After reading the articles, remember what the author said from the very beginning of the article about his player ranking system:
This is a very unfair ranking system, its just for fun. No one is suggesting that these are the best picks of the last decade - they are just the highest value picks at their spots. And since we are ranking players who have yet to finish more than a year or two, a lot of the results will be quite a bit ridiculous.
In other words if you create a system and manipulate numbers that are turn out to be ridiculous, then crap into the system will net you crap out of the system.
Ainge's numbers are skewed by having gotten lucky on some 2nd round picks like Glen Davis, Ryan Gomes and Leon Powe, players chosen late that got playing time and PERs that when multiplied gave extremely large value for the position they were chosen in. That's great but the draft is meant to build and rebuild franchises and you aren't winning many games if you best value picks are Davis, Powe and Gomes.
I love the fact that Ainge can seeming grab a productive role player in the second round every couple of years and that he has hit on some late picks in the first round, but what I want to know is that when given high(lottery) first round picks, which he should be getting over the next couple of years at least, will he not screw them up?
Sometimes, its more important in the top of the draft to just get even value than it is to reach for excessive value. You don't want to be the guy drafting Michael Olowakandi, Greg Oden, Jan Veseley, Joe Alexander, Wesley Johnson, or Johnny Flynn when superstars are being drafted right behind then but "hitting" on guys like Marcus Thornton, Lance Stephenson, Chandler Parsons. Don't get me wrong. Thornton, Parsons and Stephenson are great value picks in the second round that would jump Ainge's score in this very high, but the Celtics need to hit at the top. Ainge has never had to do that. I think his highest draft pick was that he used for the team was Kelly Olynyk at 13.
I dunno - the problem with putting so much emphasis on the 'skill' at selecting the top lottery picks is that often your choices are far fewer and constrained by context.
Presti didn't exhibit any brilliant skill choosing Durant. He was the only choice once Oden was taken.
And the choice of Oden - is that an example of a 'poor' draft choice? Or simply the inability to see the future? Pre-draft medical due diligence can only go so far.
Basically, in the top 10 or so picks of every draft, the order is usually fairly predictable. Sure, you have an occasional surprise -- like Bennet going #1 this year -- but even when that happens most of the other top picks still slide into predictable slots based on the teams making the picks.
As much as it is a crap shoot, extracting value out of the later part of the draft is, indeed, over time, the real difference maker. No - guys like Powe, Davis, Gomes aren't going to be your superstars that carry you to a title. But they represent 'found money'. Value that can be used to leverage up through trades.
You say Danny was 'lucky' to find gems late in the draft - and certainly he has. But when a GM is able to pull an above-average number of contributing players like Rondo, Bradley, Sullinger, Gomes, etc., out of post-15 picks, at some point you have to acknowledge that maybe, skill might be a contributing factor. The fact is, the odds on any pick after #15 being even a solid contributor off the bench are less than 50%. And after pick #20, they are much worse. Yet Ainge has managed to get tremendous value of out a lot of post-15 picks. He's had a handful turn out to be scrap. But he's gotten above the board value out of the vast majority of those picks.
Since Al Jefferson was taken at #15, Danny has had only two picks in the top 15. The first one was the 2007 #5 (Jeff Green) who he traded for Ray Allen and the 2nd round selection of Davis. The other was this last year's #13 (Olynyk), which he got by trading our #16 and change to get.
So far, that looks like pretty good usage of his early round picks.
You are, imho, overly dismissive of the author's methodology:
In other words if you create a system and manipulate numbers that are turn out to be ridiculous, then crap into the system will net you crap out of the system.
The assessments that the author comes up with are not inconsistent with other analysis that have been made of the NBA draft. Ultimately, the author's own caveats are meant to point out that there is room for error bars in the final rankings. The exact rank order should be taken with a huge grain of salt. But that doesn't mean that the essential conclusions are 'ridiculous'. It is perfectly reasonable to use it to say, "these GMs over here have been more successful at drafting then those GMs over there".
Here's another analysis that attempts to rate _teams_ (not GMs) for their draft performance from 1989-2008.
http://www.82games.com/bestdraftingteams.htmIn that study, the Celtics came out #7. Ainge's tenure only covered a small, 6 year portion of that 20 year span. The earlier part of that span also includes the weight of such wonderful hits as Michael Smith, Acie Earl, Kedrick Brown & Jerome Moiso -- all of which occured prior to Ainge's tenure. Smith, Brown and Moiso in particular were all top 15 picks - who ended up providing almost no value.
Topic: Ainge - a look at GM draft performance (Read 20601 times)