Better to be swept in Round 1 and pick #15... or have 9th best draft odds?

[mctyson]

even if this team made it to the 2nd or 3rd rnd. it wouldn't have been worth it. I'd still feel they're far away from being a contender.

so if you make the EC Finals you are not a contender?

[GreenWarrior]

eastern conference...?

[GreenWarrior]

We weren't gonna miss the playoffs unless we decided not to do the IT deal, so the real question is: would you rather have IT, make the playoffs, and pick 16th, or have the Cavs pick, miss the playofds, and pick #10?

I'll take IT over a few extra draft spots any day.

ouch! IT was pretty ineffective in the playoffs. this logic is why we'll be wallowing in mediocrity for a long time.

I know the next response to this is "if we get better players around IT, he'll be better, yada, yada, yada". but why go through all this to make a mediocre player better? why not just get the good players and worry about adding mediocre players later.

[Smokeeye123]

The 29 people who voted to get swept should become Nuggets fans.

[gpap]

This blog is into "potential" and draft picks a lot more than it should be.

Even though we got swept in the playoffs, I'll take playoffs anytime over an unknown commodity like Justice Winslow who is just as likely to be a bust or mediocre as he is a star.

[gpap]

The 29 people who voted to get swept should become Nuggets fans.

And the other 57 should become Sixers fans.

[MBunge]

Making the playoffs was misguided.  Making the playoffs as a bottom seed isn't without some benefit, in that a rookie NBA coach got his first taste of playoff basketball, as well as many of the young players.  Ideally though, the C's would have fought for a shot down the stretch, and then faded into the lottery.   Had we done just that, we'd be talking Justise Winslow or Myles Turner right now.  Maybe even someone higher, since a pick at #9 would have been more plausible to teams willing to trade down a few slots.  Hopefully, many of the Celtics younger fans, learned what I did over the 20 years spanning the Bird & KG era.  That mediocrity is the worst possible outcome in the NBA.  If you aren't good, you better suck.  Not bad or good enough is a terrible place to be in the NBA.

I loathe the whole tanking argument but at least the guys who want to tank for the worst record in the league have a point.  But tanking for #9?  In the last 20 years, only two Nowinski and Tracey McGrady have been taken #9 and become franchise players and those kind of players are NEVER available at #9 any more.

Mike

And yet Ainge offered  4 first round picks for the number 9.  Go figure.

The only reason Ainge offered them is because he could.  Do you think Ainge would have offered 4 years of first round picks otherwise?  He was willing to overpay because he's got more picks than he can possible use.

If you can find even one vaguely credible basketball person who thinks Winslow is even in the same solar system as Nowitski and McGrady, knock yourself out.

Mike

[Celtics18]

Remember the end of the 2014 when a whole bunch of folks were furious that we won a few "meaningless" games late in the season.  The feeling was that those wins lost us one or two spots and a chance at the future superstar, Dante Exum.

A year later, it looks like Marcus Smart has a brighter future than the Australian Penny Hardaway.

The point is that it's way too early to bemoan who we lost out on in the draft.  To me it's a given that you try to win all the games you can as an organization.  It's the only way to play sports--on any level--you play to win the games.  Once draft time comes around, you do the best to pick the best player at whatever spot you end up with. 

I also am a strong believer that drafting a player is only the first step.  More important than where you draft is who you draft, and after that, even more importantly, is how that player is developed, how he fits with his fellow players and the coaches, what kind of mentorship he receives, how he works to improve, how he handles adversity, and how he handles the pressures both on and off the court of being a pro. 

I've never bought into this notion that a player's upside is concretely determined  when he's between nineteen and twenty-one years old.  I know that fans like to know exactly what they are getting, but the futures of these players as commodities are never as known a quantity as the scouts, and draft experts will have us believe.

 

[GreenWarrior]

This blog is into "potential" and draft picks a lot more than it should be.

Even though we got swept in the playoffs, I'll take playoffs anytime over an unknown commodity like Justice Winslow who is just as likely to be a bust or mediocre as he is a star.

I think this logic works better in football. in the NBA if you're not a free agent friendly city, trades and the draft are the only way to build a team or get a superstar. it's the system everyone should be hating on, not fellow fans.

I don't totally disagree with what you said though. i'd much rather get a known commodity than an unknown. Ainge tried and no one wants what we have. so what does that tell us? even the other teams view any picks out of the top 10 as pretty much worthless. and guess what? they're right, look at our team. no one wants them and they were all pretty much drafted out of the top 10. so, our players and picks aren't quite the assets we'd hoped for.

I guess we can just wait and be really bad 10 yrs. from now and then decide to tank.     

[Celtics18]

This blog is into "potential" and draft picks a lot more than it should be.

Even though we got swept in the playoffs, I'll take playoffs anytime over an unknown commodity like Justice Winslow who is just as likely to be a bust or mediocre as he is a star.

I think this logic works better in football. in the NBA if you're not a free agent friendly city, trades and the draft are the only way to build a team or get a superstar. it's the system everyone should be hating on, not fellow fans.

I don't totally disagree with what you said though. i'd much rather get a known commodity than an unknown. Ainge tried and no one wants what we have. so what does that tell us? even the other teams view any picks out of the top 10 as pretty much worthless. and guess what? they're right, look at our team. no one wants them and they were all pretty much drafted out of the top 10. so, our players and picks aren't quite the assets we'd hoped for.

I guess we can just wait and be really bad 10 yrs. from now and then decide to tank.   

That's not what it tells us.  It only tells us that nobody was willing to give Danny what he wanted in return for them.

I think Danny values the players and assets that he has and isn't willing to sell them on the cheap just to get rid of them.  If he can't get what he deems good value, he'll wait until he can.

That's very different than "no one wants them."

[PhoSita]

We weren't gonna miss the playoffs unless we decided not to do the IT deal, so the real question is: would you rather have IT, make the playoffs, and pick 16th, or have the Cavs pick, miss the playofds, and pick #10?

I'll take IT over a few extra draft spots any day.

I dispute the premise.

I think we could have made the IT trade and still missed the playoffs if Ainge had waived Prince and Bass outright instead of keeping Bass and trading Prince for Jerebko and Datome.

No Bass, Jerebko, or Datome for the last couple months of the season, with Sullinger also going down for that timeframe ... definitely would have fallen short, in my opinion.

[PhoSita]

I think Danny values the players and assets that he has and isn't willing to sell them on the cheap just to get rid of them.  If he can't get what he deems good value, he'll wait until he can.

That's very different than "no one wants them."

None of what you've just said here is inconsistent with the basic idea, though. 

The Celtics' grand pile of assets, to this point, has not been sufficiently enticing to other teams to get one of them to part with a player or pick that Danny considers a difference maker.  This cuts against the idea that the Celtics are in such a good position in this rebuild because of all the picks and young players they have. 

So Danny is left waiting, hoping for somebody dumb or desperate enough to get bamboozled.

[Celtics18]

I think Danny values the players and assets that he has and isn't willing to sell them on the cheap just to get rid of them.  If he can't get what he deems good value, he'll wait until he can.

That's very different than "no one wants them."

None of what you've just said here is inconsistent with the basic idea, though. 

The Celtics' grand pile of assets, to this point, has not been sufficiently enticing to other teams to get one of them to part with a player or pick that Danny considers a difference maker.  This cuts against the idea that the Celtics are in such a good position in this rebuild because of all the picks and young players they have. 

So Danny is left waiting, hoping for somebody dumb or desperate enough to get bamboozled.

. . . and/or for his assets to continue to improve. 

[PhoSita]

. . . and/or for his assets to continue to improve.

Fair point.  I'm not getting my hopes up on that happening.  The value of some of the picks is variable.  I'd say the Celts' own future draft picks have the best prospects currently.