patient if you're just waiting around until the Celtics have a superstar / franchise player. 

There's just no way of knowing how they will acquire the next guy who fits that description, and even when they do, it will probably be a few years (at least) before it becomes clear that said player is of that caliber.

Just be thankful that the team we have now, though still early in the process, is reasonably entertaining.  I'm glad that Ainge traded for a guy who can score in bunches and who is generally an entertaining player to watch.  We've got that, at least.

I think there's significant indication that at least a healthy portion of the current roster (7-8 players) are being treated as a modest foundation of young talent, although none of them qualifies as a must-keep core piece.

So while you probably shouldn't get too attached to any one player, I think we can be thankful this isn't a Sixers-style situation where the deck chairs are going to get shuffled a lot every year as the ship goes down, over and over.

Great post Pho. Saved me a lot of keystrokes. TP.

[inverselock]

we get the 12-15th pick, then what?
i'd rather play in the playoffs, ever for 4-5 games than tremble while the ping pong balls disappoint us again
right now i love this team, thomas is a total game changer for us, getting to the FT line and everything. It would be a great learning experience for our young players, and when you put that against a slim posibility of getting a top 10 pick AND THEN making a good choice, i'll take the 4-5 games thank you. we got enough picks anyway.

Picks dont matter unless  they are top 6-7. If you want us to win a playoff game, get bounced and draft a team full of Kelly Olynyks than godspeed.

1998: Pick 10 -  Paul Pierce

1998:  Pick 9 - Dirk Nowitzki

1996: Pick 13 - Kobe Bryant

Three players in the last 20 years.

We've had posters go into exhaustive detail about the likelihood of an NBA superstar coming in the later round of the lottery. It happens, but it happens rarely.

Merely pointing out the fact that picks after 7 can net you player better than KO.   Not saying picks after 7 are better, just not useless.

I did post a list of more than 3 players fwiw.  http://bkref.com/tiny/6ngzI

Hey,  we might win the lottery like 1.7% lucky ass Cleveland did.

[D.o.s.]

I would wager that there are second round picks you could buy from other teams on draft night that would net you players better than Olynyk.

A) You can basically throw out all the players from before the Bird rule was instituted (so after 1978), since the NBA draft of yore was positively lawless and chaotic.


B) Why is that list in descending win shares?

C) why did you search for every player without putting a 'usefulness' cap on it? You can search by 'Hall of Famer', since that's what we seem to be talking around:

http://bkref.com/tiny/zIp2o

That's 10 players. Not counting Dirk/Pierce/Kobe/Ginobili and the guys who are locks, since they're still active, but that would look like this (it doesn't have Steve Nash, but he's on the list too):
http://bkref.com/tiny/DMO4Y

And you still drop very quickly from Dirk/Kobe/Pierce level players to Tony Parker + Jason Terry type guys.

[jonaslopes]

And you still drop very quickly from Dirk/Kobe/Pierce level players to Tony Parker + Jason Terry type guys.

Tony Parker is closer to Dirk/Kobe/Pierce than to Jason Terry.

[inverselock]

I wasn't trying to make the case against. 

The team we have is not going to finish bottom 5.  That's our situation. 

Is it hopeless? No.

Would it have been better if Ainge tore the team down further to guarantee a high draft pick? 

You might be right.

[D.o.s.]

And you still drop very quickly from Dirk/Kobe/Pierce level players to Tony Parker + Jason Terry type guys.

Tony Parker is closer to Dirk/Kobe/Pierce than to Jason Terry.

I think you're underestimating Jason Terry.

I wasn't trying to make the case against. 

The team we have is not going to finish bottom 5.  That's our situation. 

Is it hopeless? No.

Would it have been better if Ainge tore the team down further to guarantee a high draft pick? 

You might be right.

I don't like tanking, but the notion that we could finish with a crappy draft pick and still get our next franchise cornerstone is so much more unlikely than it seems to some posters (not you, necessarily) that I think it needs reiterating.

Kawhii Leonard was brought up earlier -- he went 15th to a different team, cost the Spurs their starting point guard of the future, and couldn't shoot the three until San Antonio got ahold of him. He's an example of everything tilting exactly right, not something that could be feasibly replicated.

[makaveli]

we get the 12-15th pick, then what?
i'd rather play in the playoffs, ever for 4-5 games than tremble while the ping pong balls disappoint us again
right now i love this team, thomas is a total game changer for us, getting to the FT line and everything. It would be a great learning experience for our young players, and when you put that against a slim posibility of getting a top 10 pick AND THEN making a good choice, i'll take the 4-5 games thank you. we got enough picks anyway.

Picks dont matter unless  they are top 6-7. If you want us to win a playoff game, get bounced and draft a team full of Kelly Olynyks than godspeed.

1998: Pick 10 -  Paul Pierce

1998:  Pick 9 - Dirk Nowitzki

I would be pretty happy with pick 9.  But the thing about PP is that he inexplicably fell - it would be like us drafting tenth and somehow getting Stanley Johnson.  Nowitzki came from a time when people undervalued foreigners, now Young Dirk would probably go like 4th.  People weren't sleeping on him either, Don Nelson was saying he'd be rookie of the year leading up to the draft according to the Google search I just did.

oh you guys...
so what, it's now my turn to name all the worst picks made starting witj Kwame, Darko, Oden etc. ?
my point was that the odds for getting a good draft selection AND picking a team changing player is like 1 : 50.
get to the playoffs

[KeepRondo]

You can't use Kobe for this argument. If he was back in high school, he would be projected to be a top 3 pick before even going to college.

[D.o.s.]

You can't use Kobe for this argument. If he was back in high school, he would be projected to be a top 3 pick before even going to college.

Agreed -- if Dante Exum can go 4th straight out of high school with no real footage, Kobe has to be considered in a similar light.

That's another thing to consider: international scouting is light years ahead of where it was even 10 years ago, so the Kobe/Tony Parker/Ginobili types aren't nearly as hidden as they were when those players were actually drafted.

[Greyman]

We don't need to get worse to get better. Making the playoffs is the thing that can help the team get better. Improved experience for these players and we look more attractive. Lots of others have explored this and said it better on this thread.

Don't get the concern over being better than expected now.

[D.o.s.]

We don't need to get worse to get better. Making the playoffs is the thing that can help the team get better. Improved experience for these players and we look more attractive. Lots of others have explored this and said it better on this thread.

Don't get the concern over being better than expected now.

I think it depends on whether you expect the players on the roster now to be on the team when we're actually in contention, or whether you think they're assets to get flipped for other players.

[MBunge]

we get the 12-15th pick, then what?
i'd rather play in the playoffs, ever for 4-5 games than tremble while the ping pong balls disappoint us again
right now i love this team, thomas is a total game changer for us, getting to the FT line and everything. It would be a great learning experience for our young players, and when you put that against a slim posibility of getting a top 10 pick AND THEN making a good choice, i'll take the 4-5 games thank you. we got enough picks anyway.

Picks dont matter unless  they are top 6-7. If you want us to win a playoff game, get bounced and draft a team full of Kelly Olynyks than godspeed.

1998: Pick 10 -  Paul Pierce

1998:  Pick 9 - Dirk Nowitzki

1996: Pick 13 - Kobe Bryant

Three players in the last 20 years.

We've had posters go into exhaustive detail about the likelihood of an NBA superstar coming in the later round of the lottery. It happens, but it happens rarely.

2008 NBA Draft.

#17 Roy Hibbert.

#24 Serge Ibaka.

#25 Nicholas Batum.

#35 DeAndre Jordan.

#45 Goran Dragic.

2009 NBA Draft.

Pretty weak.

2010 NBA Draft.

#10 Paul George.

#18 Eric Bledsoe.

#40 Lance Stephenson.

2011 NBA Draft.

#11 Klay Thompson.

#30 Jimmy Butler.

Mike