BUMP from steenking Page 2. Watch out Mad Max … Max 2 is improving and may be on a path to get to what you’re supposed to be ahead of you. Nice problem to have and also should start accumulating some trade value of his own. Smooth, good athlete and gets to the rim plus has some mid range game too.
have only seen the first few minutes of the game today, but he looked like he didn't belong in a good way--just stepping around and finishing over/around whomever. next step is doing it with the big boys.
Yeah really liked what I saw from him today, definitely a step above the rest of guys on the court. Hopefully just a year or two away from being the wing we keep trying to trade for.
He looks pretty bad to me, like there’s flashes of good play, he ran a couple fast breaks well, but overall he is raw to put it nicely.
I am starting to feel that our drafting/scouting dept. success has been largely overblown due to a couple of lucky picks/signings: AR and AC. Maaaaaay be Zubac. IMO, only the red were good picks, in relation to their draft position. Abysmal. 2024 17 Dalton Knecht 2024 55 Bronny James 2023 17 Jalen Hood-Schifino 2023 47 Mojave King (↳IND) 2022 35 Max Christie 2021 22 Isaiah Jackson (↳IND) 2020 28 Jaden McDaniels (↳OKC ↳MIN) 2019 4 De'Andre Hunter (↳NOP ↳ATL) 2018 25 Moritz Wagner 2018 47 Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk 2017 2 Lonzo Ball 2017 28 Tony Bradley (↳UTA) 2016 2 Brandon Ingram 2016 32 Ivica Zubac 2015 2 D'Angelo Russell 2015 27 Larry Nance 2015 34 Anthony Brown 2014 7 Julius Randle 2013 48 Ryan Kelly 2012 60 Robert Sacre 2011 41 Darius Morris 2011 46 Andrew Goudelock 2011 56 Chukwudiebere Maduabum (↳DEN) 2011 58 Ater Majok 2010 43 Devin Ebanks 2010 58 Derrick Caracter 2009 29 Toney Douglas (↳NYK) 2009 42 Patrick Beverley (↳MIA) 2009 59 Chinemelu Elonu 2008 58 Joe Crawford 2007 19 Javaris Crittenton 2007 40 Sun Yue 2007 48 Marc Gasol 2006 26 Jordan Farmar 2006 51 Cheikh Samb (↳DET) 2005 10 Andrew Bynum 2005 37 Ronny Turiaf 2005 39 Von Wafer 2004 27 Sasha Vujačić 2004 56 Marcus Douthit 2003 24 Brian Cook 2003 32 Luke Walton 2002 27 Chris Jefferies (↳TOR) 2000 29 Mark Madsen 1999 23 Devean George 1999 30 John Celestand 1998 26 Sam Jacobson 1998 31 Ruben Patterson 1998 45 Toby Bailey 1997 52 DeJuan Wheat 1997 54 Paul Rogers 1996 24 Derek Fisher
I think we draft pretty well, we just don’t draft and keep our players most of the time. We are a win now team, so there’s not a ton of development, and we are very impatient as a fan base so the players we do draft don’t get the most leeway, if they don’t turn into rotation guys within 2 years we want them gone, where many other franchises have more patience than that, right or wrong. Our high/late first early second round picks do well though, they’re all still in the league, some have become all-stars, Lonzo would look better if lot for injuries. We essentially drafted Josh Hart and Thomas Bryant too, draft night trade, so can’t leave him off the list. That’s a lot of successful picks. Edit: I see now Zen you edited the post to show picks you thought were good based on number taken in red. I’m not trying to defend our FO that hard, but if you go off that criteria you can do that to pretty much every franchise. Almost every franchise can be made to look bad based on some star player that was drafted after whoever they picked, that’s why the draft is largely a roll of the dice. We have a lot of players still in the league though, many are key players on their teams, to me that’s the mark of a decent/competent scouting and drafting team. Are we the best at it, no, but we’re absolutely solid.
Zubac, BI, Josh Hart, and Randle are all starters. You can’t say they were bad picks at all. Also, Knecht will have a very solid career.
I think the scouting teams’s praise is from recent years… around Randle I think. And I also think it came from buying later picks and getting impact guys with those picks… Kuz and Hart. That stretch of drafting was pretty successful for us and now teams are starting to catch up with scouting. Plus the recent cba rules making buying a pick harder while also putting emphasis on drafting players for their cheaper contracts
don't have the links handy right now, but as alam and weezy said--you need to recalibrate what success means. if you're drafting outside the top 10, you're doing pretty well if the guy makes it 5 years in the league. if you're in the second round, you're lucky if he ever plays meaningful minutes. the only huge miss in recent years was Lonzo, and before his injuries he looked like a 10+ year starter for winning teams, imo. even mo Wagner, who underwhelmed me, is on his third NBA contract and has made like 50 million+ in his career. for a 25th pick, that's pretty insane. dlo was actually a very good 2nd overall pick, too. sure, a couple guys taken later were better, but some taken immediately after were much, much worse. tl;dr: 60 guys are drafted every year and the league only employs 450 total players. the good ones have decade-plus long careers. do the math.
Picks relative to their draft position. Hence DLO at #2 should not be considered a success. If anything, he underperformed relative to his draft position. But #2 is very volatile and is often "overdrafted for potential". So... even from that perspective, he is not that much of an outlier for #2. Alex Sarr Brandon Miller Chet Holmgren Jalen Green James Wiseman Ja Morant Marvin Bagley III Lonzo Ball Brandon Ingram D'Angelo Russell Jabari Parker Victor Oladipo Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Derrick Williams Evan Turner Hasheem Thabeet Michael Beasley Kevin Durant LaMarcus Aldridge Marvin Williams Emeka Okafor Darko Milicic Jay Williams Tyson Chandler Stromile Swift Randle was 7th. Drafting a starter here should not be considered a success, IMO. It should, despite some outliers, be the norm. To wit, here is a list of 7th since 2000: Donovan Clingan Bilal Coulibaly Shaedon Sharpe Jonathan Kuminga Killian Hayes Coby White Wendell Carter Jr. Lauri Markkanen Jamal Murray Emmanuel Mudiay Julius Randle Ben McLemore Harrison Barnes Bismack Biyombo Greg Monroe Stephen Curry Eric Gordon Corey Brewer Randy Foye Charlie Villanueva Luol Deng Kirk Hinrich Eddie Griffin Chris Mihm Being a starter on that list is not an outlier at all (see starters, near starters playing 20+ minutes and people with 10+ years career, like Brewer, in red). We can argue that Randle, Curry and Murray are the best players of the bunch, but still... Calling a scouting department good, when it merely does an adequate job, is some Jeanie-level low-a** standard. You could claim that we do better with the late picks than with the lottery/early ones, but I have a feeling that even that is skewed by some recency bias.
