Chicago wasn't going to do it For Bradley, Brown and Rozier/Smart. The problem with having lots of assets is that other teams want the trading partner's best assets - as a matter of perception - even if those assets are way more than any other team can give you. One of the reasons why DA wanted to break up the #1 pick into two less valuable assets.
Maybe, but what actual trades could Ainge have put together recently that would have made them a "real contender"? Getting Butler would not have done this as (a) he's only under contract for 2 more years and (b) adding him as the major piece this offseason would not put them over the top. Porzingis? Maybe, but as others have pointed out the Knicks' asking price was ridiculous. Seems like the only tangible thing people can point to is the trade down from #1, which is totally dependent on the assumption that Fultz will be much better that Tatum. This may be true, but we have no way of knowing that yet.
First things first, I'm not a Celtics fan. And I've already given Ainge plenty of credit for building a trove of assets. In fact, the entire point of my post is that he built such an impressive trove of assets, and I'm concerned the actual on-the-court outcome of that is going to be underwhelming because of a hesitancy to maximize the value of those assets.
It's not hubris for specialists with a ton of information--and the with some ability to prognosticate how a player will do in their system and what they'll do to help that player grow--to think they can make a better choice than the market.
The difference between Fultz and Tatum may well have been the difference between acquiring Porzingis and not. That's my point. You want to be a contender in 3 or 4 years? You need an elite, young player. Porzingis is that. Tatum, Brown, etc. are not.
While I'm not saying you aren't correct, here's the rub. Outside of a few generational talents, no one knows where the next cornerstone player is coming from. In 2012, no one thought the Warriors would be candidates to win 70 games. They took good players, and the players happened to develop and develop together. (Maybe you could say that Jerry West is the best basketball talent evaluator the world has seen since Red and that might be true but in that case, all of this is kind of moot anyways.)
I sort of believed that theory, and thought the trade could be justified on that basis. Except...he made the pick. And the reports are that he turned down trading #3 for Butler. It's obviously not too late to trade Tatum, but so far we don't have the supporting evidence for this theory.
Yes, I know. I was just using the Brown/Zizic poster as an anecdotal example of how irrational Celtics fans are becoming about the value of their young players.
I think we'd all be fairly surprised if Brown ends up being better that Porzingis but is it really that obvious that Porzingis is going to have a better career than Tatum?
Tatum is an iso heavy scorer who needs to add a three point shot and doesn't yet have a pick and roll game. In the pace and space NBA, I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that he has a better career than Porzingis.
I guess that's a different strokes for different folks thing--I can easily see Tatum joining the ranks of the Carmelo/Paul Pierce/Alex English pure scorers and doing that for a long, long time and that's pretty valuable.
The "he's not Paul Pierce" argument is fascinating to me. What were people saying the day after the Celtics took Paul Pierce at #10? He's not James Worthy so don't get your hopes up? Maybe there were some analysts predicting that he'd be a star around which the Celtics would build a championship team. I honestly can't remember. And we had more data about Pierce than we do about Tatum because he was a junior. I'm fine being patient right now. Our team won 53 games last year.
Fair enough-I'm at more like 3 to 2 or something but then I'm high on Tatum and abnormally low on Zinger
I don't know about "most" but yes, a big part of why I like Tatum is that I just see him as a night in night out scorer for 12 years--and I'm less sure about the super lanky guy who already has a moderate injury history.
If we didn't get Porzingis we still could have made the trade we did on draft night. Nothing would have changed.
VORP's underlying metric (BPM) is pretty clued in to floor spacing value. It's a box-score metric, so it may struggle with rim protection and other defensive elements however. And RPM (which is mostly plus/minus based) does think BPM is underrating him defensively: he's neutral defensively in BPM, while he's +1.9 in RPM. I'd lean towards RPM's view there.
It is difficult to take Ainge for this word when only last week following the trading down he said in an interview that there were a couple guys they had in mind that they liked and that it would be a very difficult decision as to who to pick. He also followed that up after the draft when discussing trades by saying that there is a window in July for things to happen.
This is a GREAT point that I bolded. My traditional scouting shows that when Porzingis does put the ball on the floor he either gets all the way to the rim or he gets bodied while having to pull up off the dribble which is the majority of these shots in the 3-10 foot range. This is a strength/softness issue that he "Should" improve upon over the years either with added lower body strength or in developing a go-to move in that range like Dirk did early in his career. Perfect example of analytics and the eyes having an "Ah-ha" moment.
It is really amazing how hard it is for some big guys to score in the 3-10 range, and it isn't easy to fix, much of it is athleticism. I am with HRB, in that this seems how people guard KP, and it is not a problem that can necessarily be coached away. What this guy can do at his height is pretty exceptional already, so for him to get stronger, and stay healthy is not going to be easy.
Even wasting a 2nd round draft pick on a Toronto infielder seemed a little wacky at the time, but Red already knew that Ainge couldn't hit the slider.
How Ainge made it to the majors as a 20 year old after only 416 plate appearances in AAA where he hit 229/263/290 has always baffled me.
Ainge's original contract with the Blue Jays said he couldn't be below AAA. http://www.baseballamerica.com/draft/1977-draft-spotlight-danny-ainge/#ykW9ZTRbZGmvkOQo.97. He was also handed the major league 3B position in 1981 I believe.
So with respect to your first bolded statement, Danny's saying that he did not have conversations with the Bulls about Butler in the last week. Which probably means that your second bolded statement is correct. (Note: I see no reason for Danny to lie about this.)
I agree with this
It could be. But you guys all encourage yourselves to get more and more optimistic and slam people who raise questions.
Significant defensive improvement over rookie year performance is the rule, not the exception for most 2nd year players. Brown showed excellent man-on-man smothering defense with plenty of blocks, intensity and movement. Where he came up short was in recognizing rotations automatically (ie, without thinking first). That seems to me like exactly the kind of skill where huge improvement is most plausible because it comes with repetition.
Ainge has taken two leaps in the last two years, with his latest pick being among the more daring moves in the history of the NBA draft. He will someday be judged by these moves, but its far, far too early to do that now. Ainge has staked his reputation on the Tatum pick (and to a lesser degree the Brown pick). If they end up as mediocre as you think they are, the only way he won't end up looking horrible is if the rest of the players in those draft classes are similarly disappointing....
To be fair, in the Smart draft, Ainge picks at #6 and the Sixers were smart to draft JE despite the injuries. And while JE is a superstar, he has huge red flag injury issues.
On a conference finals team. I thought that at times he was as good as any other Celtic on the floor against Cleveland.
In his off-season training videos, he was doing a bunch of dribbling drills and seems to be making it one of his focuses, so I'm hopeful he shows some improvement there for his sophomore year. Would certainly add another dimension to his game and would be great to see paired with his athleticism.
Here's the list of players picked at #21: http://www.mynbadraft.com/nba-draft-picks/21st-overall/210509/. Rondo was a home run; although I must say that in comparison, Greg Kite must be considered a World Series clinching walk-off home run. After all, he has multiple rings, right?
