This really depends on your definition of "good." Do you mean guys who score a ton of points even though they are shooting a lower average than the rest of their team? My definition of a "good" player is a little different.

Look, building a successful basketball team is more about fit than putting the best players on the court. In spite of what some will say, there are very very few players who are do it all guys at their respective positions. Guys like Jordan, Duncan, and Bird are such players who were at or near the very best with regards to all aspects of playing great ball. I'd break them down like so:

Sexy, phat contract characteristics

volume scoring
efficiency scoring
inside scoring
jump-shooting
rebounding
playmaking
1v1 defense

Ugly characteristics that make up Basketball IQ

offensive mismatch recognition
off-ball movement (setting screens, using screens, creating space, etc...)
team defense
leadership

Intangibles

health
likability
off the court demeanor

The success of your team is going to depend on how well you've got these bases covered. Like it or not, most players will have deficiencies in several of these categories at their respective positions. I think fans tend to put too much stock into the very first category, whilst treating the others as less essential. That's a mistake because, if anything, volume scoring is the most abundant and perhaps the easiest trait to pick up in this draft. Come on, we act as if guys like Battier or Rodman couldn't double their scoring if they wanted to. The truth is they easily could, but it'd be at the expense of their efficiency, team efficiency, team chemistry, and ultimately their team's bottom line. More importantly, that's the one attribute that doesn't create problems if you aren't so great at it. Shane Battier pretty much does it all except score in bulk, but he's hardly a negative on offense. In fact, his three point shooting makes him extremely valuable. Aside from his ability to score at a high level of efficiency, he creates space on the floor by forcing a defender to stay close, which makes it easier for his teammates to put themselves in higher percentage situations.

Many of these scorers that have not been taken, as well as some that have, are great at volume scoring but pretty much suck at everything else. This makes them zero sum players, or at times less than that. These so-called role-players are generally rank very highly in everything except the first trait, which I've already said abundantly available.

What's more, these high volume/low efficiency guys are less valuable in a format like this than they are in real life. Most real life teams have only a couple of guys who can score efficiently, so their offense has to come from somewhere, and often times it'll be from a bulk scorer because he's simply going to do it better than his counterparts. In a league such as this where you've got a much larger pool of players to cull from, that becomes less of a necessity because you are going to have better players around you.

All this, and we haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to managing this many egos for an 82 game season. That alone would be enough to make me want to limit the amount of so-called "stars" on my squad. You only have to think back to the last few Team USAs and the 2003-4 Lakers to see how well that worked out.

what if Malone payton and shaq had been three years younger?

These are three guys who were the 2nd, 12th, and 26th pick, and all of them could have arguably gone higher (plus Kobe at 10 who could've been considered higher).

Three years before:
Payton: 22.1
Malone: 24.7
Shaq: 30.2

Add in Kobe.

I'm pretty sure that team would've won every game they played. That conversation is a little different.

The reason the conversation is somewhat meaningful with the players at the ages they were is because Malone at 40 and Payton at 35 are closer to normal players. And they won 56 games (granted Malone missed half the season and Shaq and Kobe each missed a quarter), and only 52 pythag wins, didn't exactly dominate the playoffs (that team lost more playoff games than the current Lakers team), and then got beat in 5 in the finals.

it's pretty obvious that posey and Rondo were both selected too early, and from a pure value standpoint, probably far too early.
Since they're good fit, it won't matter that much because the popportunity cost is rather small
You won't get killed by picking someone three rounds too soon, where as it was a huge blunder too take someone five spots too soon in the first rounds.
Right now every fitting player can be deemed a solid picked, including Rondo and Posey

Well Billy Beane and Bill Belichick both draft players when they want to, regardless of when they think they'll go, so it's gotta be a good strategy IMO.

We aren't talking about mediocre starters, we are talking about good-very good starters.

it's especially good when you want to draft Tom Brady in the sixth round IMO

don't want to get into a football discussion, but 1 player does not make a team.

I suspect we'll have to define our terms better.

By "role player" I don't mean a guy who gets 10 minutes off the bench, I mean a guy who is generally not a scorer but still provides value in other areas. Guys like Battier, Posey, and ACG are role players. They're non-scorers. Filling your team with scorers who are deficient in other areas won't work, of course.

Nice article on Brian Grant from 1999.

"He is the hardest-working guy in the league." - Tim Duncan

If I had a choice between Grant and Rodman, I'd take Grant every time--no question." - Vlade Divac

Some other nice quotes in there as well.

http://wweek.com/html/leada040799.html

maybe he should have worked a little less hard.. probably why he got injured all the time

Divac was obviously talking about Horace

Battier, ACG, B.Wallace or Dennis Rodman are too good to be called role players. role players, by my definition, are the light/no-calorie version of these stars.

also, isn't the whole idea of role players usually limited to the playoffs/finals anyways? you never here about denver nugget or atlanta hawk role players, only bulls-spurs-lakers-pistons role players and how important they are. in a 28 year draft period, there have to be much better choices than posey and rondo.

I think if you want to criticize the Posey pick on the grounds that tbach should have just taken a different type of player (20ppg scorer, PG, etc) than fine. Its a matter of opinion on how to form the best team, in which reasonable minds can differ.

But to just make the statement that there had to better versions of Posey that tbach should have drafted, well, that's just wrong. Posey is very good at what he does and I don't think there is a player out there that had Posey's abilities and is clearly better.

D

sigh, mmbt0ne has disappeared again

that's because bad teams' role players usually suck

Interesting to consider which way causality runs on that one.

You're making it too complicated. There are a hundred BETTER players available.

well that's just like, your opinion, man

checking blog....he updated it yesterday.

haha. True.

I look foward to debating whoever I pick in the 8th round vs. James Posey. Hopefully I don't look like too much of a butthead.

My interest is actually really piqued at this point. I'm borderline obsessed...been looking through tons of players I remember of having reputations as good defenders, pestering any old person I might come across, etc.

I actually have no one in mind either. I'm not picking for a while so haven't spent any effort looking at players since I picked Caron.

See, you'd think that having 2 picks within 8 spots of each other would be nice, but after everyone saying that Posey was too early, it's made me a little nervous that one of the three guys I want won't fall to me.

Anyways, have we resolved the coaching issue? Are we going to make this draft 12 rounds? Was there another unresolved issue?

Who voted less then 5 stars for this? I want names.