Bowen's probably a 3rd or 4th rounder if you could get him whenever you want him, but you have to wait, what, 4 years for him to be worthwhile?

I think this team is a good fit for him, though, with rudy being only 21, and dikimbe playing until he's 84, this is a team that can afford to wait.

Vote against extending the draft, 10 rounds is enough

I disagree. It's not like Bowen's skillset all of a sudden changed when he was 30. He has an extremely unusual skillset for an NBA player - do you really find it that surprising that Rick Pitino didn't utilize him optimally?

What do you mean here?

After the first couple of rounds the players from all positions became quite marginal, I don't know if you call PGs drafted in the 4th and 5th round that strong:

Lever, Hinrich, Barbosa, Rondo, Moore, NVE, Rivers, Kenny but I guess you can argue them being stronger than the big men drafted in those rounds. I think the truly great PGs are pretty small still but the marginal PGs are stronger than the marginal big men. A lot of the big men drafted in the 5th round were pretty blah to me or had some serious issues.

Still want to trade up if anyone in the next few picks is interested.

I guess I personally wanted him badly this round but he comes with the fact that he wasn't used or wasn't taht effective early on in his career. Yes he might have had a skillset that wasn't used but it's pretty hard to tell from his early career of how effective he would be in his SA years.

I think the elite PF/C goes a lot deeper than elite PG (really after Deron Williams went I think its a significant drop off, and there weren't a lot of PG taken before him). But, there's a large pool of decent PG, that goes all the way down to Cassell, Doc, Sleepy, etc and there are still a few good PG that haven't been drafted. The big men drafted in these rounds were not as good IMO, much more flaws or more limited players.

Even if you assume his defensive skills are the same, his shooting was much worse in his first few years in the league, it took him six years for his TS% to break .500. I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that he had an extremely unusual development for an NBA player. I don't mind the pick, I just am not in love with pairing him with Ruland as neither of their primes overlaps.

You don't think Kevin Johnson is elite? You don't think Hardaway or Price are elite, I don't think there is that much gap between them and Billups or Deron especially since Deron has 2 elite years only while Tim and KJ had 5 in their career.

Who are the elite PGs of this draft?

Magic
Stockton
Paul
Thomas
Kidd
Payton
Nash
Billups
Deron
KJ
Price
Parker
Tim H
Andre Miller
Baron Davis

These are the first 15 pure points taken. If you want to count AI, Wade, Gilbert, Dumars as PGs, so be it. To me there all combos.

Then you have big men:

Shaq
TD
Hakeem
David
KG
KM
Barkley
Dirk
Dwight
Patrick
Kevin
Amare
Zo
Ming
Mutombo
Webber
Brand

I think people have gotten too much into the habbit of assuming players will folow the same career arc in this league as they did in the NBA. This makes a lot of sense for the most part, because for the majority of players, career arcs are determined by propensity for injuries, personality/addiction issues, and longevity / aging patterns. In these cases, it's a very reasonable assumption that the player's career arc will be similar in this league and in the NBA. But for a few players where the major issue was fit / utilization (Steve Nash comes to mind), there is no reason to think that their careers in this league will mirror their NBA careers.

Who is going to decide this? This is the problem with these type of players and young players, who is going to make the decision? Are we going to roll dice to finger out what they are what they aren't going to do?

I am not terribly concerned with his TS% as he takes less than 6 shots a game. On offense, as long as he can knock down an open 3 so the defense can't double off him, that's good enough for me. He shot .339 on 3-pointers in his first year in the league (not great, but decent), and .466 in his third year - so that part of his game was always there.

Obviously it will be up to each voter to decide these things, but a lot of it depends on how logical a case the owner can make for his players. I feel that the argument for Nash and Bowen is a lot more persuasive than the argument for someone like Tarpley or Marburry.

Let me elaborate a little here. With a player like Tarpley, the main issues are injuries / addiction. Whether these things are genetically or environmentally determined, the propensities are pretty much set in stone by the time you get the player at 24, so you can't expect him to be much healthier or better-behaved than he was in real life.

With Marbury, the argument that HSP made was that it was all a matter of fit and coaching. This argument has potential, since that is not a part of the player's inherent makeup. However, this argument doesn not work well for Marbury because he never performed well as a leader of a team no matter what setting he was in. Is there a hypothetical setting where Marbury could have blossomed? Maybe, but the evidence is lacking, so the argument is a bit of a stretch (or, for the probabilistically-minded, you can assume that there is a small % that Marbury actually blossoms in this league, but most likely he will play the way he did in the NBA).

For Nash and Bowen, the issue is also fit / coaching (coaching in the sense of how the player was utilized). But in these cases, you have very convincing real life examples that the player could thrive in the right system. You have to decide what is more likely - that they player developed new skills late in his career (extremely unusual), or that the change in performance / playing time was the result of being properly utilized and being in the right system (seems a lot more likely). This is why I think that it's OK to assume similar career arcs to real life for most players, but that Bowen and Nash are valid exceptions.

i too am interested in trading up (such a sellout)

capone,

I think calling a lot of those PG elite is a huge stretch, that's my point. Andre Miller is not close to as good or valuable as anyone on that big man list, ditto Baron Davis. Hardaway/Price/KJ/Parker are all incomplete players or have injury problems or both.

See though, I think Nash is a perfect example of where this could go wrong. He played 31 minutes a game as a 24 year old player, what reason do we have to think he should be better than he was other than our hopes that he could be? His numbers steadily increased as he was playing in Dallas, and while they did take a jump when he joined Phoenix, the difference between his 24 year old days and his last Dallas season is just as large as his last Dallas season and first Phoenix one. I see no reason why we should assume that he was being held back when he was 24 by his team and system when he got significantly better before changing systems, and it would just become ridiculous with players we like being given the benefit of the doubt over players we don't like.

Ok, this is a good point for Nash. Doesn't apply to Bowen though.

not sure why not. His hard work and struggles are pretty well documented. Like he didn't really develop a reliable 3-ball til he was 27 or so. Just chuck that?

He shot .378 from the 3-point line in his first three years in the league (four if you want to count the age-25 season where he played all of one minute). He always had that shot.

What a weird spot to average the years. In those 3 years he shot
.339
.269
.466

So you average that out to .378 and claim he always had that shot? It's pretty damn clear he developed it later.

The year he shot .269, he only had 26 attempts. If you want to say that he was a .339 % shooter at the start of his career rather than .378, that's fine. I'll take it.

And it's not weird at all to average multiple years for 3PT%. It's an extremely high variance stat, especially when you don't have that many attempts.

Of course it's weird to average two mediocre-bad years with an exceptional year. You're clearly trying to cover up his early mediocrity by lumping it in with a peak season.

While we're using a bigger sample size to avoid variance how about including the following season when he drops back down to .336 taking 300 attempts.

How are they incomplete and some of the guys you consider elite to be complete?

Deron Williams has had 1, count them, 1 season as an All-NBA player. Hardaway had 1 season where he missed a lot of time but other than his chucking, made 5 all-nba teams and 5 all-star teams, and plays better D than Deron who statistically plays no D. Then you have Kevin Johnson who had great years between 22-27 so he does have injury issues. You have Billups who wasn't effective until 26 whne he got to Detroit.

The only guys with long careers who I consider truly elite PGs are Magic, Stockton, Payton, Kidd and I guess Isiah but even they all had problems your pointing to. Magic didn't play great D, Kidd is inefficient scoring. Stockton is probally the only real complete PG in the league that did everything pretty well. I don't see how you can throw out a lot of players as not being elite. Isiah didn't play past 32 and has a worse TS% and only slightly better PER than Hardaway including a lot of lean years for TH. Payton TS% is low but played excellent D. Nash could also be included and he does just about everything e/c play D and has a late start.

Number of all NBA teams for PGs:

Magic-10 (9 first)
GP-9(2-5-2)
Nash-6(3-1-2)
Kidd-5(5-1)
Hardaway-5(1-3-1)
Isiah-5(3-2)
KJ-4-(0-4-1)
Price-4(1-0-3)
Billups-2(0-1-1)
Starbury-2(0-0-2)

I also find CP3 and Deron pretty elite but you can say CP3 is pretty complete but young but Deron is as incomplete as some of the other guys picked around him b/c he can't defend either. As I mentioned earlier in this thread D from PGs is quite overrated anyways.

I guess you need a PG, but Fisher's stats are pretty marginal throughout his career. The last couple of picks kinda picked up the last slate of good ones left but I think there are better PGs available.

He's a medium-low usage shooter with medium to low efficiency, and he's an average to below average passer for a PG. I don't pick for a while so I haven't really spent much time looking at alternatives, but I have to imagine someone better is out there.