I also feel a lot is their mature/intelligent personalities, coupled with a winning environment.
I absolutely agree that is has a lot to do with how mature they seem.
Marcus in hindsight looks like a strange pick. He was volatile in college. Perhaps Danny saw something else in Marcus.
marcus smart was the consensus #6 pick. After him and randle the pickings were slim
Looking back, danny did well. No one except Gary Harris and maybe Rodney Hood, capela broke out. That draft was top heavy and smart was a great pick compared to vonleh/stauskas/mcbuckets and the other lotto guys
Eh, Smart was an alright pick at best.
Nikola Jokic, Jusuf Nurkic, Elfrid Peyton, Zach Lavine, Dario Saric, TJ Warren, Spencer Dinwiddie, Jordan Clarckson, and the aforementioned Harris, Capela, and Hood all went after Smart in that draft.
That's not a game that is fairly played. Every draft there are guys taken late that are better than guys taken early. That means every GM, but one (and sometimes him too), skipped on that player because of workouts, concerns, performance, etc.
Sometimes guys just end up being good in spite of every scouts information of them before the draft. Some of those on the list are outliers.
A better question to ask is how Marcus has performed compared to other 6th picks.
Here is an article with the estimated values of draft picks.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/index616a.html?p=2740Here are Marcus' stats.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/smartma01.htmlMarcus is on pace to finish at 13 win shares by the end of his rookie contract, and the estimated win shares for a sixth pick over his rookie contract is 15. He's been a good not great pick.
By the way, I'd take Marcus over Payton, Nurkic, Lavine, Warren, Dinwiddie, Clarkson, Randle, and Hood today, and I'd definitely take him over those guys in a 7 game playoff series.
Harris, Capella, and Jokic are the only ones that I'd probably take over Marcus today, but no one thought those three would be as good as they are today. NBAdraft.net projected Capella as Ian Mahinmi, Harris was OJ Mayo, and Jokic was Vucevic. I don't respect NBAdraft.net a lot, but these were the most positive takes on these guys. There's a reason they were drafted later.