I'm glad the preferred "ClarkNizzle" made it into the spreadsheet

STOP NAMING PLAYERS

...

oh, you're talking poker, sry.

dude had microfracture. He's unstoppable.

It took me like 3 seconds but I laughed

He does drink a crapload of milk, so that obv gave him magical powers.

Among other things, yeah.

im interested in moving up to pick soon. if you want to trade down, PM me.

good pick with gasol (i think). i had my pick narrowed down to him and two others, and was likely going to go the "safe" route and pick gasol. one reason i wasn't thrilled was that his defense leaves a little something to desire, but that's just my opinion.

that said, i like the pick (like i said)

For the record, your opinion is somewhat wrong.



so, GKA is getting a 7 footer who just before the 1st season, during, and immediately after had a better then average defensive rating and had very good defensive win share rating. what makes people think he's a lousy defender is that oddly this year and last he dropped off badly and turned from an above average defender to a below average one. so, just weird.

im taking this to mean in season 1 or whatever he's pretty good defensively and def will help your team, but beyond that, (like "at 28" or whatever season 2 is) hurts your team defense.

yeah i have no clue how DWS and DRtg work, i'm not going to lie. i noticed that he had some oddly low years, and that his average of ~8 DWS/year seemed around average in comparison to other bigs i was looking at.

i was mostly basing my statement off of being in LA and watching almost all of his games this year (small sample, i know), and realize that this might not be the best way to judge.

i've been trying to figure out the defensive "advanced" stats on B-R.com to no avail so far. cheers

Good pick. One of the best players available at this point IMO.

Both of my wanted players still available, so I still want to move up if anyone wants to trade down.

Draft wise it may or not be a mistake. With the position that bigcat was in he had to either take him late first or early second. I'm guessing he wouldn't have still been around when it was time to pick in the third. If that's a piece that really fits in to the plan of his team I don't see it being that huge of a mistake. You have to see how the teams look in the end.
Statistically he's not a monster like some other players that's where this draft gets iffy. Do you go by the eye test of watching a guy play or is this a pure number crunch? Honestly I laugh when I see someone like Shawn Marion go before James Worthy. Marion may have more impressive index ratings and stats in some areas but if I had to pick between the two from just watching them play and what they did and have done in their careers I'll take Worthy every time. I can offer a more in depth explanation but I would have to give up too much of my strategy for it to make sense why I would take Worthy over Marion. Saying that the only way Worthy would be valuable is if you paired him with Magic Johnson is kind of silly. So are we going to start just disregarding anyone's career who played with a great point guard? I think Worthy is one of those players that if you watched the NBA in that era you know how good he is but if you have to go back and get out stats and compare him to some players now you wouldn't get the full scope of how good he really was.

nooooo way is worthy better than marion. matrix has been one of the most talented defensive players in the league for awhile and in addition has been playing solid offensively for a long time (with and without nash). such an extremely versatile player.

Am I just dreaming are the guys nowadays going a little high. There are still a lot of retired guys who are better than some of the guys just drafted.

Edit 19 of the first 42 are out of the league...I guess not that bad, but still.

As for B-R.com's defensive stats...check Gary Payton's career D stats on there if you need any proof that it's not that great a measure

His DWS are pretty high for a PG, although for arguably the best all time they aren't that high but DRTG is kinda low for an all-time great.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/.../kiddja01.html

Kidd actually has better #s for DRTG and DWS, he's also a really good defender in his prime imo.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...stockjo01.html

Stockton had compable #s to Payton. PGs hardly have DRTG under 105, much less 100 like some of the all time great defensive centers/bigmen, it's just much easier for them.

1st, 1st, and 7th

Guys nowadays are definitley going a little high. Yes 19 of the 42 are out of the league but look at the 19. Most of those 19 are automatic picks. HOFers, dream teamers, NBA at 50/60 type guys. I'm guessing that most of the non-stars, second tier and role players are going to be recent players because it's just easier for people to remember what's most recent and if you're not old enough you haven't seen any of those guys play.

Actually now theres 3 guys I really want, so maybe I'll just sit back and hope one falls to me.

Agreed. Ray Allen seems like a good example of that, although I guess if you want a 2 that can kill it from the outside, you cant do much better. But I don't think he was close to being the BPA, but this is when teams take shape and positional skill becomes more important.

D

If anyone wants to offer me trade ideas, go ahead and PM me.

Not sure on the Chauncy and Vinsanity picks. Chauncy was a reach, and I guess with Vince, well actually I'd just never have him on my team but I guess he's got to go some time.

Big thumbs up for Gasol and Allen.

Ray Allen didn't decline this year, he took less shots. It's not like Allen's gonna take 20 shots a game in the league anyway.

Don't get me wrong, if I didn't go with Howard I would have probally gone with Ewing. These are my thoughts.

Howard at 22 is already a first team all-nba player. With that being said the center position isn't particularly strong right now and with Yao out it could probally be just a technicality that he is a first teamer. With that being said, to me Howard is a better rebounder and has a much stronger inside game then Ewing who from what I remember was more of a big man shooter than a true inside presence. With that being said, I might have misjudged Ewing's defensive abilities. Looking deeper into his stats he was rediculous at the position.

Dwight Howards inside game reminds me more of Shaq than Ewing and I wanted a guy more like Shaq. I wanted a guy who prefers dunking and working inside to a guy who takes jumpers. Looking at Patrick he was an about 50% fg% shooter which is good but not rediculous for the position while Howard has hovered around 60% the last 2 seasons. 1 big hurt to Dwight is his FT%, like Shaq it's pretty terrible and the sick part it's getting worse. His rookie year was his best %. I took a gamble with Howard over Ewing. With Ewing I knew exactly what I would be getting or atleast something close to it. With Dwight he could be the best big man of his era (the post Shaq/Duncan), with Ewing we know he was one of the top 3 centers of his era.

wrong.