They were 6th in points per 100 possessions, but yeah I think people are way underrating Dumars and Blackman here and looking past nearly all of the faults of the Kings' players for no good reason other than "well the team didn't need them to do that."

I'm not following this logic at all.

The Kings were 6/29, which is very very good.

AC's team could most definitely be worse than the Kings but not much worse than an average NBA team. If you define average as 15th and "much worse" than average as say 20th, then they could be 7th-19th, no?

I think I said this earlier, but as far as I know AC has no 3 point threat. Blackman could score though, and I may be underrating him still. If teams don't have to worry about an outside shooter, Webber can be doubled, I think their offense might struggle a bit at times. Smits wasn't a very good defender or rebounder for his size. So Blackman/Smits lack of D could hurt them. This could still be a very good team, I just think 02 Kings > AC.

Dumars >>>> Bibby defensively
JHo/Blackman = Peja/Christie (keeping the wing players together Christie best of the bunch but Peja the worst)
Vlade > Smits Vlade was old and slow by then, not bad but not that much better.

I'm just not seeing zomg way better defensively. I'm not seeing better defensively period tbh.

I agree with this. As long as it is agreed that deciding this based on age 24 only is the worst way to do it (not saying you want that, just that it should be made clear that won't be the way it goes).

WOW ASSANI WOW.

Yes.

A) He created 2.2 turnovers a game via blocks and steals (probably more with charges). Not bad. B) He was a good man-to-man defender which blocks and steals don't really show at all.

It's way bigger of an advantage than you're giving it credit for. Two big guys who can step out and make good passes really stretches the defense. Also, you can exploit matchups with this. Say you have a center who is a good post defender, well you could take him out of the picture with Divac in the high post and still leave Webber to do work. Works the same way the other way around. Having two guys who can pass and shoot a good jump shot really mitigates a great interior defense.

No. You can much more easily exploit a bad defender of Blackman's proportions (unless he's better at defense than his stats are leading on), than you can a decent offensive player such as Christie. The offense controls where the ball goes, not the other way around. And if the defense wanted to force Christie to hit a shot, he could.

Cute.

Dumars had some AWESOME interior defense behind him to help the fact that he wasn't very quick. Webber's good and Smits was alright, but it's nothing compared to Laimbeer and Rodman.

See above. Also, IMO you could've probably used a little thinking to figure out the difference between offense and defense and their deficiencies.

While not as good as the Kings, that team wasn't awful. They won 42 games (43 pythag wins), and were average both offensively and defensively. They were average. That's not my point though. Webber chucked up 3 3 pointers a game at a 31.7% clip there. He also shot FTs less frequently at a 59% rate. But you already knew this because I posted it.

So like I said, there is NO WAY that AC-Cobra's team is better than the 2001 Kings team.

Bummed at the small amount of picks since I was last on. A few comments:

Bill Cartwright - I'm a little surprised that there wasn't more love for this pick. I think his career trend was very similar to McDyess and kind of like Ziggy's, starting out hot, getting injured, and then going on to have a solid career. To me, that's the definition of someone who isn't injury prone.

Larry Johnson - See above for reasons I don't like him in this format. His injuries were more chronic.. Still, you can't knock the pick that much given how low he was taken.

Danny Granger - One of my new favorite squads with DG. It's just a perfect fit, and I think DG was a steal where he went. Of all the young guys, I think he's got the least amount of question marks besides Chris Paul..

I've said it so many times but again. Dumars wasn't quick enough to guard point guards. Bibby at 24 was a much better defender than he is now, and WAS quick enough to stay with point guards. Dumars was a better team defense player probably, so at best he's one >.

I don't think JHo is anywhere near as good on defense as Christie was. Peja and Blackman are probably a wash though.

Vlade was a very good post defender then, which was more important as Webber was a good help defense player.

I think you all are underrating just how good that Kings team was. IMO they were better than the Lakers that year and also better than any team in this playoffs this year.

basketball ref.com should provide a game simulator for us, I can see that happening in the next few years no doubt.

+1

It would probably suck, but at the same time be really, really awesome

Why don't we just vote on who did the best job of building their team. We can still do it tournament style.

I think doing multiple year votes could turn out to be a mess, and this is really the only other option.

Can we just post a sticky that's like "Don't talk about what happens after the draft until the draft is over?" It's just not constructive at this time. This coming from a former offender.

From 24-26, Rolando Blackman averaged roughly 21 points, 4 rebounds, 3.5 assists. Shot over .800 from the line (5.5/game) and shot about .520 from the field. He played on Dallas teams that were very bad defensively, Drtng is a pretty bad stat and we all know this. There's no way he's <Peja defensively and though he is clearly a different player, he was very, very good offensively.. .580 TS%.

Joe Dumars put up roughly 15.5 points, 2.5 rebounds, 5 assists. .550 TS%.

This team would be very solid offensively, and for the first 3 years of the team you would expect them to get to the conference finals at least a couple times.

Yeah but some teams will be awesome at 24, others awesome later, some will be consistent, some have injury concerns. It's hard to compare period. But even tougher without multiple tourneys imo.

+1

How is it not constructive? Why wait until everyone picks their teams and are biased on how to do it to decide?

The problem was it wasn't decided before we started picking, waiting longer only intensifies the issue.

Yea since there are so much variables it should be just a "who built the best team for now + future."

Chances of 3 full tournaments with voting actually all taking place is like 10% imo.

it sucks when people start picking based on specific years of production. Especially considering Assani's whole point when starting this thing is we aren't just getting those stats for each guy.

A) If we're going to be biased later, we're going to be biased now as well. We're all 3-5 players deep and know the shape of our team.

B) Because this draft is not about winning and losing. It's about creating a team you like and think would succeed and having good debate (as we are now with the Kings vs. AC-Cobra).

Obviously its not about winning or losing, but it would be nice to know how the hell it will be decided so we can pick accordingly.

this

Okay, I'll explain to you how it will work:

We're drafting to create a team that will be good now, and will continue being good into the future. Whether that means you want to peak 4 years from now or be solid going into the 15th season is up to you. Whatever postseason is created will try to accurately represent this.

Ok, now that I have tbach's opinion I only need 38 more.

you pick based on making the best team for now and the future, not because you're trying to angle shoot based on how we're going to judge it

I think it's as simple as "all things considered (i.e. short term, long term, injuries, etc), which franchise would you most like to own" and we all publicly force rank all 40 teams and add up the points (40pts 1st, 1pt 40th).