Confessions of a TANKER

[3inthekeon]

The biggest problem with tanking for a franchise player is that the team has to get rid of so many assets that even if the team is lucky with the ping pong balls and lucky with the pick itself, it almost never wins a championship. Because the team then spends the next few years trying to rebuild around the elite talent and is rarely successful. Then the elite talent leaves for a winner elsewhere.

The common refrain is that it's almost impossible to win a championship without an elite talent, which may be true, but it's rarely mentioned that most champions had multiple elite (or damn close to elite) talents. (Lebron/Wade/Bosh, KG/Pierce/Allen, Duncan/Parker/Ginobli, Shaq/Wade, Shaq/Kobe, Duncan/Robinson, Jordan/Pippen etc)

[JimiCliff]

I don't think that's clear yet at all. I'd say that there's no clear safe superstar prospect in this draft.

Right, that's my point - at this moment, there isn't, but at the beginning of the season people were talking as if there were. So not only has it been wonderful to watch the raptors overachieve this year; if we had tanked, we'd be a little disappointed by our expectations at the start of the season, when we'd been led to believe that there might be an O'Neal/Duncan/James/Rose/Davis-esque player coming down the pipe.

[Mediumcore]

Lowry is having a great year, but I don't know if you could categorize him as a franchise talent. He's basically playing to his full potential right now, and much like a Kemba Walker that might be enough to will your team to a winning season, but against elite teams, Lowry generally has looked average outside of a few good games. I think to be a franchise talent you should be able to dominate at least your own position against majority of your opposition.

[JimiCliff]

Lowry, at his current level of play, is close. But in 3 years, when he's 30, what will be Lowry's level of play?

To be honest, we're not even sure what Lowry's level of play will be next year without the motivation of a new contract.

It's a good, slightly horrifying question.

Again, the best possible outcome would be that Lowry mirrors Billups' career arc. Billups played at a high level well into his thirties (and I'd also say that purely in terms of talent, Lowry's a better player than Billups).

[Bandit]

DeRozan (24), Patterson (24), Ross (23), JV (21)

I love looking at this, it makes me happy

The most realistic plan is to draft such a player.

I'm sure MU/TL have plenty of "plans", but since they operate in the dark, I'm not prepared to assume everything will work out for the best without knowing any details.

I'm going to have to disagree here, while drafting a player like lebron, (a completely known dominant player) would be amazing, you're usually in a bad place as a team unless you get lucky. Now lucky is important, I would rather be decent team who gets lucky with a couple decent late teens early 20 picks (ie: a fringe all-star or above average role player) and add them to a roster who's young and promising.

Now it may never happen, and we may stay decent without luck and not become great. But we're still young and improving, with financial flexibility and the ability acquire assets/look like a nice place to play in FA.

End of the day I would rather be decent with a bright future and good options, while still getting the chance to throw the dice in draft, then be bad and go for one or two "sure things" in the draft.

On the idea of franchise players, outside of Lebron/Durant, most of them can't carry a team to the finals by themselves. One of the reasons why I love basketball. That's a good thing though, and one of the reasons why I so strongly believe in teams buying in together and playing complementary basketball (Read the Spurs). We have a very flexible group that with the addition of a franchise-lite could suddenly become a seriously competitive team, if we kept our assets, and had a coach that knew how to put them together.

Besides, franchise players aren't usually franchise players until they've won something. I believe they're made, not drafted.

[white men can't jump]

Couldn't disagree with Simmons more on 2nd round picks.

"People get carried away with second-round picks because they’re cost-effective assets if you nail them, but recent history says you have about a 10 percent chance of landing a rotation player from picks 31 to 40. (Since 2009, only Draymond Green, Kyle Singler, Chandler Parsons, Lance Stephenson, DeJuan Blair and MAYBE Nate Wolters came through.) "

No idea why he limited it to picks 31-40, because that effectively removed 20 picks each year where some really good rotation/starters came from. He listed about 1/4 of the 2nd round picks since 2009 that are playing decent minutes in the NBA (e.g. rotation players). For instance, Marcus Thornton isn't included (43rd pick 2009), yet he averages about 26 minutes per game for his career, including this season.

Hell, just from the 2009 2nd round I could add Dante Cunningham, Jeff Pendergraph, Sam Young, Jonas Jerebko, Jodie Meeks, Patrick Beverly, Chase Budinger, Nick Calathes, Danny Green, Nando de Colo!!!, and Patty Mills. With Blair, that makes 12 players from the 2009 2nd round that are still averaging over 10 minutes per game in the NBA (e.g. rotation players). Some much much more than that. I'd say the chances of getting a player that sticks in the 2nd round is closer to 35% than 10%.

But 2009 is not the norm.

Some years are stronger than others, but still, it is definitely not a 35% chance of getting a player who sticks. That would mean roughly more than 10 players every year in the 2nd round are keepers. Maybe in the best years, but not most.

The thing is though, any pick is potentially valuable. 2nd round keepers are not necessarily just low-end rotation players: Gasol, Millsap, David Lee, Goran Dragic, Bass, Amir, Gortat, Ilyasova, Parsons, etc.....It's just still a much lower likelihood than in the first round, especially when you factor in quality of the "keeper" as a fair amount of 2nd round keepers are just fringe rotation players or 3rd stringers.

2005 was great....Lee, Amir, Gortat, Ellis, Ilyasova, Bass, Blatche, Lou Williams...and a few others, like 11 solid players.
2006 was total crap....the guys who played or are playing in the league now....Freeland, Novak, PJ Tucker, Daniel Gibson (currently no contract), Millsap, Ryan Hollins....Millsap is basically the only noteworthy pick in the entire 2nd round, and at best that's 6 "keepers" where all the others are fringe rotation players. No team would miss any of those picks other than Millsap.
2007.....Carl Landry, Glen Davis, Josh McRoberts, Marc Gasol, Aaron Gray, Ramon Sessions....That's 6 again, and Gray is a total benchwarmer, while only Gasol is a true obvious starter.
2008.....Pekovic, Chalmers, DeAndre Jordan, Asik, Mbah a Moute, Dragic...6 again, and no keepers after Dragic at 45, but the quality of "keepers" very strong in this draft.
I'll skip 2009 since you went through it. Though Sam Young is not currently in the league, which brings your count down to 11. And the quality of the "keepers" is pretty low, with the best guys just being solid role players.
2010....Stephenson, Fields, Ebanks, Jeremy Evans....I think it's fair to say that only Stephenson's place in the league is safe. Fields could be in the right situation or if his jumper ever comes back to any degree. Some guys (Harangody, Pittman, Varnado) have seen the floor, but are not keepers. So that's 4 picks at best, but really only 1 of note at the moment.

I'd say in most years you're basically lucky if there are 5 or 6 solid players who can legitimately be in the main rotation of a winning team. And you're really lucky if it's a starting calibre player where some years there might be a handful, and some years none at all. So using 6 as an estimate, where you rarely get more high-quality players than that, and some years don't even get that many keepers at all, that's somewhere in the ballpark of 20%. And in most years, that 20% are not guys who will fit into your top 8 rotation.

So 10% might be low, but 35% is definitely high.

[thead]

is Kyle Lowry not a franchise altering talent?

[thead]

follow up...rather then win with 1 superstar couldn't we focus on gathering a collective of 6 to 8 million dollar guys and overwhelm teams with our depth.

[Bandit]

is Kyle Lowry not a franchise altering talent?

Now that's a term I could get behind, Franchise Altering.

I would say yes, the Kyle Lowry playing this year is definitely a Franchise Altering talent. If just through attitude alone, and then you add his play on top of that

[white men can't jump]

follow up...rather then win with 1 superstar couldn't we focus on gathering a collective of 6 to 8 million dollar guys and overwhelm teams with our depth.

That's how you become the Milwaukee Bucks.

[thead]

I remember doing the math not too long ago...I went over the drafts from 2000, 2008. Unfortunately my computer died...I was also working on a nifty flow chart of Masai's transactions. Anywho...I think I pegged it at around 11% of second rounders and 31% of first rounders last beyond 5 years in the league. I could be wrong as I wasn't done the model before the crash

[thead]

That's how you become the Milwaukee Bucks.

David Khan is how you become the bucks

[white men can't jump]

David Khan is how you become the bucks

David Kahn was with the TWolves....

The Bucks frequently rely on trying to do it with several mid-range talents (*along with what they hope will be contributing youngsters). And "doing it" becomes being a perennial treadmill team. It's 8th seed or bust mentality. You need top level talent, which likely means having to pay a premium for at least a player or two.

[thead]

apologies got my shitty GMs mixed up

[mcHAPPY]

I was always with the "maximize value" rationale. I'm quite happy with the way things have worked out. This is the part of the OP that I like the most:



Things were heading in a very bad direction last summer, and I'm glad Ujiri didn't wait long at all before repairing the damage done to the team. He had to pick a "direction", and his direction went with patience and maximizing value. Trade Gay for a better financial situation, which also allowed all the core pieces to fit better together. This could've easily resulted in continued losing, but there's no way we'd still be playing terrible ball with the young guys being a complete afterthought.

Is it going to be hard to get a franchise-altering talent to really ensure a chance at prolonged contention??? Absolutely. It was always going to be hard though. We don't know at all if any of the players in the 2014 draft will be that guy, so it was always a bad idea to go the Philly route (which is generally a bad idea given the extent of their tank job), especially because it would've been hard to be that bad. And now we're a good (but not great) young team with much more financial flexibility, and all our assets are playing up their value. We may be able to trade or buy such a talent within the next couple of years.

I'm pretty happy with where things stand. No clue what the ultimate direction will be, but I like that the Raps have options. It didn't feel that way last spring. Now they have no bad contracts, lots of youth, no outgoing draft picks, and possible capspace in upcoming summers (even possibly significant space).

Regarding bold, and also gave Toronto the opportunity to keep 2 role players at their choosing. Vasquez is not a bad backup NBA point guard. Patterson is a great option off the bench. If they can be signed to reasonable contracts, awesome. If the Raptors match a reasonable contract, awesome. If they are looking for ridiculous contract, luckily they can agree to the QO and it gives them 1 more year. If they are looking for a ridiculous contract and another team offers it, Toronto can let them go.

Flexibility with a little bit of leverage is a great thing.