I said I give up arguing about Noel and that we'll all have to wait to judge it accurately, but I have to pipe up...
I havent read the entire trend but a couple of things I think people are missing here. Thad Young netted the Nets the 20th pick in the draft. Jeff Teague netted the 12th. Are you telling me a guy that has had a major injury to start his career, has no offensive game, and is a RFA is worth the 3rd pick in any draft?
His injury is now virtually irrelevant. Restricted free agency essentially means a team option for a four-year max contract, which might very well be his market value this time next year. Please, everybody, stop repeating the meme that he has "no offensive game", it does not get less false the more it's repeated. He can dribble pretty well for a big man, he can pass well period, and he's not even close to being the worst shooting big in the league.
If Ainge was trying to rip them off why didnt any other team give up a top 5 or 10 pick for him?
Good question.
Which team in that range would conceivably have coveted him?
Teague was an All Star the year before last. Come on this makes no sense.
He was one of the least shiny All Stars in the last 20 years. It will almost certainly be the only All Star appearance of his career. He's a somewhat above average PG in a PG-oversaturated league. There are way fewer above average mobile defensive centers. We're all used to the concept of defensively-elite offensively-limited centers being valuable, they just usually have a lot of defensive box score value wrapped up in rebounds and/or blocks like Ben Wallace, Andre Drummond, DeAndre Jordan, Tyson Chandler, Andrew Bogut, Dikembe Mutombo, etc. Noel's reputation would be far rosier if you converted 1 of the 2 steals per game he gets into an extra block per game, even though steals are inherently more valuable.
If Ainge said I will give you 3, 23 a player (Hunter) and a low level future 1st for Noel and the Lakers pick that would probably be more far but I wouldnt even consider 3 for Noel given what I laid out above.
I'm slowly coming around to the idea that the opportunity to draft Jaylen Brown was worth more than Noel, and that we might be able to acquire Noel at a clearance price later this season. But if we had been picking 4th, it would've been an absolute no-brainer to me to trade that for Noel straight up.