In regards to your last couple sentences, it's probably more of a case by case basis with every draft and every player possibly available. For instance, Turner and Porzingis strike me as polarizing guys. Turner's current lack of mobility and Porzingis current lack of strength leave me feeling like both are boom or bust players. Maybe Ainge has stronger convictions than I regarding one or both of them and will either move up to grab one or pass on both. My guess is he and his staff scrutinize and target players rather than just hedge their bets by throwing many picks at the wall and seeing who sticks. I guess I could be wrong though.
Along these lines, Tankathon has us 4th in the draft rankings because of our 4 picks in the top 41, despite sitting at pick 11.
http://www.tankathon.com/power_rankings
Of course, it's just a generic valuation based off of prior drafts, but maybe lends some comfort to those that feel like the sky is falling with every win we get.
Those power rankings are an interesting idea, but the weights that tankathon is using are crazy, they completely over-value later picks. There's just no way that our picks collectively are worth more than the #1 pick.
The logical mistake they're making is only using average player value at each draft slot. It makes much more sense to incorporate the *maximum* value, or the chances you get a superstar. That's what drives the #1 pick to have so much more value than the #11 pick.
Yes, I have to agree with Boris here because of the roster effect. Only 5 starters and a tiny (13-man 'active') roster means that the 'true value' of most late picks is essentially zero, even if the 'average' value for that late pick is above zero (because one or two sleepers out of 20-30 guys picked at that slot). Another way of saying that is that your are far more likely to get _nothing_ out of those late picks than _something_, even if 'something' is actually better than 'average' for that pick.
But the graph said!
I think I get what you're saying. You're saying the chances of hitting on a Jimmy Butler are slim to nil and most likely we can expect Delonte West level rotation guys or worse with the Clips, Sixers 2nd and our own. Three D Wests do not equal what you can hope for with say, pick #7, but this Tankathon site adds them all up anyways. Right?
The numbers still hold. Say the value of someone like Jimmy Butler is 100, but you only get him one in a hundred tries for a 2nd round pick. The pick still has a value of one, even if it whiffs and gives you 0 99% of a time.
Just because an event is unlikely doesn't mean it has zero value. The odds of us picking out one good player out of four tries with 11, 23, 33, 41 is - as the site says - probably not that dissimilar from the odds of the Knicks getting one good player with #1
That's true when talking about the speculative value of a future pick.
But that's not necessarily the _realized_ value of a pick. And the discussion was really about what the chances are of getting 'star' value out of a pick. That becomes a threshold such that picks that return average value below that are essentially zero. Heck, even if you use the lower threshold of 'quality rotation player', the vast majority of picks are useless, 'on average'.
Exactly. With a top 3 pick you have something like a 50-60% chance of getting a "star," defined loosely.
In the 10-20 range you have around a 10% chance, and below there the chances are close to zero.
If you care about stars much, much more than anything else, then those top 3 picks are worth many, many more times what even a mid first rounder is worth.
And this must be the way GMs view it too, because you never see teams swapping multiple mediocre picks for a top 3 pick in a good draft.
Topic: Belichick, Ainge and draft strategy in the NBA vs NFL (Read 6310 times)