We'll know the fate of Giddens today...

[JPMmiles]

So the total of Celtics' expiring contracts increases by $1.1 million at 6:30 this evening? Can't say it would be a surprise.

As for the vaunted draft expertise of one Daniel Ainge I'm not sure his prowess is so great:

2003 Dahntay Jones and Troy Bell - which he traded away for Kendrick Perkins and Marcus Banks

2004 Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Brandon Hunter

2005 Gerald Green, Oriene Green, Ryan Gomes

2006 Randy Foye - who was then traded for Sebastian Telfair

2007 Gabe Pruitt, Jeff Green - traded to Seattle with others for Ray Allen and rights to Glen Davis

2008 J. R. Giddens, Semih Erden

2009 Lester Hudson

Let me help you out here:

2003 Kendrick Perkins and Marcus Banks

2004 Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Brandon Hunter

2005 Gerald Green, Oriene Green, Ryan Gomes

2006 traded for Sebastian Telfair, Rondo, Powe

2007 Gabe Pruitt, a trade to Seattle with others for Ray Allen and rights to Glen Davis

2008 J. R. Giddens, Bill Walker, Semih Erden

2009 Lester Hudson

I'm ignoring the last two years as there is little to no data on those guys.  Is it because they are terrible or because they were drafting players onto a championship team?  

So really, you look at that list from 2003 - 2007, and who stands out?  

Marcus Banks - he was traded for Wally and Kandi.  Wally was then part of the Ray Allen trade.  WIN.

Brandon Hunter - you could do worse with the number 56 spot than take a rebounding specialist.  It didn't work out, but c'mon.  It's the number 56 pick.

Gerald Green - This is the big one.  He was a sure thing and we blew a reasonably high draft pick on him.  He was a part of the Garnett trade, but a very minor one, obviously.

Oriene Greene -  bust.  But a #53 bust, so who cares.

Telfair - Sucked, but helped get us Garnett.  I'd call this a draw.

Gabe Pruitt - bust.  But at #32, only a handful of players drafted after him turned out better, and we gone one of them (Big Baby).

Otherwise you're looking at:

Perk
Big Al
Delonte
Tony Allen - not awesome, but a solid pick
Ryan Gomes - a steal at #50
Rondo
Powe
and a trade that netted Ray and Baby
and a trade that set us up for another trade that turned into Garnett (this one is a bit of a reach, I'll admit)

I'll take that track record any day of the week.  Let's also keep in mind that the Celtics have only kept and used one draft pick in the top 10 in the last 10 years (Joe Johnson - 2001 #10), so the kind of talent that you might see drafted by other teams just won't be there.  
It's easy to forget, but the Celtics only had one terrible year before the big 3 arrived.  Otherwise it was season after season of just barely making (or just barely missing) the playoffs.  That doesn't yield a lot of high picks.

[BballTim]

So the total of Celtics' expiring contracts increases by $1.1 million at 6:30 this evening? Can't say it would be a surprise.

As for the vaunted draft expertise of one Daniel Ainge I'm not sure his prowess is so great:

2003 Dahntay Jones and Troy Bell - which he traded away for Kendrick Perkins and Marcus Banks

2004 Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Brandon Hunter

2005 Gerald Green, Oriene Green, Ryan Gomes

2006 Randy Foye - who was then traded for Sebastian Telfair

2007 Gabe Pruitt, Jeff Green - traded to Seattle with others for Ray Allen and rights to Glen Davis

2008 J. R. Giddens, Semih Erden

2009 Lester Hudson


Now granted, Danny did turn some of these draft picks into Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, eventually, and was also good enough to target Kendrick Perkins, Glen Davis, and Rajon Rondo as talents and trade for their rights, but strictly as a drafter of talent I would say he is okay. Nothing special. He has made his bed with this current team through trades, IMO, not through drafting.

I mean end results of draft day and draft day trades have been exceptional but without the words  "draft day trades" I can't use the word exceptional. There have been a bunch of bad acquisitions on draft day as well.

Brandon Hunter
Marcus Banks
Sebastian Telfair
Oriene Greene
Gerald Green
J. R. Giddens
Gabe Pruitt
Brandon Hunter
Tony Allen

For six years of drafting and acquiring, that's a lot of misses as well. The thing is for every one of his misses he hits huge. Overall the effect is excellent but whether he can continue to parlay his current talent into draft day giant successes will remain to be seen now that the well of good young talent is running dry.

  On those draft day trades they were pretty much all pre-arranged deals, so basically Ainge drafted who we ended up with. It's not like we traded with Seattle after they drafted Davis. It's not like weeks passed before he traded for Perkins and Banks. Most of the misses were late 1st rounders or 2nd rounders. If you include all of the late picks every team in the league would probably have more misses than Ainge. Considering the only top 12 picks went towards KG and Ray, getting Al, Perk, Gomes, Rondo and West is pretty impressive.

[fairweatherfan]

Danny has been exceptionally good with 2nd rd picks, and pretty mediocre with 1sts.  Giddens is on that second list. 

I don't think "pretty mediocre" is fair, either.  He's landed two legit stars (Big Al, Rondo), a starter on a championship team (Perk), and a starter on a 66 win team (Delonte).  None of those picks were higher than 15th in the draft.

He's missed on one late lottery pick (Banks), on the 18th pick in the draft (Gerald, who is still a defensible pick), and on the last pick in the first round (Giddens).  Depending upon how you saw Tony Allen before his knee injury, he's either a slight miss or a fairly neutral selection.

How many GMs who haven't made a pick higher than 13th can say they drafted players of the quality of Big Al, Rondo, Delonte, and Perk?

Yeah, that's fair - I guess maybe the "what if" of a guy like Brandon Roy or the other players we passed on in other drafts can tend to cloud my impressions.  His 1st round record is not as exemplary as his 2nd, but mediocre is probably underselling it by a good bit.

[BballTim]

I would be shocked if they picked up the option.  Right now, Gidden's only real value is as an extra body in practice, and as another small expiring contract to add to the others in a possible trade.

  Not that I think it will happen, but they can still sign him next year if they don't pick up his option (like TA).

[footey]

Danny has been exceptionally good with 2nd rd picks, and pretty mediocre with 1sts.  Giddens is on that second list. 

Giddens was the last pick in the first round, so the distinction between first and second round picks really has little bearing with respect to him.

[Finkelskyhook]

I think Danny drafted for raw talent in the first round with the intention of trading them at some point.  He chose experienced players with some kind of issue (undersized / injury) who could contribute in the second round.

I've always thought Rivers is grossly overrated in here and everywhere else as a developer of players.  Perk and Jefferson were going nowhere until Clifford Ray came on board.  The defense was a collossal joke until Thibs came on board.

[Chris]

Danny has been exceptionally good with 2nd rd picks, and pretty mediocre with 1sts.  Giddens is on that second list. 

How so?

He "hit" on Gomes, although as I noted earlier my view of Gomes is as a fringe-player on a good team.  On a bad team he puts up numbers, but on the Celtics of today he's a ninth-man.

He "hit" on BBD, who IS a ninth-man on the current Celtics.  I don't think too many people view him as a legit NBA starter, as evidenced by the deafening silence when he was a free agent this summer.  Besides, if you want to give Danny a bit of a pass on Giddens because he was a very late 1st rounder, you need to take away a little credit for BBD because he was nearly a first rounder.  

He "hit" on Powe, who's having the same injury problems that kept him out of the first round to begin with.

Who else that Danny drafted in the second round is still even in the league?

Best-case, that's three useable NBA players, but it's not like they're a Gilbert Arenas or Monta Ellis in there. 

How many GMs have a similar track record in the second round?  R.C. Buford, certainly.  Who else has added as many rotation players in the second round as Danny?  My guess is the list is very small.

Not sure about GMs, but just for fun, here are some second round "hits" since 2003 by different teams (and I am counting them on their overall performance in the NBA, not just the team that drafted them.  I have also done my best to list guys on the team that they ended up playing on during their rookie season, but I am not 100% positive of all of them.  So if anyone wants to correct it if players did not play for the teams that drafted them, feel free):

Cleveland: Jason Kapono (2003), Anderson Varajao (2004), Daniel Gibson (2006)
Lakers: Luke Walton (2003), Ronny Turiaf (2005), Von Wafer (2005), Marc Gasol (2007)
Washington: Steve Blake (2003), Andray Blatche (2005), Dominic McGuire (2007)
Seattle/OKC: Willie Green (2003), Kyle Weaver (2008)
Orlando: Zaur Pachulia (2003), Travis Diener (2005), Marcin Gortat (2005 from Phoenix)
Milwaukee: Keith Bogans (2003), Ersan Ilyasova (2005), Ramon Sessions (2007), Mbah ah Moute (2008)
Chicago: Matt Bonner (2003), Chris Duhon (2004), Aaron Gray (2007)
Utah: Mo Williams (2003), CJ Miles (2005), Paul Millsap (2006)
Indiana: James Jones (2003)
New Jersey: Kyle Korver (2003), Chris Douglas-Roberts (2008)
Atlanta: Royal Ivey (2004)
New York: Trevor Ariza (2004)
New Orleans: Brandon Bass (2005)
Golden State: Monta Ellis (2005)
Philly: Louis Williams (2005)
Celtics: Ryan Gomes (2005), Leon Powe (2006), Glen Davis (2007)
Detroit: Amir Johnson (2005)
Minnesota: Craig Smith (2006)
Charlotte: Ryan Hollins (2006)
Houston: Carl Landry (2007 from Seattle)
Miami: Mario Chalmers (2008)
Clippers: Deandre Jordan (2008)

So looking at this list, since Ainge has been here, I would put the C's near the top at second round drafting along with the Lakers, the Bullets, the Cavs (they also drafted Boozer the year right before I started this list from), the Magic (who would probably run away with this, if they hadn't traded away Andy), Milwaukee, Chicago, and Utah.  

I think this list helps to demonstrate that there really have been a lot of good draft picks in the second round, and there are some other teams that seem to have a knack for finding them.  

Some other interesting things is that the Spurs really haven't done a lot in the second round.  Most of their damage has been at the end of the first round. The same thing is the case with the Knicks, who other than Ariza, have not really had a second round keeper.  However, they have "reached" for several players in the first round, who were projected as second round talent (Chandler, Lee, Robinson), and ended up being very good.

[nickagneta]

Okay so maybe the way I formatted my info wasn't the best, okay maybe it sucked, but my point is still that I don't think Giddens is that rare a miss. You can color over all the mistakes he made on draft day as "eventually leading to Ray and KG" but at the time of those trades, the goal of KG and Ray were not the ultimate objective.

That 2006 handling of the #7 pick was a disaster in my mind. Say all you want about Theo's contract and Telfair being a part of the KG trade but I can then argue that if the C's don't make this trade then Minnesota would have drafted Foye and Boston would have drafted Brandon Roy. If after the rookie campaign that Roy had the C's then make the trade with Minnesota for KG maybe they don't have to give up Gomes if they are included Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy, Al Jefferson, the Celtics #1 pick, Minnesota's #1 pick back to them, Gerald Green and Raef LaFrentz. The KG trade could still have gone down without Theo's contract if we were including Roy.

So sorry, I don't give him a pass on that. And I think lots of GM's pick up serviceable players in the second round. No one the C''s have picked up in the second has been great, just okay to pretty good. The second round is littered with players the quality of Powe, Baby, and Gomes.

And sorry, I think Tony Allen was a bad pick. I think Giddens was a bad pick. I think Green was a bad pick. I think the 2006 #7 was handled awfully. Six drafts, 4 bad first round moves and one year without a first rounder because you might have had to overpay for KG with that first round pick because you mishandled they 2006 #7 pick.

Again, if I formatted the original way I tried to communicate this poorly, I apologize for starting misleading others but, Danny's record on drafts has been great overall but let's not color everything Celtic Green by saying he rarely misfires when it comes to the draft. He misfires a bunch, even if it is less than some.

[bbd24]

What this thread tells me is something I think I've already known for years.

We got a helluva GM and his number needs to be retired soon.  You see all the talent he's brought to the team and you realize just what he's done.  Shoot, even the coaches he's brought aboard have been gems.  Wyc and Pags made the right decision to bring #44 back to where he belongs.  Working in green.

[BballTim]

Okay so maybe the way I formatted my info wasn't the best, okay maybe it sucked, but my point is still that I don't think Giddens is that rare a miss. You can color over all the mistakes he made on draft day as "eventually leading to Ray and KG" but at the time of those trades, the goal of KG and Ray were not the ultimate objective.

That 2006 handling of the #7 pick was a disaster in my mind. Say all you want about Theo's contract and Telfair being a part of the KG trade but I can then argue that if the C's don't make this trade then Minnesota would have drafted Foye and Boston would have drafted Brandon Roy. If after the rookie campaign that Roy had the C's then make the trade with Minnesota for KG maybe they don't have to give up Gomes if they are included Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy, Al Jefferson, the Celtics #1 pick, Minnesota's #1 pick back to them, Gerald Green and Raef LaFrentz. The KG trade could still have gone down without Theo's contract if we were including Roy.

  I think that, while we didn't know it at the time, getting Theo's contract to flip into a star player was clearly the goal of the Roy deal. Secondly, there's no guarantee that Minny still would have done the deal. Wasn't Theo's contract almost fully insured? The difference in cost to Minny is pretty substantial. Also, the total gain of the 20-20 hindsight dealings that may or may not prevent us from winning a title is Ryan Gomes, who probably wouldn't have gotten any decent minutes at all the year we won the title.

[RAcker]

What this thread tells me is something I think I've already known for years.

We got a helluva GM and his number needs to be retired soon.  You see all the talent he's brought to the team and you realize just what he's done.  Shoot, even the coaches he's brought aboard have been gems.  Wyc and Pags made the right decision to bring #44 back to where he belongs.  Working in green.

Amen and TP.

[fairweatherfan]

Long list of 2nd rd picks

TP for the research - I don't think Danny's necessarily the best GM in the league at finding 2nd rd talent, but he's clearly got one of the best records since he's been here.  Also, I wouldn't count him as a "hit" yet by any means, but Lester has already overachieved for a 60th pick just by making the roster, especially of an elite team like ours. 

[Chris]

Long list of 2nd rd picks

TP for the research - I don't think Danny's necessarily the best GM in the league at finding 2nd rd talent, but he's clearly got one of the best records since he's been here.  Also, I wouldn't count him as a "hit" yet by any means, but Lester has already overachieved for a 60th pick just by making the roster, especially of an elite team like ours. 

Yeah, I wasn't going to include anyone from this years draft, just because there is nowhere near enough evidence yet.  But I would agree that Lester looks like he could be a keeper.

[P2]

So the total of Celtics' expiring contracts increases by $1.1 million at 6:30 this evening? Can't say it would be a surprise.

As for the vaunted draft expertise of one Daniel Ainge I'm not sure his prowess is so great:

2003 Dahntay Jones and Troy Bell - which he traded away for Kendrick Perkins and Marcus Banks

2004 Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Brandon Hunter

2005 Gerald Green, Oriene Green, Ryan Gomes

2006 Randy Foye - who was then traded for Sebastian Telfair

2007 Gabe Pruitt, Jeff Green - traded to Seattle with others for Ray Allen and rights to Glen Davis

2008 J. R. Giddens, Semih Erden

2009 Lester Hudson

Let me help you out here:

2003 Kendrick Perkins and Marcus Banks

2004 Al Jefferson, Delonte West, Tony Allen, Brandon Hunter

2005 Gerald Green, Oriene Green, Ryan Gomes

2006 traded for Sebastian Telfair, Rondo, Powe

2007 Gabe Pruitt, a trade to Seattle with others for Ray Allen and rights to Glen Davis

2008 J. R. Giddens, Bill Walker, Semih Erden

2009 Lester Hudson

Let me help you both out:

Hunter was drafted in 2003, and we drafted Justin Reed in 2004. TP, please.

[bdm860]

But come on, as I think I have illustrated, I am not trying to be overly critical of Ainge I just think saying he rarely misses is looking at the world through very Green glasses. He misses a lot. Everyone does. It is the nature of the business.

He doesn't miss all that much relative to draft position, especially when compared to his peers. 

Dead on.

Think of it in baseball terms.  If a player is batting .350, that's great, even though he's getting out far more than he's getting on.

What's a good success rate for mid-to-late first rounders and second rounders?  Sure anybody can list several second rounders still in the NBA, but how many of those were picked by the same GM?

Just pulling numbers out of the air here, but Danny is batting like .300 with his non-lottery picks, while the avg for the rest of the GMs is like .100 (or worse).

Some of his "busts" are still in the league (Telfair, Banks), while most other GM's busts are out of the league.