Author Topic: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?  (Read 26386 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #105 on: March 02, 2015, 01:26:10 PM »

Offline D.o.s.

  • NCE
  • Cedric Maxwell
  • **************
  • Posts: 14061
  • Tommy Points: 1239
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.

You make the point that franchise cornerstones are much more unlikely to be picked outside the top five.  The flip side of that is that "franchise cornerstone" type players are fairly unlikely to be picked in the top five as well.

If you count Pierce, Nowitzki, and Bryant as the only franchise cornerstone type players picked later in the lottery in the past twenty years, I would counter that the amount of that caliber of players picked in the top five in the past twenty years, only includes one more player.

I would say that Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Lebron James, and Kevin Durant fit that bill.

That makes seven franchise players picked within the past twenty years.  Four of them were picked in the top seven, three of them were picked outside the top seven.

What this indicates to me is not that if you want a transcendent franchise changing level talent you better get a pick in the top half of the lottery, but rather that the type of player you are talking about comes along extremely rarely.

Basically, I would say that your transcendent level superstar comes around on average less than once every other draft.

Iverson wasn't a franchise cornerstone? I see. Regardless I agree with your overall point that the draft can be an absolute crap shoot. I would also add guys such as Melo and Kevin Love to that list as well as Vince Carter (the Toronto version was amazing).

If you want to start adding to the list, I submit pre-injury T-Mac, who was a dominant player, Tony Parker, who somewhat quietly has been chugging along as Duncan's top sidekick for all those titles in San Antonio, Shawn Marion, the Phoenix years (so underrated), Paul George, who was becoming a young superstar prior to his knee injury, Marc Gasol, who is reaching his superstar prime in his early thirties . . . Nash, Amare, Zach Randolph, Paul Millsap . . . Deandre Jordan . . . Kawhii Leonard? . . . Giannis? . . . Gobert? . . .

Stars can and do happen from outside the top half of the lottery.

The wonderful thing about the NBA draft is that all the wonderful players you'd want to draft at #5 will still be there at #1, and so on.


Drafting a player at #1 when you could get them at #5 is a horrible waste of resources.  That's where you trade down and received additional assets.

Mike
You seem to be arguing against a point I'm not making. Or at least taking a snippet of something I wrote to start an entirely different conversation.
At least a goldfish with a Lincoln Log on its back goin' across your floor to your sock drawer has a miraculous connotation to it.

Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #106 on: March 02, 2015, 01:26:43 PM »

Offline MBunge

  • Antoine Walker
  • ****
  • Posts: 4661
  • Tommy Points: 471
There's no point to the tanking debate.

We tried.

I don't believe Ainge entered this season with a plan to tank and I don't think he's trying to tank now.  If he was, he wouldn't have gotten IT.

Mike

Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #107 on: March 02, 2015, 01:30:10 PM »

Offline MBunge

  • Antoine Walker
  • ****
  • Posts: 4661
  • Tommy Points: 471
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.

You make the point that franchise cornerstones are much more unlikely to be picked outside the top five.  The flip side of that is that "franchise cornerstone" type players are fairly unlikely to be picked in the top five as well.

If you count Pierce, Nowitzki, and Bryant as the only franchise cornerstone type players picked later in the lottery in the past twenty years, I would counter that the amount of that caliber of players picked in the top five in the past twenty years, only includes one more player.

I would say that Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Lebron James, and Kevin Durant fit that bill.

That makes seven franchise players picked within the past twenty years.  Four of them were picked in the top seven, three of them were picked outside the top seven.

What this indicates to me is not that if you want a transcendent franchise changing level talent you better get a pick in the top half of the lottery, but rather that the type of player you are talking about comes along extremely rarely.

Basically, I would say that your transcendent level superstar comes around on average less than once every other draft.

Iverson wasn't a franchise cornerstone? I see. Regardless I agree with your overall point that the draft can be an absolute crap shoot. I would also add guys such as Melo and Kevin Love to that list as well as Vince Carter (the Toronto version was amazing).

If you want to start adding to the list, I submit pre-injury T-Mac, who was a dominant player, Tony Parker, who somewhat quietly has been chugging along as Duncan's top sidekick for all those titles in San Antonio, Shawn Marion, the Phoenix years (so underrated), Paul George, who was becoming a young superstar prior to his knee injury, Marc Gasol, who is reaching his superstar prime in his early thirties . . . Nash, Amare, Zach Randolph, Paul Millsap . . . Deandre Jordan . . . Kawhii Leonard? . . . Giannis? . . . Gobert? . . .

Stars can and do happen from outside the top half of the lottery.

The wonderful thing about the NBA draft is that all the wonderful players you'd want to draft at #5 will still be there at #1, and so on.


Drafting a player at #1 when you could get them at #5 is a horrible waste of resources.  That's where you trade down and received additional assets.

Mike
You seem to be arguing against a point I'm not making. Or at least taking a snippet of something I wrote to start an entirely different conversation.

If your point is that having the first pick in the draft is usually better than the fifth pick, who exactly is arguing otherwise?

The argument seems to be over how much your team should damage itself to marginally increase its chances at the first pick from really unlikely or really, really unlikely to just unlikely.

Mike

Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #108 on: March 02, 2015, 01:34:55 PM »

Offline D.o.s.

  • NCE
  • Cedric Maxwell
  • **************
  • Posts: 14061
  • Tommy Points: 1239
The point is that "stars happen in the second half of the lottery, too" is not necessarily the best case against sacrificing short term wins for a better chance at long term prospects.

But I seem to recall that you're only reticient about tanking if it's not a full blown Philly job, so you probably agree with that.
At least a goldfish with a Lincoln Log on its back goin' across your floor to your sock drawer has a miraculous connotation to it.

Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #109 on: March 02, 2015, 03:19:38 PM »

Offline mctyson

  • Rajon Rondo
  • *****
  • Posts: 5087
  • Tommy Points: 372
The point is that "stars happen in the second half of the lottery, too" is not necessarily the best case against sacrificing short term wins for a better chance at long term prospects.

But that actually is the best argument against "losing more to get a better chance at a higher pick."  People here operate with the certainty that said higher pick will be a future All-Star.  More often than not players drafted in the lottery are destined for being average, or below average, or complete busts.

No one who is in favor of this team achieving its maximum potential this year would argue that we are in favor of this because we believe Danny Ainge will draft an All-Star in the mid-to-high teens (though he has done that before).  We are arguing against the idea that the GM and Coach of this team should be focused on improving our draft position over winning games.  I think that is terrible strategy to build a team for long-term success.


Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #110 on: March 02, 2015, 03:48:46 PM »

Offline D.o.s.

  • NCE
  • Cedric Maxwell
  • **************
  • Posts: 14061
  • Tommy Points: 1239
I'm sure you would argue that. Based on your first paragraph, I'm not sure that anything I could say would be able to convince you otherwise, so it's probably not worth my time or effort, is it?
At least a goldfish with a Lincoln Log on its back goin' across your floor to your sock drawer has a miraculous connotation to it.

Re: We make the playoffs...get knocked out. then what?
« Reply #111 on: March 02, 2015, 03:56:12 PM »

Offline Quetzalcoatl

  • Antoine Walker
  • ****
  • Posts: 4098
  • Tommy Points: 419
There's no point to the tanking debate.

We tried.

I don't believe Ainge entered this season with a plan to tank and I don't think he's trying to tank now.  If he was, he wouldn't have gotten IT.

Mike

I think his plan is to flesh out as many rotational players while keeping financial flexibility as he can and not worry about wins/losses at all.  I'm pretty sure he's told Stevens to give different guys like Smart specific minute thresholds to make sure they develop (and probably gave the order for him to start), but other than that I don't think he's meddling in Stevens' affairs.  Obviously, better players will lead to more wins, but adding those players for cheap is worth the lottery spot trade off.

I would really like to see some good players under Stevens, though.  You can really see that he is getting a feel for the NBA now.  I'm glad we have him signed long term