nba off season 2024 bud 2 suns etc

lamelo made the allstar team his second season and was great from the moment he stepped on an nba court, hes just injured all the time, but he wouldve been a perennial allstar at the very least, and still could be

2020 draft hard to gauge bc of covid, this one is a more traditional "no clear #1 bc no one is that compelling" problem

like sarr at least should be a great defender in space, but still dont know what he'll do offensively. dillingham could be a maxey/trae young type offensive engine but he's so bad defensively. reed seems like a shoo-in high level rotation player but his lack of size lowers his ceiling. topic is not much of an outside shooter yet. no one knows if risacher's the real deal. clingan seems like a kessler archetype atp. holland and buzelis cant shoot, etc.

idk 2020 draft kinda perfectly illustrates the point to me, everyone thought that guys like okoro, williams, killian hayes, deni avdija were real stretches as top 10 picks, reflective of a weak class at the top and that's exactly how it has played out. but then you have guys like halliburton, maxey, bane, jaden mcdaniels, quickley later in the draft when it gets to the point that nobody actually has any ability to gauge year to year quality

the weak class at the top while there are better players in the middle of the draft is just a failure put the players in the right order theres nothing else going on

hmm, looking at that list of 2020 top 10 busts, common thread seems to be betting on positional size/athleticism in the absence of more revealing skill data and passing up talented small guards (maxey, quickley, bane's arms) in the process

the banes arms fallacy

tbf to the teams drafting for the nba is really hard it makes sense to fallback on size and athleticism cause at least the players have that, its kind of like drafting quarterbacks in the nfl where you just hope they can read the speed of complexity of the pro game but theres no way to test for it, except thats every nba player

That Houston pick that went into the top-3 is from Brooklyn. It was obvious at the time and even more so now that prioritizing the picks from Brooklyn over getting Ben Simmons was the right move.

— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) May 12, 2024

the nets are skilled at team building, just none of them are the nets haha

Uh, what the fuck just happened?

da #1 pick its all yours who are you going to select

feel in my bones that a hawks-pelicans trade involving brandon ingram is imminent

for dejonte or trae

My immediate thought was some trade involving Trae but I’ll take the 7’1” man who weighs 217 what could go wrong

for dejonte or trae

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 12, 2024 3:22 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

feel like dejounte makes more sense if they keep CJ

feel like cj shouldnt factor into their decision making too much hes just not that good anymore

true, they may just prefer dejounte is of only to have some sort of defensive identity with herb jones

*if only

trae gives them more of what they need shooting and playmaking but zion and trae together on defense might be a non starter

thing about dejonte is hes best with the ball in his hands but hes still not that good and now hes dominating the ball, idk not a big fan, his defense has slipped too maybe he can get it back but it seems like he might think hes a star now whos above all that

he made one injury replacement all star team and signed to klutch, v much a case of a guy who thinks he's better than he actually is

No team had EVER dropped from 1 to 5 in the history of the NBA Draft Lottery…

It’s now happened to the Detroit Pistons TWO years in a row.

Incredible.

— Ryan Field (@RyanFieldABC) May 12, 2024

lottery used to be just top three so its only been possible to do that in the few years since they switched to top four

still gotta be long odds of doing that tho

theyve only done the top 4 lottery since 2019

its a bum deal for detroit, but the worst record has a 48% chance of #5, definitely bad luck to happen twice but just under 1 in 4 odds bad luck

its one in four if youre the worst team two years in a row

honestly odds are better that the pistons get a star in this draft bcuz four teams ahead of them screwed up than they would be if they had the no 1 pick themselves. it’s for the best

been out so i'm catching up with news now and lol at this being the year that a team hits the bottom of lottery to #1 jackpot move-up, too poetic

well it's not that everyone understands precisely how to order the top 5, that's not the point. teams still mess up all the time. but for instance that tatum draft was considered to be loaded and it looks that way now. it's just that people thought it was gonna be fultz and lonzo who were the stars not tatum and fox

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Sunday, May 12, 2024 3:39 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean there are big misses in the top five every year

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 12, 2024 3:41 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it was nate duncan who actually said this fwiw, the idea is not that there’s a hard cutoff at 5 but just that the confidence in your evaluation (and/or a player’s chances of making it) decrease more or less linearly with draft order, which is kind of self-evident

What would Trae Young and the No.1 pick get you in a deal?

— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) May 12, 2024

the replies are great

I think it was nate duncan who actually said this fwiw, the idea is not that there’s a hard cutoff at 5 but just that the confidence in your evaluation (and/or a player’s chances of making it) decrease more or less linearly with draft order, which is kind of self-evident

― brony james (k3vin k.), Sunday, May 12, 2024 6:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i mean they know something about who the good players are its not random

trae + the first pick isnt going to get you anything the teams that want trae doent want the first pick and vice versa

yeah teams that want to win now want trae, teams that wanna develop want the #1 pick

interesting inflection point for the hawks they could tear it down they could move the first pick for guys they could carry on with the trade one of their guards plan and use the first pick

Jalen and okongwu should be the main keepers because of contracts and because they are good. Hunter’s borderline mostly due to contract I think but they could really use and upgrade there. Capela should be gone regardless then it’s Trae and Dejounte

I will say the nice thing about Dejounte is that he closes games whereas Trae tends to piss them away

they should trade both of them and rebuild around jalen johnson

trae is only 25 - i thought he had been around for forever

the tough thing with Trae is that you can have one of the top 3 offenses in the league with him but can you actually have a functional defense with him on the court

read a landry fields quote that they are not interested in trading the pick which is exactly what someone who wants to maximize trade value would say, but maybe they just keep it and roll the dice with sarr.

there’s 0% chance anybody is trading for the no 1 pick in this draft

personally don’t think their young players or this pick project to be good enough for the hawks to rebuild around them unless they wanna be bad for like 5 years

yeah could get pretty dicey

sarr seems fine whatever. him, trae and jalen could be cool. tbh i had no idea sarr existed before today

yeah i think thats prob the way to go*

*idk if sarr is the guy there or what

i have been reading about sarr for all of 10 minutes but my goodness there has to be someone with more upside than him

im v v excited that the spurs could pull off both their starting lineup vacancies with these two picks. i dont think they need to necessarily start both players right away. despite their various flaws, there are PGs i like (sheppard, topic, dillingham) and wings (risacher, buzelis, holland). i watched sam vecenie go through a mock where theyd get risacher at 4 and dillingham at 8 which would be really fun.

well ok

shams: Bronny James, the son of NBA superstar LeBron James, is expected to stay in the 2024 NBA Draft, league sources said.

...

The younger James’ decision comes ahead of a big one for his father, who has to decide whether to opt into his $51.4 million player option to remain with the Los Angeles Lakers for 2024-25 by June 29. Team sources said last month the Lakers are very open to the prospect of helping LeBron fulfill his dream of playing with Bronny by potentially drafting him.