Curry: 2 rings above replacement
Labron: 3 rings above replacement
Jokic: 0 playoff wins above replacement

We'll see how it plays out. I think it's going to come down to top 7 player + 1 all star +fringe all star + great bench vs. Top 1-2 player + 1 all star + craptastic or rookie supporting cast that they will argue won't be a negative like 95% of rookies are in their first year.

I don't see any all-stars that aren't maxes being available in by pick 40 (hell closer to pick 30), meaning in order to get another all-star you're looking at around 15-25M left to fill out the rest of your roster and will have to wait another 23 spots to pick your next player...

I'm not 100% sure how it will play out, but only 45M left is going to be pretty tough to cover 7 roster spots with.

https://www.basketball-reference.com...506090CLE.html

Great all you need to do is pick [undrafted], [undrafted], [undrafted] and fill out your bench with a bunch of [undrafted elite role players] sans cap space and you have an apples to apples comparison.

Too bad Jokic isn't a top 7 player

one funny thing about comparing towns/jokic by rpm, is that towns' orpm is better, while he's 3pts worse on d than jokic. basically the opposite of what you might expect (and similarly, towns drpm is legit terrible for a big). anyway that's an aside, iyam public 'metrics' aren't good enough to throw total faith behind him on the jokic v towns question. i think there's substance to the idea that consensus has some value, even isolating smart nba opinion-havers who know about all the stats, how many would legit take jokic>towns? i get the feeling very few?

this isn't like a wiggins thing where his stats are just bad and people are just overrating athleticism. towns also has great overall stats for his age, and has some legit points of positive difference: better scorer, better athlete, probably better scouted, plays more minutes etc - you could also have some reservations about jokic's stats due to role/style

Dood, Jokic isn't close to a top 5 player wtf? LeBron, Durant, Steph, Harden, Kawhi, Harden, Russ...who of those 7 people is he close in value to?

Harden's clone obviously

Staps and Robert Covington lollllllllll

@McBeef, quite a few writers are on board with Jokic>Towns last year, some even have him as a better prospect going forward. I wouldn't even go that far, but we're talking about next year and Jokic was pretty far ahead of him in every category, not just a single stat... And especially the more important one, wins and the effect on winning percentage in lineups.

@Geoff. It's hard to believe but the numbers are there. You can take any single reputable advanced stat in itself or aggregate them, he's very close to top 5 in all of those metrics. More importantly, the impact he has on his team has been top 3. And this isn't some guy who's doing it because he's playing with Lebron James all the time or whatever, it's coming from a guy who's spent about a third of his time playing from the bench.. A bench mind you that was elite, but that same bench was WOAT the second he became a starter.

He's very young and in his third year, Cinarocket said it himself that players tend to take a jump in year 3 (not sure I agree). We're also talking about a guy who probably got less of a whistle advantage and was fat. Now that he's forgone Eurocup to work on his body and conditioning I can see a jump there.

He started playing serious BBall 6 years ago.

4 years ago nobody knew him
3 years ago he put up great numbers in the Adriatic and was considered an ok prospect but way too slow.
2 years ago he became the MVP of the Adriatic
1 year ago he put up a top 3 rookie season eclipsed by only Magic and Bron at the same age per minute
This year he's blew by Magic and second year Bron, and his advanced-stat contemporaries at the same age are 2 others, 3rd year Bron and MJ.

Now even I'd have a hard time believing he'll end up anywhere close to those guys, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is that all the evidence points to him improving next year and he's already very, very good. I'd rank him somewhere around 8-10 last year, and I don't think it's a stretch to put him at 6-7 next by any means.

Also wtf undrafteds.

Sorry for the wait, gents. Real gross place to pick. Have went back and forth a bunch of times between 4 guys.

Anyways I'll take

What happened to everyone posting their guys salary ?

My point, Dood, is more that Jokic isn't really close to those people. So even if he's firmly at 9 (which obv is closer to 5 than 15) he is still closer to 15 than 5. Feel me?

My point is that he is and there is a good chance he will eclipse some of them next year because he has been improving by leaps and bounds for four straight years, and this one he's actually working on his body in the offseason instead of carrying his team to the silver medal and working the player just picked in the process.

feel me?

Speaking of which, I feel like Draymond could be undervalued by quite a bit in this draft, but I'm sure some will disagree. This is where I had him though.

And yeah please include Sportrac salaries and PM the next up.

[edit] Also I disagree with Moneyball about this stretch of picks sucking, I think this could be the best value in the draft. IMO not a lot is separating them from the top 10..

I do. I just find it kind of laughable I guess. I don't know how we could bet on it but I'd say there's an extremely small chance anyone reasonable considers him a better player than any of those guys in 2017-2018. But hey, I've been wrong before.

I was in the same boat Geoff, I thought last year him finishing 9th in RPM, high in other categories, and leading all centers was a fluke because I was burned by a former top 10 asset. If you look back I was skeptical that he'd improve from his historical rookie year (per minute), then he not only improved, but at a pace that's beyond the greats.

He has game-breaking skill on offense--if you remove the top10asset+Jokic disaster lineups the team scores 120.3PPP when he's on, that's higher than Steph and Durant, and those guys play with other all-stars. And this is just one guy with some of the worst PG play last year.

I've stopped capping my expectations, which probably means I'll be disappointed next year.

Damn this is a tough spot.

Pick coming soon.

I guess I just don't think the Nuggets are that bad. I think Murray/Harris are solid young guys we should expect improvement from, Faried/Chandler decent veteran role players, and Millsap is very good. If Jokic is, or close to, the player you are making him out to be they should be, at the least, favorites to playoff. And I'm not even sure they are are they?

lol wp

@Geoff come on with the undrafteds.

To answer your question I think they are pretty big favorites to playoff. afa his supporting cast being good, maybe but they were outscored by a ton sans Jokic, and with him on the floor they outscore opponents by 6 pts/100. To put that into perspective with Harden it's 7pts/100, and Kiwi 8pts/100. Those guys were on 55 and 61 win teams respectively. It's pretty crazy that they were nearly as good as the Spurs/Rockets when he was on the floor, but on par with the Brooklyn Nets the moment he hit the bench.

I'll take Harden.

For 28,299,399.

51,700,601 remaining.


Team construction will be key, but with a band of offensive (pun intended) miscreants he led the Rox last year to the second best offense in the NBA.

A number of guys are somewhat favorable in terms of advanced stats and value-per-dollar, but they haven't been able to have such an outsize effect on team success as Harden.

One could argue, outside of LeBron and KD, no one else in the league could lead Houston to 55 wins last year and the WCF three years ago.

He's turning 28 next month, took a major step forward last year, and has a big sample size of being a top-7 player in the league.

Can he win a playoff game first before we're putting him in the top 10 players in the league?

Are krayz and wrane around? If so I can hang out but getting sleepy