Once the teams have been assembled, does it really matter where the players were selected? Does it really matter how much a GM thinks it will work or the 5000-10000 words the GM may have written about how it will work?
Subjective outside perspectives are great because they see the players as they are and not what a GM has made them into over a three week period. Sometimes players are talked about so much GMs start believing in the rhetoric. Suddenly people are believing that Wes Matthews or Kyle Lowry or Jodie Meeks or Serge Ibaka are players of a much much higher quality than they actually have shown to be and players like David West or Lebron James or Andre Iguodala or Pau Gasol or Rudy Gay are much worse players than they have shown to be.
I thought it refreshing for Redz to come in and say what he did about some of the players on the Trailblazers that had been marketed ad nauseum for 3 weeks. Not trying to pick on IP and know that Redz and IP are extremely friendly so the comment was eye opening. I think more voices like that would be great.
Wait... isn't the goal of these "panelists" to observe and give feedback during the draft process? If so, don't they become equally as invested in the arguments as anybody else?
And, alternatively, if the goal is for panelists to swoop in at the last minute to render judgment without having participated in the process, isn't there at least an argument that all the debate, etc., of the draft is worthless? I mean, if this all comes down to people deciding a winner by reputation and their own personal biases, while disregarding all the argument, stats, etc., does that really improve anything?
I'm not sure which system you're advocating for, but I agree that more outside opinion can be interesting. I'm not as sure about bestowing them with a title, and I definitely don't like any idea that anticipates that they wouldn't be involved in the draft during the drafting process. If people want to do that, that's cool. However, I'm not sure that I'd encourage it, and I'm not sure everyone would be a fan of the idea (for instance, see the Commish's comment
here.)