Your assumption that pick 10 is a far more valuable asset than pick 16 is just ridiculous. It is six picks better sure, but I would say the chances of getting a star at 10 or 16 is just about the same, slim.
In terms of the difference in 10 to 16 in terms of getting a star, historically speaking it is about a coin flip as to which spot is more likely to yield a star.
However, the difference in value for trading up is great. It is much easier to trade up to the 6th pick using the 10th pick than the 16th pick. If the end goal is to trade up as high as you can then the 10th pick is a lot more valuable.
That isn't to say I would undo the deals we made to get us to the playoffs in order to get the 10th pick.
In the end if we see someone who we think can be a star in the 6-10 range then we have more than enough assets to get up there.
The thing is, anyone available at 16 was also available at 10, so even in the years where 16 has yielded a better player than 10, you still could have had that player at 10 if you were a better drafter. The difference between 10 and 16 is the 6 players taken from 10-15 every single year, which you will never be able to draft at 16, and which give you a much higher likelihood of getting an impact player.
EDIT: 2011 is a good example of this. the 10th pick was Jimmer Fredette. The 16th pick was Nikola Vucevic. 11 was Klay Thompson. 12-15 were Alec Burks, the Morris twins, and Kawhi Leonard. Thus if the Kings weren't idiots, they would have had their pick of 3 all star level players in Leonard, Thompson, and Vucevic or 3 solid rotational players in Burks and the Morris brothers, but instead they took Fredette. That is the advantage of 10 vs. 16. And while 2011 was a bit rare with the shear quality of player still on the board at 10, every year there are a lot more quality players available at 10 than 16.
And I could point to Vucevic at 16, Iman Shumpert at 17, Tobias Harris at 19, Montiejunas at 20, Farried at 22, Mirotic at 23, Reggie Jackson at 24, Cory Joseph at 29, and Jimmy Butler at 30, Chandler Parsons at 38, and Isaiah Thomas at 60 as still available. If we'd have pulled Vucevic, Chandler Parsons, and Isaiah Thomas out of that draft, could anyone be complaining? We'd probably be a third seed this year.
We could have done awesome with picks 16 and later, we could have drafted Fredette with the 10th pick. It isn't the position you draft, it is invariably who you take.
I suspect 2012 is more the usual than 2011 though. Take a look at that draft and tell me 10 and 16 made a huge difference. Picks 10-16 are all pretty unremarkable.
Topic: Was this playoff appearance worth it? (Read 31613 times)