The Draft Pick That Celtics Management Regrets The Most

[Roy H.]

Or at least will admit to:

Zarren has been in the NBA long enough to realize that you’re not going to hit a home run with every draft pick.

But he readily admits the 2011 draft is one that the Celtics whiffed on by not taking Butler.

"The one that we talk about the most internally is Jimmy Butler and JaJuan Johnson," Zarren said. “Every team has tons of these stories. We had it narrowed down to those two guys and picked the wrong one."

Zarren added, “We should have picked Jimmy and we didn’t.”

Folks often want to talk with Zarren about the 2013 NBA Draft when the Celtics traded up to select Kelly Olynyk and not Giannis Antetokounmpo, who went Milwaukee at No. 15 -- two spots behind Boston taking Olynyk at No. 13.

But as Zarren and several NBA executives pointed out then and afterwards, Antetokounmpo's play in Greece gave very little insight into how he eventually grew into being a league MVP.

“Look, I defy anyone to look at his statistics or his performance in Greece and learn that he was going to grow a bunch of inches and become the MVP of the league,” Zarren said. “I don’t think Milwaukee knew that either.”

Zarren added, “I feel worse about the Jimmy one because we had it narrowed down to two guys.”

[BE-Celtic]

Overall, I think that the Celtics have been very good at drafting in recent years. Of course you can miss out on someone but nothing says that the player would have been that good in your team, your system etc. Look how many franchises Butler went through before finding his spot in Miami...

I've seen someone post recently on Twitter the number of playoffs wins for players who had been drafter in the top 10 in the recent years : Marcus Smart has 28 wins, the rest of the top 10 combines for 26

https://twitter.com/Timi_093/status/1304803010737065985

He did the same for Brown and Tatum and the result is pretty much the same. So I think C's have been very good at building the team, especially from a defensive perspective.

As for Giannis, I would agree that NBA tends to overlook european players, but it might be because I'm from Europe   

[boscel33]

I'm going back in time, I think that Michael Smith pick in 89 they regret a lot!  Hardaway, Barros, Kemp, Armstrong and Divac all went in the first after. 

[gouki88]

That draft really bothers me. Not only did we not persevere with Moore, who has grown into a really handy bench player since leaving Boston, but we didn't pick Butler either. Argh

[mobilija]

The regret might be heading towards letting Riley sneak in and grab Herro ahead of Our pick...

[Yoki_IsTheName]

Overall, I think that the Celtics have been very good at drafting in recent years. Of course you can miss out on someone but nothing says that the player would have been that good in your team, your system etc. Look how many franchises Butler went through before finding his spot in Miami...

I've seen someone post recently on Twitter the number of playoffs wins for players who had been drafter in the top 10 in the recent years : Marcus Smart has 28 wins, the rest of the top 10 combines for 26

https://twitter.com/Timi_093/status/1304803010737065985

He did the same for Brown and Tatum and the result is pretty much the same. So I think C's have been very good at building the team, especially from a defensive perspective.

As for Giannis, I would agree that NBA tends to overlook european players, but it might be because I'm from Europe   

And there was not a lot to go on with Giannis at the time too, he wasn't heavily scouted. Teams just knew how athletic of a freak he is, but not a lot of teams are sure if he will develop into this behemoth of a skilled player.