here is an interested set of points on having soooo many picks, some which i saw over on SOSH. the celtics are about to face a major roster crunch from having too many young players with guaranteed contracts.
aside from 2015, keep in mind as noted above that in 2016 the celtics have another 4 first round picks and 4 2nd round picks. (please check me on this since it seems an almost absurd amount of picks.)
even with free agents leaving, contracts expiring, blah, that means the celtics have 3-4 players more than you'd expect to have in your regular rotation due to first rounder alone. also, i haven't included possible veteran signings or the likelihood that a credible player might come out of one of 2nd rounders. and i expect ainge to score on at least one of his second rounders.
the point here is that there will be a roster crunch pretty quickly...simply too many guaranteed contracts are on the immediate horizon.
so, what solutions are there for this embarrassment of riches?
one possible solution is the obvious one - package them for a smaller number of very high picks. the straightforward answer is, of course, simple ... trade a bundle of the so-so picks for something in the top 5. that solution leads us to this interesting study done on the value of draft picks.
fivethirtyeight.com did a study (http://fivethirtyeig...y-really-worth/) suggesting that the proper value for four non-lottery first rounders is approximately the third and fourth picks in a typical draft. ok, but that strikes me as more than most GMs would actually give the celtics. picks that high up in the draft are valued too highly by most GMs who are all praying for the next lebron. so while tempting, this is an unlikely scenario. so let's look at other possible scenarios.
next would be for ainge to package his many pennies, nickels, and dimes for a smaller number of quarters and dollars. that is, as with the KG and ray trades, use the first rounders with other assets to grab the big star. this reduces the roster crunch. ainge has done an incredible job of acquiring a range of resources, including picks, a range of salaries, TE, etc. and ainge is one of the most "wheeling and dealing" GMs in the nba. he is a gambler and now he has chips to play with.
third, ainge might simple play leapfrog with the picks, ala the play for olly last year. for example, use picks 22 and 24 to grab a player at 17. or use 10 and 20 to move up to 8. if another team at 8 thinks their player will still there at 10, they will probably bite on such an offer. while this may not place the celtics in the top 5 picks, it does allow ainge the chance to grab a great player that is falling...and as we know with pierce and rondo, sometimes that happens.
a fourth option is open to ainge, one in which there's more value in keeping the picks, though that may bring us back to the problem of the pending roster crunch. it may be wise to draw upon one of danny's true talents - spotting talent in the late-first-round. danny's been good at finding late first-round gems and with so many such picks, it might be more sensible to take players with question marks and high upside like marvelous-melo (tm), rondo, and sullinger, knowing that it's a good thing to miss some of the time. remember, the nba average for getting a credible player late in the first round is around 25%, danny does better historically. this means that the celtics would select "high risk, high ceiling" players intentionally betting that half or more would never last in the nba. danny would swing for the fences with each and every pick and say "screw it" to selecting nice, safe role players.
final option, i suppose keeping players overseas for a season or two is another option. but this only postpones the pending roster crunch, which while better than nothing, does not resolve it. nor are there enough good players would be a fit here, but it is one possibilty.
so, after all that, i ask the collective wisdom of cb - what's the best plan here? package assets? or be like big papi and swing for the fences with most of these picks and assume that you'll hit on some, miss on others?
First of all, great post and TP. I'd heard of the 25% figure before and I know Danny is quite good at spotting late round talent, certainly better than 25%, but how much better do we think? And are there any other GMs (Presti? Buford?) with a similarly impressive track record?
Rondo, Big Al, Perk, Tony Allen, Delonte West, Big Baby - all great picks. For the past 10 or so years, I've been making my own picks before Danny gets his in on draft night and I wanted all those guys independently of Danny except Perk and Delonte. I also thought Gerald Green was the best pick to make at the time and now with Granger gone. So that's quite good. But...
Gabe Pruit over Josh McRobberts was dumb then and it's dumb now. JR Giddens over DeAndre was even dumber, and both fit the same profile - not that young of a guard / wing from a non powerhouse school over a high profile high school big man turned promising 1&Done frosh. With a low first rounder it made no sense to avoid the hi-reward option at a harder to fill spot.
Fab Melo was just idiotic and Perry Jones probably wasn't the best player there but he seemed obvious to me, freshman potential top 5 pick before the season... or a 7 footer who put up 7 and 5 in Year 2 and clearly did not know how to play basketball. Now apparently Melo over PJ is a message board travesty, but it kinda was then too.
There's 3 or 4 late round picks that were obviously botched, obviously. Historically I'm good at draft analysis, I could never be a GM, but I honestly think Danny's rep as a late-round starter-finder is a bit overblown. No one hits them all, and hindsight is 20/20, but most of those late round steals are a few years back or more- the Colangelo era of GMs. Now we're in the Presti- Sam Hinkie - asset collector / portfolio builder era. First rounders are generally hard to get (except for us apparently, credit to Danny) and the league braintrust is smarter, more patient.
Bottom line, in one sentence, I think Danny's late round prowess is real and well above average but not best in the league or glorification-worthy. I do wonder if there are fewer chances now.
Topic: Celtics have 8 picks in the 2016 NBA Draft (Read 22791 times)