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2016 NBA OFFSEASON


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1 hour ago, evilwaldo said:

Massive.  The Bucks now have to teach him to play basketball since he went from high school to the NBA.

If they stash him in the D league for three years and teach him how to play maybe they will get something.

You would think that a team who had a massively disappointing season would draft someone who could provide some immediate help at 10.  Like most GM's they get sucked into measurables and upside over ability leading to horrible picks like this one.

I guess to play devil's advocate, you can see the other side as well: The Bucks are a team that hit on Giannis, so it stands to reason they would be confident in evaluating raw talent from overseas in the late lottery. 

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45 minutes ago, JRGoldman said:

I guess to play devil's advocate, you can see the other side as well: The Bucks are a team that hit on Giannis, so it stands to reason they would be confident in evaluating raw talent from overseas in the late lottery. 

That was hitting a bullseye blindfolded.  Giannis also played overseas in a second tier pro league and a youth system.  Maker has not played above the high school level.

To show you how flawed the talent evaluation system is in the NBA right now check out the stats from the 2009 NBA draft and move forward.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_2009.html

Lots of lottery pick busts and solid players being drafted after the lottery down through the second round.

There is this idea going around the NBA that you only stay in school for a year so that teams cannot uncover your flaws.  Focus on the upside and hide the flaws until you are in the NBA.  That is what leads teams to whiff in the lottery so much and better teams make wise selections at the end of the draft.

The bad teams focus so much on upside that they reach for guys when solid contributors who need little development fall to the bottom of the round.  The 2011 NBA draft is a great example.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_2011.html

 

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I think picking a small sample hides the inherent problem with the NBA draft, which is not a change in talent evaluation. The "problem" is that being a good NBA player is really fucking hard, and being a top 5 NBA player is near impossible. To win a championship, you need a top 5 player. This is basically fact, with a handful of notable exceptions throughout the years. For small market teams, who have no real chance of signing a top 5 player in free agency or acquiring them in a fair trade deal, you almost have to swing for the fences, hope that you can have a talented player learn on the job his first two years, do enough right to show incremental improvement as a team, and have him sign a more lucrative max that carries him through his prime. As bizarre as it sounds, it doesn't make sense for teams in the lottery who don't have a player that will develop in to an all NBA caliber player to draft NBA ready, safe bet players. Even if you hit on all of them, which is more unlikely than hitting on a good player in the lottery, the sad fact is that players like Draymond Green, Isaiah Thomas and the like only really help you when you are already in the upper echelon of NBA teams. 

This has been true forever. It's not a recent trend, and it's not because of one and done culture among college players. It's true because basketball is a hard sport that very few people are good enough at to make a tangible difference to your team. 

I think the Maker pick was bad, because I think Maker is a joke player, a youtube highlight reel gone viral. That being said, if I were the Bucks, I would pick him 100 times out of 100 over Denzel Valentine or Caris LeVert or someone that may be a more "NBA ready" prospect. The Bucks looked okay two years ago and a million miles away last year. No matter which version is closer to the truth, having a player who can contribute immediately doesn't actually matter for them all that much. At least the Maker pick showed a commitment to a plan or a way of thinking about talent. That alone means the Bucks are miles ahead of your average NBA front office. 

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Agree 100% with the last paragraph. Nobody selected around Maker was going to boost them from a team with a lot of issues to a playoff contender by himself alone. Going for a player with a tonne of upside but is very likely going to bust in that position is fine. He's a freak and they're trying to collect freak athletes with long wingspans and have done a good job of it so far. Build around Giannis and Jabari and go from there. Khris Middleton is a very good supporting player and one of the better 3 and D types in the league. They're looking to move Monroe and MCW won't be long for the roster either if Point Giannis works out.

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2009-2012 or 13 is by no means a small sample size.  You need at least three seasons to properly evaluate talent from a draft and the last ten years we have seen a huge change in how prospects are handled from the AAU level on up.  The focus is on athleticism and upside while marginalizing the weaknesses.

Go back twenty years and you have guys staying in school for a full four years.  All of their flaws are out in the open by that time.  

One and dones are there to showcase their positives and downplay their negatives.

 

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You're missing my point. It doesn't matter if every player is a freshman, or a 4 year college player. NBA front offices were no better at evaluating talent 20 years ago. Good teams whiffed, bad teams made good picks, teams made terrible trades, teams bet heavily on their scouting departments and lost, teams hit the bullseye blindfolded, as you so eloquently put it. 

No matter how much you can look at players, or how much they are attempting to hide their weaknesses, talent evaluation is essentially a die roll. Draft picks are lottery tickets and always have been. Teams have always drafted on upside, and teams have always searched for market inefficiencies. Drafting on upside is historically how teams have gotten better. 

You can be mad about the Maker pick. If I was a Bucks fan, I'd probably have a healthy amount of side eye directed toward the decision makers right now. That being said, it seems a bit odd to blame the AAU system or one and done collegiate players for the Bucks picking an unproven commodity, since 1) every draft pick is essentially an unproven commodity and 2) drafting the unproven commodities that are higher risk, higher reward is historically the way that teams have gotten better when drafting from the position that the Bucks were in. 

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6 hours ago, JRGoldman said:

You're missing my point. It doesn't matter if every player is a freshman, or a 4 year college player. NBA front offices were no better at evaluating talent 20 years ago. Good teams whiffed, bad teams made good picks, teams made terrible trades, teams bet heavily on their scouting departments and lost, teams hit the bullseye blindfolded, as you so eloquently put it. 

No matter how much you can look at players, or how much they are attempting to hide their weaknesses, talent evaluation is essentially a die roll. Draft picks are lottery tickets and always have been. Teams have always drafted on upside, and teams have always searched for market inefficiencies. Drafting on upside is historically how teams have gotten better. 

You can be mad about the Maker pick. If I was a Bucks fan, I'd probably have a healthy amount of side eye directed toward the decision makers right now. That being said, it seems a bit odd to blame the AAU system or one and done collegiate players for the Bucks picking an unproven commodity, since 1) every draft pick is essentially an unproven commodity and 2) drafting the unproven commodities that are higher risk, higher reward is historically the way that teams have gotten better when drafting from the position that the Bucks were in. 

I understand your point.  I agree that the analytics are much better than 10, 20, or 30 years ago.  I believe the talent and data evaluation skills are lagging far behind.  

With all of the additional analytical data teams should be making more informed decisions but when I see great players past the lottery I have to question what people are missing.  You have better data to make better decisions but why are teams whiffing?

If you are saying that teams are just rolling dice then why bother with analytics because rolling the dice is not analytic based it is random.

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4 hours ago, RandomAct said:

Do any of the rest of you approach the offseason and free agency with a sense of dread? Or is that a Mavs fan problem?

Hilarity.  The Sixers have 5 guys penciled into the 4/5 spots if Saric comes over and nobody to play 1-3.  They can't get any worse right?  Nobody wanted their guys in a trade on draft night.  No free agents want to play here.  

 

Oh no, they are going to throw stupid money at someone to come here and be a starting PG/SG/SF until they can draft and develop one.

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16 hours ago, evilwaldo said:

I understand your point.  I agree that the analytics are much better than 10, 20, or 30 years ago.  I believe the talent and data evaluation skills are lagging far behind.  

With all of the additional analytical data teams should be making more informed decisions but when I see great players past the lottery I have to question what people are missing.  You have better data to make better decisions but why are teams whiffing?

If you are saying that teams are just rolling dice then why bother with analytics because rolling the dice is not analytic based it is random.

I think you are over estimating the predictive power of analytics. Advanced metrics can do a lot of things, but infallibly telling you the future of sport isn't one of them. They can give a team better educated guesses, but even with the advancements in analytics that basketball has seen in recent years, we haven't really progressed past "having exceptional measurables in things like wingspan, quickness and leaping ability makes you much more likely to succeed than scoring 20 points a game in college does". Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you, but it seems that aside from you thinking that one and dones are intentionally obfuscating their weaknesses, you're mad that the Bucks drafted Thon Maker over a more surefire bet, when in reality, taking a player with Maker's athleticism and upside works out much better historically than drafting a college player who "just knows how to play" but has physical limitations.

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The same Wizards fans who were all DURANT IS COMING HOME!!!! MORTAL LOCK!!!! KD2DC!!!! FINALS HERE WE COME!!!!

are now the same ones saying Durant is a "punk bitch" because he didn't meet with the Wiz

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17 minutes ago, RolandTHTG said:

76ers offered Barnes a max deal.

 

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall for that pitch.

We are the only team desperate(and dumb) enough to offer you the max?

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Hassan Whiteside has told Miami he wants them to finalize their deal by 7/1 (the final day of exclusive negotiations).  ESPN is reporting that Dallas will offer Whiteside a max contract as soon as free agency opens. 

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