I think Ellington is good value, but he's not really a versatile enough bench piece in this.

team kkc writeup

so i was #blessed w/ the second pick and got the top guy on my board, the slim reaper



KD gonna KD on my team, a transcendent talent in the prime of his career

had to wait around for 40 picks for my second guy, all defensive team corner stone, Patrick Beverley



again, not expecting him to do anything he hasn't demonstrated irl, mainly play eliiiiiite d and provide a moar than credible spot up threat off the ball

Third pick was a big man on a steal of a deal, Cody Zeller



DRPM darling, does all the dirty work on the offensive side, doesn't need wasteful touches in the post, can hit that 18 footer if you don't follow him out of the paint

Fourth pick was a 2 guard on a rookie deal who should be back 100% come playoff time



Another spacer who has the athleticism to take advantage of the minimal attention he'll see on the offensive end with KD and out fifth pick on the court

I cash in my saved cash with my fifth pick, OLYMPIC CARMELO ANTHONY



Now I have twooooo world class buckets getters and an auto mismatch in the 38+ minutes i'll either have KD or Melo at the 4

Finish up with Zaza to give 20+ minutes of elite D at the 5, Levert as a backup 2 with the size to soak up minutes at the 3 when KD or Melo are off the court, and Rioooooooo to give a PBev light impersonation for 12 minutes a game

Final rotation v1.0

PBev 32/Rio 12/LaVine 4
LaVine 32/LeVert 16
KD 28/Melo 12/LeVert 8
Melo 24/KD 14/Zeller 10
Zeller 24/Zaza 24

the diff between johnson and winslow is that winslow has been really flawed, but good at some stuff, while johnson has been total trash at pretty much everything

i hold out some hope for johnson too, but man he's looked like a total bust

A lot of the lower body injuries, people can work on their shooting while they're out.
I dont know if JW can do that with the shoulder injury

I think I made a team that was undrafted that could be competitive in the bottom half of this, I'll post it and some random thoughts about the exercise when we finish these last three picks

gotta have RoLo at center

I wanted to wait until after the draft to argue my Jokic pick but I am going on vacation tomorrow so I'll do my best to get it in now. The reason why I felt he was the clear #1 is:



I think you can even argue he might even be on the Steph/Durant tier next year.

If you're still reading I'll try to explain. While it's true that last year he put up the (tied for) best numbers per minute as a second year player of all time, those numbers alone don't tell the whole story. As you all know he started the season playing power forward, then moved to the bench to appease Nurkic. Nikola and the team struggled in that role, so some of his now GOAT 2nd year numbers were negatively affected by a start to the season that was an anomaly in that he will never be playing PF next to a post-up guy who can't post up.

On December 15th he became a starter, and Malone yolo'd and started letting him bring the ball up-court and basically play PG. His /36 numbers after that move are pretty amazing:

23.3pts/13.3rbs/7.0ast/1 st/.9blks/3.3 tov - 64.8TS

25.5pts/8.5rbs/8.1ast/1.1st/.6blk/3.9 tov - 62.9TS
27.1pts/5.0rbs/7.6ast/2.0st/.2blk/3.4 tov - 61.2TS
28.1pts/6.2rbs/4.0ast/1.8st/.9blk/2.4 tov - 61.5TS

The below numbers are Bron, Steph, and Kawhi. Jokic was actually leading everyone in PER post 12/15 as of mid march before they took Hoopdata down (if someone knows how to calculate this now lmk).

So he produced at a similar rate the the best, but that doesn't mean anything unless he can impact the way his team plays right? Check out the net ratings post 12/15 for players with starters minutes

You've got 3 Warriors, CP3 (who should have been on here but minutes), Kawhi who barely edges out Jokic, then LBJ. What stands out here is that Nikola is the only one near the top of this list who actually plays for a mediocre team, and that's his most telling number and greatest indicator of his impact. He played on a 40 win team, but when he was on the court as a starting center they played like a 58 win team. Kawhi otoh played on a team that won 61 games, and when he was on the court they played like a... 62 win team. This isn't just noise for him either, last year it was the same thing, they were 9.5 points worse with him off the court.

Not only did he put up elite numbers, but when he was on the court his team was elite.

You can dismiss him all you want because he's never been to the finals or whatever, but the only evidence I see that holds him back from being in the top 4-7 discussion is that he has not done it over a large sample nor played a lot of minutes. They are both valid arguments, but at least with the former we literally have 4 years now of him making mind-bottling jumps that far surpassed even the wildist of Jokic nuthugger's dreams.. Last year in particular--he did this with basically zero rest during the offseason, having to qualify for the Olympics (where he was MVP) then having the play in the Olympics (where he took silver).

I had him and Durant as #1 and #2 itd, with Kawhi #3 then LBJ/Steph further back. If the goal was to win the draft in the minds of TZ, I think KD was the clear #1. My goal is to be the Jesus of TZ spreading the word of the BBall Messiah. And also to lol at CVig because why not.

Cliffs :

Good post, Seadood.

Eric Gordon is above LBJ on that net rating list, too. I'm just going to write that off as noise.

I think you make a compelling argument for Jokic > Brow, and while I still wonder if he gets "solved" due to his lack of raw athleticism, it's more likely he improves and posts better stats next year given his age and size, and the fact that Millsap is a perfect complement to his game.

But, defense, positional versatility, and defense.

the defensive questions around jokic are really interesting imo, his offensive skills i'm basically a believer in and i assume most people are the same

he's obviously pretty slow and has like zero explosiveness. what he does have is good length, balance, coordination. in the past his physical limitations were bad, but a little less of a death knell. i think in today's nba, it's just an unanswered question about if a guy like that can REALLY be a good defender like some of jokic's stats say he is - teams just seem to get better and better at exploiting weaknesses (esp mobility weaknesses) like that every year

the counter in jokic's case is that he's such a bball genius that he's going to be able to use the good aspects of his tools, and use positioning/anticipation etc so well that he makes up for his weaknesses

we kind of just have to see how jokic's career pans out so see imo - i'm personally doubtful that jokic will be able to hold up 'properly' vs elite teams in the playoffs on d

still to pick:
RT
heroball
Wrane

is that right?

I'm done.

Picked Troy Daniels last.

So did I just crush this draft so bad I killed the discussion?

Things I think people did wrong -

Draft rookies
Project growth beyond the 1 year scenario of this draft
Draft non-all NBA talents on max max contracts in the first 3-4 rounds

batphone went off with my biggest fan mentioning me again, so here's my only take:

if jokic is gonna be Tier A tier this year, and murray is basically the next curry, AND they got paul milsap who is actually a legit ~Top 20 player, I see no reason the Nugs can't win at least 60. That gives them a Top 3 player, a Top 20 player and the next Steph Curry. And two good youngs on GH and Hernangomez. Hell, they could push for 73!

Everyone emptying their bank accounts on O43.5?

I don't think much neeeds to be said about the utter hyperbole and sensationalism of that post other than aejones sensible and correct reply.

Yeah agree with all of this

This draft was fun, but sorting by RPM has gotten really out of control. RPM is pretty broken as a measure of defensive contribution and people are just blindly citing it to rank players at this point.

Not as much parity in this draft as others due to poor drafting, but here's some teams I like that are well constructed and don't play themselves off the court with slow bigs or bad spacing.


disko - i like the RWB/DAJ fit and love putting Curry with them. Still not sure about the Favors pairing, but I like the interior defense and think its pretty versatile to backup a kinda weak backcourt defensively. Also found good value in Harrell/Warren


beef - Talent rich with great spacing. Didn't mind dipo at all - think he's good in a vacuum and being underrated maybe due to not being awesome on the sortbyrpm strategy.

jmurder - Love this team on both ends. I like Skal a lot and am probably still higher on DAR than most. He's still 21 years old and already decent. Don't like the Payton pick much though.

aejones - great boom or bust team. Embiid is the best C in the league healthy imo (close to Gobert but I can't imagine a full season Embiid is worse - but defense of both would be so important vs elite teams) Pretty easy for things to fall apart here but don't really mind that strategy. Just matches up better on paper when healthy vs most teams.

vinivici - so much shooting and scoring, so much shooting and scoring against

RT - The Rondo decision is probably a bad one but we've still seen flashes. Love the Casspi/Bradley values.

Assani - Kiwi was slam dunk #1 value of draft so getting him anywhere else was a steal. You also might have benefited by sortbyrpm since he might be the best player in the league this year and ran bad and got dinged on DRPM. So whoever was gonna get Kiwi had the easiest path to win the draft. Drafting wise Assani did similar to what I think I'd do, which is to not marginalize Kawhi's defense and surround him with capable shooters. I don't love the interior defense, but it's hard to even really think it's that important when the wing and guard defense here is just so strong.

oh also liked loldolphins and seadoods teams but both had some glaring problems so left them off the first pass but they are pretty strong teams

How I'd rank the Top 5 players going in to next year trying to predict some decline, injury risk, not caring much in reg season, etc

1. Durant
2. Kawhi (very close)
3. Curry
4. Labron
5. Harden

I'd like to just 5b. RWB because I love him and think he's one of the few stars in this tier capable of carrying bad teams to good records/playoffs, but I think he's a quick tier below these guys

I probably should have gone Roberson over miles, but at the time hadn't zerod in on grant which left enough money. Hard time stomaching 10mil for him after he gets hacked as a wing player, but probably fits really nicely on my team. Assume he makes aejones undrafted team

Lol cvig still filled with salt.

And wrongness ofc but that's been a given since 2012

I actually went with this for the undrafted team:

rozier $1,988,520
Derozan $27,739,975
Thabo $5,121,951
Tobias $16,000,000
Adams $22,471,910
McCaw $1,312,611
tolliver $3,290,000
Kilpatrick $1,524,305


$79,449,272

Others I considered on my sheet:
Jeremy Lamb $7,000,000
Harry B $23,112,004
teague $19,000,000
Oubre $2,093,040
roberson $9,259,259

Teague is probably a better spending of the money than Steven Adams on a pure production POV, but the next best Cs actually get pretty weak (mostly because bigs are so overpaid right now-- some of the league still treating it like a two big league, making a bunch of guys: Dieng, Faried, Tristan, that are pretty good undraftable. Also injury problems with guys like Mahinmi/Noah) and there aren't many cheap ones available), and also Rozier is a perfect fit alongside DDR.

Btw: I would choose Tobias > Gallo for "production of NBA player over full 82 games" next season, I could see arguing Gallo in a one game/upside/playoff format.. but for the price it's Tobias pretty clearly. Pretty similar players too tbh.

I'd say for me the draft broke down approximately like this:

Kawhi Leonard $18,868,625
Kevin Durant $25,000,000
LeBron James $33,285,709

vinivici9586 Stephen Curry $34,682,550

[this tier I tried to move a few guys around like Jimmy ahead of PG, but it's mostly one big morass imo]

Nikola Jokic $1,471,382
Karl Towns $6,216,840
Joel Embiid $6,100,266
Draymond Green $16,400,000
James Harden $28,299,399
Jimmy Butler $19,300,894
Giannis Antetokounmpo $22,471,910
Anthony Davis $23,775,506
Chris Paul $24,599,459
Paul George $19,508,958
Russell Westbrook $28,530,608

Rudy Gobert $21,974,719
John Wall $18,063,850
DeMarcus Cousins $18,063,850
Robert Covington $1,577,230
Marc Gasol $22,642,350
Kristaps Porzingis $4,503,600
Isaiah Thomas $6,261,395
Gordon Hayward $29,727,900
Jae Crowder $6,796,117
Myles Turner $2,569,920
Klay Thompson $17,826,150

[giant tier of like 50-100 guys who have different arguments for them based on team construction... Blake can kinda be in his own tier, if he's healthy, and if he reverts to 2014 form, he's a good pick-- but those things seem so insanely unlikely to me he just kinda seems not great for 30m]

I think you are wayyyyyyyy overvaluing embiid.

I'd have him down by kristaps or so