I’ve stumbled upon an amazing yet sad statistic.
Although Lonzo Ball & Jayson Tatum were both from the 2017 draft (2nd & 3rd). Tatum has already played 200 + more regular season games than Ball.
But wait…it gets worse. If you include post season games, Tatum has played 284 (536) more NBA games than Ball (252).
Why is that amazing? It barely registers interesting. If you'd looked a bit further, you'd have noticed that Fultz the #1 pick in that draft has only played 195 regular season games. So Tatum has almost played as many regular season games (442) as Fultz and Ball combined (447). And if you look at it from a regular season minutes played perspective Tatum (15024) has played more than Fultz (5144) and Ball (8187) combined.
Why is it sad? Ball has made a lot of money and he wasn't a budding superstar whose career was cut short. Even if he stayed healthy, he was just going to be a solid NBA starter.
Not to mention #4 pick Josh Jackson only played 291 regular-season games and #6 Jonathan Isaac has played only 150 games.
Although Fox, my fav in that draft, has done quite well. Celts definitely won that draft and trader Danny showed why he is the master. Trade down and get the guy you really want.
Oddly enough, Danny's biggest mistake was getting too clever with the pick we got from Philly. We only got the Lakers pick if it was top five. If we'd settled for the Lakers pick with lesser protections, we could have drafted Mikal Bridges or SGA.
Yeah, he put too much faith in the Kings being bad. I can't entirely blame him for that, but making that 2-10 instead of 2-5 would have been way better in hindsight
At the time, I don't think anyone was concerned about the protections. Everyone thought the Kings would be bad and the pick would be great. It still ended up being the #14 pick if I'm not mistaken. From an Ainge mistake standpoint, it does rank with trading up to take Olynyk instead of Giannis was a big mistake or passing twice on Bane at the end of the 1st round.
As for huge mistakes, the Sixers did draft Bridges but then traded him for a player whose career consisted of 13 games played over 2 seasons. Mistakes don't get much worse than that. To top it off, Bridges is a born and raised Philly boy.