who said it was a negative?

so this is a draft based on career, not based on potential? if it is then players w/<x years of experience should have been ineligible draft picks and if not all anyone can do is extrapolate for the young superstars.

edit: and the fact they are being drafted at age 24 is all the more reason to take paul over stockton

CP3 over Malone is bad. DH over Malone is borderline ******ed.

Barkley was actually the other guy was considering taking at the 11th btw...over Malone (because I could make the arguement that he did it all...and he created on his own unlike Malone)

I figure the whole concept of this draft is to draft a player on a brand new franchise at their prime...and I truly feel Paul was the better choice over Malone and Stock. You guys are saying we're discounting the longevity and HOF careers of these guys - but you guys on the other hand are discounting the greatness of Chris Paul and more importantly - how he hasnt had a chance to be in the league for 10-15 years.

Paul not having played for 10-15 years is hurting him, when imo - it shojuldnt.

No offense meant. I thought you knew it was close and chose the guy you liked best (That's what I wrongly extrapolated from your comments anyway).

I would definitely take Malone over Juwan Howard.

Its a negative in the sense that their ceiling has been reached. We have seen their career arc, and how good they are. They are hurt by their longevity because we can't say "well they could be the best ever!"

We already know what they are.

But whatever, CP3 is gangster. I'm just glad I didn't have to decide whether or not to pick him.

Barkley

i actual LOL'ed - and I dont do that often.

I think he means Josh Howard.

QFT

ok - fine - but stop using the same logic against players who havnt played 10-15 years in the laegue.

Chris Pauls single season was greater than both Malone and Stcocks best single seasons....even if we werent talking about "potential" (but thats not what this is ultimately about)

If you're happy, I'm happy.

That's the fun part about this thread, though. A few posts above, someone said that Dwight Howard over Karl Malone is insane. We won't actually know if that's true for 15-20 years. But is it really a stretch to think that a very young, incredibly athletic guy like Howard might have an HOF career also? It's the same argument I made before about LBJ being debatable over MJ. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, you'd be crazy if you don't take the best player of all-time over a guy with a 25% chance of being the best player of all-time. But this thread is just for fun anyway.

Let's say we did this for baseball. With the benefit of hindsight, anyone who doesn't take Bonds first is a complete idiot. But could anyone have guessed how good Bonds would become in 1988?

IMO we shouldn't really be talking about this in case it effects what people might do. One thing leads to another and the next thing we're talking about even more players (I used restraint not to give an example here as an example of how easily this could turn out bad).

This is very true imo

If it's a single elimination tournament deciding things, Pedro goes first AINEC.

Would have been funnier if I hadn't said Dwight in the second par.

yeah he's like the Rondo of baseball

Paul probably has had a better PG season right now than anybody since Magic. Look at his numbers. Dude's been beast.

But you just don't know how his body is going to age. Some nagging injuries that plague him throughout his career. Really, the downside for a 22 year old PG who's already had a few injuries, and is only 6 foot? I mean, how much does he rely on his quickness? I really don't like this pick. Just too worried about his longevity. And consider, how much better than Karl Malone or John Stockton can you really be?

we are supposed to discount any fluke occurrences (such as a sudden proneness(sp?) to injury)

I am back and quite hammered. Basically, I can't believe that SHARK DOCTOR took Chris Paul for several reasons.

1.) I tossed Paul out as an idea to myself, but figured that was 0% chance that he goes this high.

2.) I had a list of three guys, one of which I had zero desire to take because I dislike him. Of course, he's still on the board now.

3.) I told you I would be out for the night and lol @ people acting like I would forget Karl Malone.

I'll probably put my pick up tonight, but if not sometime early tomorrow afternoon.

Being injury prone (having a bad back) != fluke occurrences.

Read the rules, IMO.

I don't think you suddenly become prone to injury. Being prone to injury means you are likely to be injured. If you're talking about something like Grant Hill, I'd consider that a fluke injury because he was completely healthy until he injured his ankle mid-career, and then played on it when he should have been healing. Then of course he got the staph infection after surgery which was just bad luck.

It's not that Chris Paul is injury prone. It's that we don't know how his body is going to act as it ages. We do know about it for guys like Malone or Stockton, they're going to play a bunch of years barring freak occurrences. For CP3, we just don't know yet.

That's the argument, anyway.

Stockton missed 54 games in 19 seasons. Only 4 games in his first 13 seasons, and played in all 82 games in 16 of 19 seasons.

Paul has missed 24 games in his 3 seasons, and has yet to play 82 games in a single reg season.