I miss Danny's drafting...

[vjcsmoke]

Agreed -- Danny was really fun to have around at draft time. He was a REALLY good drafter, except if the pick was in the teens of the 1st round...... in which case he was straight trash.

Maybe I'm just forgetting some of the busts but off the top of my head I can think of:

Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk, James Young, Rozier, Yabu, Langford, Nesmith

Jefferson and Bradley are home runs. Nesmith, Olynyk and Rozier are very solid picks. Young, Green, Yabusele and Langford are busts.

I think to come out of that range with 5 hits and 4 misses is actually quite good.

The worst miss will be taking Kelly Olynyk instead of Giannis Antetokounmpo.

We took a stretch 3-and-D big over an annual MVP candidate.  That one will always sting.

I think the value of late round guys like Jefferson was more in the FLIP. We moved Jefferson, a couple of 1st round picks and other minor pieces for KG which led to our championship team of 2007. That was HUGE!

I can remember plenty of late 1st round defense-first guards who had zero offensive game that Danny picked but who cares. We have to live with the mistakes because in the end he built us a championship team in 2007 and his all-time great heist of the Brooklyn Nets helped build the foundation of the Celtics team that won it all in 2024.

Danny wasn't perfect as a GM but when he made big moves, they were astronomically brilliant. Sadly many teams became reluctant to trade with DA after the big Brooklyn move because they were too afraid to get embarrassed in the deal.

[jambr380]

Agreed -- Danny was really fun to have around at draft time. He was a REALLY good drafter, except if the pick was in the teens of the 1st round...... in which case he was straight trash.

Maybe I'm just forgetting some of the busts but off the top of my head I can think of:

Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk, James Young, Rozier, Yabu, Langford, Nesmith

Jefferson and Bradley are home runs. Nesmith, Olynyk and Rozier are very solid picks. Young, Green, Yabusele and Langford are busts.

I think to come out of that range with 5 hits and 4 misses is actually quite good.

And two of the guys you are calling busts were big parts of franchise altering trades for us. Green helped get us KG and Langford helped get us White. So from a value perspective for the Celtics specifically, they were actually quite useful.

Green definitely wasn't an all-out bust, though. He had a 12 year NBA career, although much of that came after he returned from a couple of years overseas. I was happy we got him back for another run during the IT King of the 4th season.

[libermaniac]

Need we discuss the disaster that was the 2015 and 2016 drafts after our first picks?  Has the 7-year stretch of Demetrius Jackson come off the books yet?  Fred VanVleet was just sitting there as we burned through second-rounder after second-rounder in 2016, and the only reason those two drafts weren?t even worse is because Pat Riley refused to take a gazillion picks for Justise Winslow, so we didn?t trade the picks that ultimately became Terry Rozier and Jaylen Brown.

And Danny didn?t look so squeaky in 2019 and 2020 either.

You seem to be demanding perfection.

It's also weird that you criticize the 2015 and 2016 drafts, which glossing over us getting Brown, as if that was the obvious selection.  And what was wrong with Rozier?

I ignored those picks largely because I thought your premise was picks outside the top 20 (which made sense to me because Brad has never had such a pick).

In 2015 and 2016 he made the following picks:

28 - RJ Hunter
33 - Jordan Mickey
45 - Marcus Thornton
23 - Ante Zizic
45 - Demetrius Jackson
51- Ben Bentil
58 - Abel Nader

And he traded away 31 and 35 in 2016 as well.

The overall point is Ainge made a lot of bad picks.  He made some good picks as well.  He made a LOT of picks.  Stevens has made very few picks, and of those few picks, probably the only one we can make a final judgment on is Begarin.  The other point is that Ainge?s best later picks came earlier in his tenure.  Whether that is because he got worse at drafting, everyone else got better so there were fewer diamonds in the rough, or just the structure of the team he was drafting into (the mid-aught rebuild years) is up to interpretation.

In 2023 and 2024, the Jazz and Celts were similarly situated.

Would you prefer Sensabaugh and Filipowski, or Walsh and Scheirman plus future #2s?

Brad didn?t trade down from 25 in 2023 for talent alone. He did it to manage the second apron ramifications. Same reason he traded down from 32 this year.

And you can?t compare Jazz players numbers to Celtics. Totally different situation. Give it time on Schierman. How impressed was everyone with Payton Pritchard after his rookie year?

Finally, when Ainge made decisions for financial ramifications, like 2016, the results were horrendous. Two horrible draft and stash players in Yabusele and Zizic instead of DeJounte and Siakim.

[Roy H.]

Need we discuss the disaster that was the 2015 and 2016 drafts after our first picks?  Has the 7-year stretch of Demetrius Jackson come off the books yet?  Fred VanVleet was just sitting there as we burned through second-rounder after second-rounder in 2016, and the only reason those two drafts weren?t even worse is because Pat Riley refused to take a gazillion picks for Justise Winslow, so we didn?t trade the picks that ultimately became Terry Rozier and Jaylen Brown.

And Danny didn?t look so squeaky in 2019 and 2020 either.

You seem to be demanding perfection.

It's also weird that you criticize the 2015 and 2016 drafts, which glossing over us getting Brown, as if that was the obvious selection.  And what was wrong with Rozier?

I ignored those picks largely because I thought your premise was picks outside the top 20 (which made sense to me because Brad has never had such a pick).

In 2015 and 2016 he made the following picks:

28 - RJ Hunter
33 - Jordan Mickey
45 - Marcus Thornton
23 - Ante Zizic
45 - Demetrius Jackson
51- Ben Bentil
58 - Abel Nader

And he traded away 31 and 35 in 2016 as well.

The overall point is Ainge made a lot of bad picks.  He made some good picks as well.  He made a LOT of picks.  Stevens has made very few picks, and of those few picks, probably the only one we can make a final judgment on is Begarin.  The other point is that Ainge?s best later picks came earlier in his tenure.  Whether that is because he got worse at drafting, everyone else got better so there were fewer diamonds in the rough, or just the structure of the team he was drafting into (the mid-aught rebuild years) is up to interpretation.

In 2023 and 2024, the Jazz and Celts were similarly situated.

Would you prefer Sensabaugh and Filipowski, or Walsh and Scheirman plus future #2s?

Brad didn?t trade down from 25 in 2023 for talent alone. He did it to manage the second apron ramifications. Same reason he traded down from 32 this year.

And you can?t compare Jazz players numbers to Celtics. Totally different situation. Give it time on Schierman. How impressed was everyone with Payton Pritchard after his rookie year?

Finally, when Ainge made decisions for financial ramifications, like 2016, the results were horrendous. Two horrible draft and stash players in Yabusele and Zizic instead of DeJounte and Siakim.

Brad's job is to add talent to the roster.  Losing talent to acquire second rounders that he then misses on isn't sensible.

And, why hold Danny to a perfection standard, saying he should have always nailed the best available player?  He stashed players due to a roster crunch; our roster currently has Davison and Walsh.

Danny is a better drafter.  Full stop. 

[libermaniac]

Need we discuss the disaster that was the 2015 and 2016 drafts after our first picks?  Has the 7-year stretch of Demetrius Jackson come off the books yet?  Fred VanVleet was just sitting there as we burned through second-rounder after second-rounder in 2016, and the only reason those two drafts weren?t even worse is because Pat Riley refused to take a gazillion picks for Justise Winslow, so we didn?t trade the picks that ultimately became Terry Rozier and Jaylen Brown.

And Danny didn?t look so squeaky in 2019 and 2020 either.

You seem to be demanding perfection.

It's also weird that you criticize the 2015 and 2016 drafts, which glossing over us getting Brown, as if that was the obvious selection.  And what was wrong with Rozier?

I ignored those picks largely because I thought your premise was picks outside the top 20 (which made sense to me because Brad has never had such a pick).

In 2015 and 2016 he made the following picks:

28 - RJ Hunter
33 - Jordan Mickey
45 - Marcus Thornton
23 - Ante Zizic
45 - Demetrius Jackson
51- Ben Bentil
58 - Abel Nader

And he traded away 31 and 35 in 2016 as well.

The overall point is Ainge made a lot of bad picks.  He made some good picks as well.  He made a LOT of picks.  Stevens has made very few picks, and of those few picks, probably the only one we can make a final judgment on is Begarin.  The other point is that Ainge?s best later picks came earlier in his tenure.  Whether that is because he got worse at drafting, everyone else got better so there were fewer diamonds in the rough, or just the structure of the team he was drafting into (the mid-aught rebuild years) is up to interpretation.

In 2023 and 2024, the Jazz and Celts were similarly situated.

Would you prefer Sensabaugh and Filipowski, or Walsh and Scheirman plus future #2s?

Brad didn?t trade down from 25 in 2023 for talent alone. He did it to manage the second apron ramifications. Same reason he traded down from 32 this year.

And you can?t compare Jazz players numbers to Celtics. Totally different situation. Give it time on Schierman. How impressed was everyone with Payton Pritchard after his rookie year?

Finally, when Ainge made decisions for financial ramifications, like 2016, the results were horrendous. Two horrible draft and stash players in Yabusele and Zizic instead of DeJounte and Siakim.

Brad's job is to add talent to the roster.  Losing talent to acquire second rounders that he then misses on isn't sensible.

And, why hold Danny to a perfection standard, saying he should have always nailed the best available player?  He stashed players due to a roster crunch; our roster currently has Davison and Walsh.

Danny is a better drafter.  Full stop.

I?m not holding Danny to a perfection standard. I was pointing out that when Danny also made moves for salary cap or current roster construction reasons he also didn?t ?draft well. Brad is not done adding talent to the roster. He deemed it better in 2023 and this year to get out of salary commitments to drafted players and instead spend that on veterans. He won the title based on his decisions in 2023. And this year he?s still right up against the 2nd apron. Signing a regular contract at 32 would likely impact how he adds to our front court in free agency.

There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s. I think Schierman and Gonzalez both have intriguing potential. It?s way too early to dismiss Brad?s drafting skills.

[Roy H.]

[There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s.

Full stop. 

[libermaniac]

[There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s.

Full stop.

You strike me as a guy who doesn?t understand what a small sample size is.

[Roy H.]

[There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s.

Full stop.

You strike me as a guy who doesn?t understand what a small sample size is.

You strike me as a guy that doesn't understand that results matter..

[libermaniac]

[There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s.

Full stop.

You strike me as a guy who doesn?t understand what a small sample size is.

You strike me as a guy that doesn't understand that results matter..

You mean like winning a Championship? 🤔

[Roy H.]

[There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s.

Full stop.

You strike me as a guy who doesn?t understand what a small sample size is.

You strike me as a guy that doesn't understand that results matter..

You mean like winning a Championship? 🤔

One championship = small sample size, right?

You also strike me as a guy that doesn't understand that somebody could be lacking in certain areas, but very good in others.

Danny is a better drafter.

[libermaniac]

[There?s no way you can say FULL STOP yet as Brad?s resume is totally incomplete compared to Danny?s.

Full stop.

You strike me as a guy who doesn?t understand what a small sample size is.

You strike me as a guy that doesn't understand that results matter..

You mean like winning a Championship? 🤔

One championship = small sample size, right?

You also strike me as a guy that doesn't understand that somebody could be lacking in certain areas, but very good in others.

Danny is a better drafter.

After Brad has made more than one first round pick that?s played in the NBA and we?ve had a chance to watch them play for a few years, I?d be perfectly willing to admit it if he can?t draft. But why would a guy who?s coached at both levels and has proven he can evaluate talent at the NBA level, as well as the high school level for recruiting, have a blind spot when it comes to draft talent? It?s possible, but unlikely. The variance is more than likely attributed to small sample size. Come on, you?re a bright enough guy. You have to admit that?s a possibility. Unless, and this is what I?m suspecting, you just want to argue for arguments sake.

[slightly biased bias fan]

Agreed -- Danny was really fun to have around at draft time. He was a REALLY good drafter, except if the pick was in the teens of the 1st round...... in which case he was straight trash.

Maybe I'm just forgetting some of the busts but off the top of my head I can think of:

Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk, James Young, Rozier, Yabu, Langford, Nesmith

Jefferson and Bradley are home runs. Nesmith, Olynyk and Rozier are very solid picks. Young, Green, Yabusele and Langford are busts.

I think to come out of that range with 5 hits and 4 misses is actually quite good.

The worst miss will be taking Kelly Olynyk instead of Giannis Antetokounmpo.

We took a stretch 3-and-D big over an annual MVP candidate.  That one will always sting.

I think the value of late round guys like Jefferson was more in the FLIP. We moved Jefferson, a couple of 1st round picks and other minor pieces for KG which led to our championship team of 2007. That was HUGE!

I can remember plenty of late 1st round defense-first guards who had zero offensive game that Danny picked but who cares. We have to live with the mistakes because in the end he built us a championship team in 2007 and his all-time great heist of the Brooklyn Nets helped build the foundation of the Celtics team that won it all in 2024.

Danny wasn't perfect as a GM but when he made big moves, they were astronomically brilliant. Sadly many teams became reluctant to trade with DA after the big Brooklyn move because they were too afraid to get embarrassed in the deal.

I have posted this a while back & I will post this one more time when it comes to that draft.

Yes every team went to watch Giannis play before the draft, but Giannis was playing in division two Greece at the time. The standard of opposition he was playing against would not have been Div 2 college teams.

Giannis not only refused to work out or interview with the Celtics, but refused access to his medicals too. Milwaukee Bucks did get his medical information and because of that they could see Giannis growth plates had not closed. At the time Giannis was only 6-8 and without that 2-4 inch growth spurt, he would not be the same player that became MVP.

[Kernewek]

Again, my point is Danny had a large volume of picks, and it isn?t clear his success rate was great.  Stevens has had a small volume of picks, and it also isn?t clear his success rate has been great (in large part because we really can?t know the results of most of them yet).

What do you consider a good success rate though?

I've always felt drafting (especially later in the draft) should be looked at more like a baseball batting average (where hitting .250 is average,.300 is really good), as opposed to FT% (where ~75% is average, above 80% is good). Not that these should be the actual benchmarks, just directionally speaking.

Count me among those happy with Danny's drafting, though will admit he had many misses. Part of his success was he set himself up for many bites at the apple.

And let's shout out the Tatum and Brown picks. There's probably 29 GMs taking Fultz and Ball before Tatum. And most of the mocks had Jaylen Brown going #8. After that gutsy Tatum draft move, I'm 100% in the "Danny would have been the only GM to draft Durant over Oden" camp had the ping pong balls worked out that way.



I do one day hope to see what Brad can do in the draft, especially if he has a lot of picks in a rebuilding era (not that I'm hoping for a rebuilding era). You'd think a guy that turned a mid-major college program to a major, the guy that helped Isaiah Thomas turn into an MVP candidate, Jordan Clarkson into Player of the Week, and had a lot of career role players who played their best ball or revitalized their careers under him (Bradley, Crowder, Marcus Morris, Evan Turner, Sullinger, etc.), you'd think a guy like that would be able to pull the Kawhi Leonards, Draymond Greens, Pascal Siakims, Jimmy Butlers, Khris Middletons, Malcolm Brogdons out of the draft. Time will tell.

I think this is more or less where I sit, as well. Drafting well with any consistency is very difficult, and involves a serious element of luck even when you have the best basketball minds in the room making the decisions, because even with all the advances in analytics, the odds of someone reaching their potential are still largely a mystery.

Comparing Ainge vs. Stevens as drafters across their tenure with the C"s is difficult because they've been tasked with very different organisational goals so far, Stevens hasn't really had to rebuild the team from scratch with a combination of draft picks & trades the way Ainge did when he joined the team in 2003 (22 years ago).