That argument came up before. I guess I don't understand it because we see good players taken outside the top picks all the time. If you trust your scouting and think a particular player is vastly undervalued, trading down would be smart.
The claim that players picked earlier have a better shot at being a star is true, but we are not throwing a dart at the dartboard or making the pick blindfolded. There is something called scouting that is supposed to accurately determine which players are overrated and which aren't.
I know that trading down is more difficult to pull off in the NBA so I'm not proposing it as a realistic idea (also I started this thread before the Celtics won the 1st overall pick). I just think that this may be a draft where there isn't a huge difference in talent between the 3-4 spots and 8-10. If you look at history, this isn't actually the controversial statement that people have made it out to be.