Guerschon

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I think we are talking past each other a bit. I evaluate this as two distinct issues. First, did the player you drafted end up being a good value for their draft slot? Olynyk easily did. Second, are there other guys that you should have drafted instead? Obviously, yes.

As examples from the same class, Bennett was a terrible pick. Oladipo was a very good pick. It doesn't matter that even with his breakout he's still just the third best player in his class. Shane Larkin was a bad pick. Giannis and Gobert are off the scales good.

To look down the draft at what might've been is too exacting a standard. Every pick in the first five rounds wasn't a bad pick because Brady is the GOAT.
I read somewhere that DA's biggest draft regret isn't GA. (It was Butler.) He said that they had seen GA plenty and they considered him but thy never saw him as an all-NBA candidate. KO was a good solid line drive to CF. GA turned out to be a Grand Slam but he also could have been Bruno Caboclo.

edit: here's a link: http://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2018/04/boston_celtics_danny_ainge_gia.html
 

Big John

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I've seen dozens of rationales for why Olynyk was a good pick but I'm not buying any of them. Ainge was at the beginning of a major rebuild in 2013, and he settled for a complementary player instead of going for the brass ring.

As for Yabu, who knows? He's pretty athletic for a man his size and he has a decent stroke. He was injured and missed Summer league plus a bunch of games earlier in the year. He obviously has a ton of improving to do, but it's too early to write him off. He won't turn 23 until next December.
 

HomeRunBaker

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I read somewhere that DA's biggest draft regret isn't GA. (It was Butler.) He said that they had seen GA plenty and they considered him but thy never saw him as an all-NBA candidate. KO was a good solid line drive to CF. GA turned out to be a Grand Slam but he also could have been Bruno Caboclo.

edit: here's a link: http://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2018/04/boston_celtics_danny_ainge_gia.html
As Big John points out, there is a time and place for line drives......like these next few summers. At the time of the Olynyk pick we needed to roll the dice on an impact player to build a foundation for when guys like Olynyk can provide value to a run. Olynyk provided little value as a role player on a rebuilding team at that time whereas his equivalent today would provide great value now that this foundation has been formed.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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As Big John points out, there is a time and place for line drives......like these next few summers. At the time of the Olynyk pick we needed to roll the dice on an impact player to build a foundation for when guys like Olynyk can provide value to a run. Olynyk provided little value as a role player on a rebuilding team at that time whereas his equivalent today would provide great value now that this foundation has been formed.
We've had this debate before. Going back to the 2013 draft, I had forgotten that DA hadn't yet traded KG and PP yet so we can't know what he was trying to do with that pick. Still, one could argue that consistently drafting NBA contributors might be a better way of rebuilding a team in a salary cap era than trying to hit home runs, in which case a team could end up like PHO.

Besides, in the vast expanses of the multiverse, I'm sure there's a universe out there where the Nets traded for 'Melo, the Cs took Giannis and couldn't give him the 25 minutes per night he got in MIL, and he never developed into an all-NBA potential . . . .
 

nighthob

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Having Giannis apprentice under one of the greatest big men in NBA history would not have stunted his development. If anything it would have made him even better.
 

HomeRunBaker

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We've had this debate before. Going back to the 2013 draft, I had forgotten that DA hadn't yet traded KG and PP yet so we can't know what he was trying to do with that pick. Still, one could argue that consistently drafting NBA contributors might be a better way of rebuilding a team in a salary cap era than trying to hit home runs, in which case a team could end up like PHO.

Besides, in the vast expanses of the multiverse, I'm sure there's a universe out there where the Nets traded for 'Melo, the Cs took Giannis and couldn't give him the 25 minutes per night he got in MIL, and he never developed into an all-NBA potential . . . .
* The Pierce/KG deal was agreed to in principal on draft night but couldn't become official until the moratorium on Kris Joseph's acquisition expired so make the numbers of the deal work. Ainge knew precisely what he was doing with that pick.

* There is little if any evidence to show that 25 or 15 or 10 mpg as a rookie would do anything to stunt a 19-years olds growth. The only thing I'm vocally against is gifting a young kid 35 mpg (think Antoine, Ron Mercer, Jennings, Mudiay, those types) as it could prove detrimental to their work ethic/commitment to improve.
 

beezer

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I read somewhere that DA's biggest draft regret isn't GA. (It was Butler.) He said that they had seen GA plenty and they considered him but thy never saw him as an all-NBA candidate. KO was a good solid line drive to CF. GA turned out to be a Grand Slam but he also could have been Bruno Caboclo.

edit: here's a link: http://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2018/04/boston_celtics_danny_ainge_gia.html
Ainge spoke about this on T&R 2 weeks ago. He mentioned specifically that there were doubts about whether Giannis' body could handle banging with NBA bigs. On the Butler regret, he talked about how Butler had fantastic workouts with them and the draft room was split between Butler and JuJuan Johnson.

Found the link:
https://985thesportshub.com/episodes/toucher-and-rich-danny-ainge-charas-youth-and-the-stack-hour-4/
 

BigSoxFan

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Ainge spoke about this on T&R 2 weeks ago. He mentioned specifically that there were doubts about whether Giannis' body could handle banging with NBA bigs. On the Butler regret, he talked about how Butler had fantastic workouts with them and the draft room was split between Butler and JuJuan Johnson.

Found the link:
https://985thesportshub.com/episodes/toucher-and-rich-danny-ainge-charas-youth-and-the-stack-hour-4/
Not going to ever criticize Ainge but his explanations are inconsistent. You don’t draft the Freak because you are concerned about his ability to handle the physicality of the NBA but 2 years earlier you took a 6’11 twig in Johnson over Butler.

Seems to me that this was simply a talent evaluation miss. Nobody saw his meteoric rise coming, even Milwaukee.

I used to whine about this pick a lot but now that we have Horford, Kyrie, Tatum, Brown, and Hayward, I’m in a much better spot! I think whining about this is like criticizing Belichick for missing out on a 3rd round player who turned into a Pro Bowler. Can’t bat 1.000.
 

Reverend

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Not going to ever criticize Ainge but his explanations are inconsistent. You don’t draft the Freak because you are concerned about his ability to handle the physicality of the NBA but 2 years earlier you took a 6’11 twig in Johnson over Butler.

Seems to me that this was simply a talent evaluation miss. Nobody saw his meteoric rise coming, even Milwaukee.

I used to whine about this pick a lot but now that we have Horford, Kyrie, Tatum, Brown, and Hayward, I’m in a much better spot! I think whining about this is like criticizing Belichick for missing out on a 3rd round player who turned into a Pro Bowler. Can’t bat 1.000.
Couldn't this be construed as an attempt to, like, learn?

Or am I misunderstanding?
 

RetractableRoof

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Not going to ever criticize Ainge but his explanations are inconsistent. You don’t draft the Freak because you are concerned about his ability to handle the physicality of the NBA but 2 years earlier you took a 6’11 twig in Johnson over Butler.

Seems to me that this was simply a talent evaluation miss. Nobody saw his meteoric rise coming, even Milwaukee.

I used to whine about this pick a lot but now that we have Horford, Kyrie, Tatum, Brown, and Hayward, I’m in a much better spot! I think whining about this is like criticizing Belichick for missing out on a 3rd round player who turned into a Pro Bowler. Can’t bat 1.000.
Perhaps that 6'11" twig in Johnson contributed to his reluctance to drafting the Freak?
 

nighthob

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The difference was that the 18 year old Greek Freak was more physically developed than the 22 year old J3, who'd already put on a bunch of weight over the course of his NCAA career. And J3 wasn't anything like the athlete Giannis was.

Put another way, J3 was a finished product with very little physical projection left. I think that it just was a case of bad talent evaluation. I will say that draft night 2011 was one of the worst of my life and I will go to my grave believing that the 2012 Celtics would have won the title had they listened to me (I was all in on Butler and Lil' Zeke, and having Thomas would have helped Boston weather Wade's antics in the 2012 playoffs).
 

nighthob

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Drafting at the end of the first round is also different than the middle of the first round.
Yes and no. In most cases you're still playing roulette, it's just the further out you go the more Russian the roulette wheel looks...
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I'll never know for sure, but I think DA didn't draft Bender for the same reason - he was too skinny.

As for the minutes issue, I'll just say that in the Jaylen Brown piece from MacMullen today (great read; link in the JB thread), Gerald Green has this to say: "I've seen young guys break down. They're cruising along, playing great, then their minutes get funky and they fall apart. Some of them never recover. That didn't happen with Jaylen."

As Cam Newton says, "Hindsight is always 50-50".
 

JakeRae

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As Big John points out, there is a time and place for line drives......like these next few summers. At the time of the Olynyk pick we needed to roll the dice on an impact player to build a foundation for when guys like Olynyk can provide value to a run. Olynyk provided little value as a role player on a rebuilding team at that time whereas his equivalent today would provide great value now that this foundation has been formed.
Did Olynyk not provide value in helping this team show it could compete in the playoffs sufficiently to lure Horford? Did he not provide value in the same way the following year leading to the Kyrie and Hayward moves?

My point is not that Giannis, as he turned out, wouldn't have done more than that. My point is that Olynyk mattered because he helped this team win in both the regular season and playoffs and that helped the team recruit the higher end talent it now has on the roster.
 

Imbricus

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As Cam Newton says, "Hindsight is always 50-50".
Not quite a Yogi-ism, because 50/50 is the same as 20/20. :)

I didn't see the game last night, but I was predicting they'd get blown out in Milwaukee in at least one game (not that that's a really bold prediction, what with no Kyrie and no Smart). The box score was interesting, because it shows no one really stepped up to fill the alpha dog scorer role (or tried to). Monroe's 4-12 FG and 5 turnovers caught my eye -- I've noticed that he can be very slick inside one-on-one with his spin moves, but he seems to get discombobulated fast when another big guy collapses on him.

Anyway, I realize this is a Yabu thread. I see he only got 7 minutes last night. I thought Brad said he was going to play him more because he fit better with the matchups. Seems like a blowout would be a good time to get him out there.