The (way too early) 2024 Draft thread. Woo! Tanking!

[nate33]

There is a lot of small guards dominating.
Brunson maxey…Edwards is only 6-4…kyrie Irving…Donovan Mitchell

Don’t over think it on dillingham and reed

Edward's coach says he has grown to 6'-6". He has a 6'-10" wingspan. Definitely not a small guard. I can't even think of many starting SG's who are bigger.

Donovan Mitchell has an incredible 6'-10" wingspan and is built like a tank. I wouldn't call him a small guard, particularly when he plays point. Cleveland's real small guard, Darius Garland, is averaging just 14, 6 and 4 and has a -10.9 on/off differential in the playoffs.

Kyrie is doing well, but he is part of the reason Dallas has a flawed roster. He isn't good enough to be the #1 option, so he has to be a #2. And it's really hard to find a #1 option who is also a good defender, so the end result is Dallas has two defensive liabilities they have to cover for. The only way to do that is with a bunch of exceptionally good defenders who can also hit 3's. But you can't afford exceptionally good 3&D players when you are paying your stars max money.

Maxey has the incredible good fortune of playing alongside an elite #1 option who isn't a defensive liability, so Philly can put 4 good defenders around him. Philly was 16-27 in the 43 games that Embiid missed.

Brunson is remarkable, truly one of my favorite players to watch. But even with him, you can see the problem. Thibs has no confidence in putting any non-defenders on the court alongside him so the Knicks offense is totally dependent on Brunson. Nobody else can do anything. Still, I'd say Brunson is the best-case scenario if you have a small guard. Most of the time, you will end up with a Trae Young, or Darius Garland situation.

I still wouldn't take Dillingham. I buy that he might be the best regular-season player in the draft, but I still don't think you can advance in the playoffs with a guy like that. Indeed, he might be detrimental to a rebuild because he might help us win too many regular season games ahead of schedule and convince management to go all in around him as our star. The next thing you know, we're the Atlanta Hawks.

There have been taller PG’s who were defensive liabilities as-well, or even taller guards. Tony Parker was 6”2 and got multiple rings, so who knows Dillinghams, or the 6”6 Topic’s fate, he may get roasted on D as-well in the NBA.

It was a different game in the Tony Parker era. With the current emphasis on spacing, it's much easier to hunt mismatches because it's harder to provide help defense.

[The Consiglieri]

Not true at all. Buzelis was being compared to Durant, Holland to Paul George, and Collier to Baron Davis. Edwards, Bradshaw, and Wagner were all supposed to be lottery picks, turned out to be awful.

Walter, Cadeau, Mara, Almansa, and Castle also disappointed. The entire class underachieved in comparison to their rankings/projections.

every HS player gets NBA player comps coming out but Cooper Flagg and Ace Bailey were household names starting when they were in 10th grade, like the Boozer twins now. You can call that narrative, or you can acknowledge that with all the eyeballs that the AAU circuit, college scouts, and NBA scouts have trained on U16 talent, when a kid is special, they identify it early.

And they get it wrong all the time. I mean, I still think Cunningham will be a good NBA player, but he was in that category for years. Compared to Luka, blue chip #1 prospect. They had guys like Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga in that elite basket. James Wiseman was a can’t miss top 2 elite prospect compared to Chris Bosh. Scoot Henderson was a 1A 1B with Wemby prior to the season.

You are right, Flagg and Bailey are regarded in a tier above Holland/Buzelis/Collier, but it’s a lot closer than people are letting on. Everything can change day 1 of the actual season.

I’m making two points here: 2024 group was much more highly regarded than it currently is at the end of the 2024 season, and high school scouting gets it way wrong all the time.

Your first point is definitely wrong. One of the main reasons I was so frustrated and irate that we didn't tank/trade Beal earlier, was in prep for '23, a great class, when the summer evals of the next class came out, in those late June after '23 sneak previews of '24, they all crapped on the '24 class, in apocalyptic terms. Not just, "it's not a '23," it was apocalyptic negativity.

Quoting from theathletic, as one example (and you can find a billion others):

"The 2023 class is special. It had Victor Wembanyama, Scoot Henderson and a number of intriguing freshmen beyond them, plus the tremendous Thompson twins, Amen and Ausar. Unfortunately for NBA teams, the 2024 class does not seem to have any players resembling that kind of upside right now.

"Throughout the year, I’ve asked scouts and executives who are familiar with the class where the highest-ranked player in the 2024 class would be taken if they were in the 2023 NBA Draft, and the answer tends to be somewhere in the No. 6 to No. 9 range. I don’t think any of the 2024 prospects would have been likely to go ahead of Wembanyama, Henderson, the Thompson twins or Brandon Miller if you plopped them into the 2023 class, and I think there would be a real debate for teams with Anthony Black (No. 6 to Orlando) and Jarace Walker (No. 7 to Indiana). Bilal Coulibaly, who went No. 8 to Washington, would have featured in the top three of this 2024 board rather easily, and I might have even slotted him at No. 1...."

Link:
https://theathletic.com/4631644/2023/08/07/nba-mock-draft-2024-justin-edwards-ron-holland/


On the positive side, in your intense debate with Dat, you have backup from theathletic: Their board in June '23 had:

Holland 2nd

Buzelis 4th

Collier 5th

Of course they also felt all of them were nowhere near the top 6-8 of 2023.

But yeah, I think Holland was all over the place a year ago, but I definitely saw Buzelis and Collier ranked high in multiple places (maybe my memories unreliable, but I recall Collier being consistently top 2-5, Buzelis inside a similar range too and even if my memory is wrong, theathletic says as much in that article, so at least one site, for sure, agreed w/you about placement, if not about how elite you may have thought they were going in).

[pancakes3]

the '23 class is special because of Wemby. period. everyone knew that, just like the '03 class was special because of Lebron. Everyone knows who those guys are years before the draft hits. Hakeem. Shaq. Duncan. Zion.

and the transcendent players really are hard to comp. it's either "we've never seen anyone like this before" or "this guy is the best parts of 5 different players."

When you say that one of the top draft picks in the draft is a Baron Davis comp, it's really just saying, hes a fat pg. No disrespect to BDiddy - he's amazing, but if that's your comp? and comps are BEST BEST BEST case scenarios across the board? You're lucky they didn't say Deron Williams.

[NatP4]

Then you have the Wiggins/Parker class. That was the next LeBron and Melo right ?

Ben Simmons was also the next LeBron.

The hype surrounding Mo Bamba, Marvin Bagley, and Deandre Ayton was insane.

The weak 2013 class produced: Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cj McCollum, Giannis, KCP, Nerlens Noel, Alex Len, Steven Adams, Kelly Olynyk, Dennis Schroeder, Tony Snell, Tim Hardaway, Rudy Gobert, Dieng, Roberson, Muscala, Neto, Rob Covington, Seth Curry, Dedmon.

[payitforward]

I think the narrative that this year’s draft is so much worse than the 2025 (and beyond) draft is overblown. Is there any evidence that outside of the top 2-3 picks (Flagg, Harper, Bailey) that next year’s draft is any deeper than the 2024 draft? There are good players in every draft, especially in the top 10-15 picks. You just have to be lucky/skilled enough to draft them.

It’s obnoxiously overblown. Buzelis, Collier, and Holland were just as hyped as Flagg, Harper, and Bailey before the season started. We have no clue how high school players will produce at the next level.

I agree 100%.

Nor have these kinds of pre-draft assessments been particularly accurate in the past. 2011 was regarded as a weak draft. Turned out strong. 2012 was regarded as strong but was the opposite -- overall one of the worst R1 groups in the last 30 years.

For that matter, the 3 guys picked at 40, 41 & 46 in 2015 -- just those 3 guys -- have combined to play more minutes than almost 1/2 of the entire lottery combined! Not to mention that those 3 guys have also played more minutes than 11 R1 picks that year ...combined!

Not a fluke. It's the same every year -- in fact the previous year was even more extreme: 6 R2 guys have combined to play more total minutes than 11 of the 14 lottery picks together!

[payitforward]

...they get it wrong all the time....

...when the summer evals... came out, in those late June after '23 sneak previews of '24, they all crapped on the '24 class, in apocalyptic terms. Not just, "it's not a '23," it was apocalyptic negativity.

Quoting from theathletic, as one example (and you can find a billion others): "The 2023 class is special. It had Victor Wembanyama, Scoot Henderson and a number of intriguing freshmen beyond them, plus the tremendous Thompson twins, Amen and Ausar. Unfortunately for NBA teams, the 2024 class does not seem to have any players resembling that kind of upside right now....."

Nat is completely correct:

They get it wrong all the time.

Journalist-analysts get it wrong all the time. NBA execs get it wrong all the time. Not because they're dumb -- because, plain & simple, it is not possible to know this kind of thing in advance. Period.

They even got it wrong in '23 where you are so adamant that they were right. How "right" were they about Trayce Jackson-Davis? & if they were wrong, well... how is that possible?

How right were they about Scoot Henderson?

Right now, TJ-D, Brandin Podziemski, Jaime Jaquez, & a couple of other guys are looking better than a whole bunch of much more hyped-by-experts rookies.

If you can't get it right about individuals, how are you going to get it right about a whole class? & a person being able to tell that Victor Wembenyana is a transcendent talent doesn't qualify him as an expert!

It's pretty simple, really: looking back, there just hasn't been anywhere near enough correctness to conclude that "expertise" can sort for results with significant accuracy. It does a better job overall than in any set of specific cases, but even overall it doesn't really do a particularly good job!

[Jay81]

all the guys you mentioned are old grown ass adults...thats not how we do this. There is a reason why Kentucky loses to inferior but older teams

[nate33]

They even got it wrong in '23 where you are so adamant that they were right. How "right" were they about Trayce Jackson-Davis? & if they were wrong, well... how is that possible?

How right were they about Scoot Henderson?

Right now, TJ-D, Brandin Podziemski, Jaime Jaquez, & a couple of other guys are looking better than a whole bunch of much more hyped-by-experts rookies.

If you can't get it right about individuals, how are you going to get it right about a whole class? & a person being able to tell that Victor Wembenyana is a transcendent talent doesn't qualify him as an expert!

It's pretty simple, really: looking back, there just hasn't been anywhere near enough correctness to conclude that "expertise" can sort for results with significant accuracy. It does a better job overall than in any set of specific cases, but even overall it doesn't really do a particularly good job!

Can we tap the brakes on praising guys like Jaquez and Jackson-Davis just because they had a strong rookie season? These guys are 23 and 24 years old being compared to 20-year-olds.

Malcolm Brogdon won ROY as a 24-year-old rookie, but he sure as hell didn't pan out to be better than Jaylen Brown, Joel Embiid, Jamaal Murray or Pascal Siakam.

Kendrick Nunn was 2nd in ROY voting as a 24-year-old, but Zion, Barrett, Garland, Hachimura, Cameron Johnson, PJ Washington, Nik Claxton and several others panned out to be better players.

[NatP4]

Podziemski is a year older than Scoot. Again, pre-draft year Podziemski wasn’t even a projected NBA player, Scoot was 1A/1B with Wemby.

Don’t think the scouts had Franz Wagner over Kuminga or Jalen Green.

PIF is making an obvious point, the scouts get it wrong all the time.

[NatP4]

Sheppard wasn’t even a top recruit, will most likely be the highest drafted UK player. Wagner, Edwards, and Bradshaw don’t even look like future NBA players, all were top 10 ranked recruits and projected top 10 picks pre-season.

[pancakes3]

The original conversation was that some drafts are weaker than others. Now it's that scouts get it wrong.

The original point is that this year's #1 is not going to be as valuable as next year's, just like the 2023 #1 overall for Wemby was always going to be more valuable than 2022 or 2024.

[NatP4]

The original conversation was that some drafts are weaker than others. Now it's that scouts get it wrong.

The original point is that this year's #1 is not going to be as valuable as next year's, just like the 2023 #1 overall for Wemby was always going to be more valuable than 2022 or 2024.

That was never my original point. I was always talking about how the draft as a whole.

[DCZards]

Both Green and Kuminga came on strong last season. Their futures look bright.

[nate33]

Podziemski is a year older than Scoot. Again, pre-draft year Podziemski wasn’t even a projected NBA player, Scoot was 1A/1B with Wemby.

Don’t think the scouts had Franz Wagner over Kuminga or Jalen Green.

PIF is making an obvious point, the scouts get it wrong all the time.

Podziemski is a legit argument against "consensus" being right all the time. I don't have a problem with him as an example. It's Jaquez and Jackson-Davis that aren't fair comparisons.

Mostly, I'm just tired of the same old debate every draft season. You and PIF can always find late picks that outperformed early picks. Nobody is saying the draft experts are always right. But the draft experts aren't bad. There is absolutely a general trend of early picks outperforming late picks. It's better to have a high pick than a low pick. You know it, I know it, and even PIF grudgingly cedes the point. We are only arguing against strawmen.

Can we all agree that early picks are generally better than later picks, but in every draft there will be plenty of late picks that will outperform early picks?

[AFM]

Would you guys rather have picks 1, 5, and 32 or 2, 15, 29, and 50. How about 2, 7, 28 vs next years 12, 15, 18 and a 2030 FRP. How about 1st this year vs 2027 9th and 11th. How about 2029 5th pick vs 2033 1st. If you don't have immediate answers to these you are not a REAL GM!!!!

[NatP4]

Of course, my original point was in regards to the overrating of the 2025 class, and the pre-season analysis being pretty consistently wrong, as it was in the 2024 cycle and many other seasons.

[doclinkin]

The weak 2013 class produced: Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cj McCollum, Giannis, KCP, Nerlens Noel, Alex Len, Steven Adams, Kelly Olynyk, Dennis Schroeder, Tony Snell, Tim Hardaway, Rudy Gobert, Dieng, Roberson, Muscala, Neto, Rob Covington, Seth Curry, Dedmon.

So. With the notable exception of the Freak (1st ballot HOF) and one-time all-star Gobert (arguably HOF as well) you ended up with a bunch of role-players and journeymen. I'd say that seems pretty weak compared to the better drafts.

Giannis breaks the curve of course. And any team would love to draft a 3xDPOY in Gobert. But those two took a while to grow into their success, with Giannis earning MIP in his 4th year, and Gobert not even reaching double digit scoring until year 4. No obvious standouts who produced big numbers early in their careers.

Fair to say compared to many drafts that one was ID'ed as weak for a reason. The stronger drafts have both a high hit rate of successful players, obvious all-stars coming in, or a few guys at the top who produce early in their careers and improve on that rate. You won't find a draft that had zero players. But in that above group only Giannis was the key player on a winning team with the team that drafted him. (Otto and KCP have rings as roleplayers, but only after they bounced around a bit).

[payitforward]

...I, for one, have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that we should not draft a potential star player because we might win too many games and miss out on another star...

Yeah, I chuckled at that. There is such a thing as over-thinking a subject!

...Dillingham ...I think he’ll be very similar to a Maxey....

A picture in your mind -- & of course it could come true. But, really, it's just absolutely impossible to project anything with any well-founded confidence. Doesn't mean you don't pick him, of course.

...Mitchell, Brunson and Maxey all went much later in their drafts than they should have...in part because of their size. Now, they are all all-stars and top 5 in their draft class. There's a lesson to be learned there.

The problem is to differentiate the good ones from the ones who don't turn out to be unlikely stars.

Easy in retrospect, of course, as you yourself have pointed out many times. & equally easy to convince oneself of just about anything in advance (see me on Zhaire Smith, you on Jerome Robinson, Dat on Sharife Cooper, etc. etc. etc.)

But for every Donovan Mitchell, there's a Frank Ntilikina, a Dennis Smith Jr., a Tyler Lydon, a Frank Mason, a Frank Jackson, a Davon Reed -- then 20 to 40 picks later someone gets a solid player like Monte Morris. & that's all one draft!!

[SUPERBALLMAN]

Would you guys rather have picks 1, 5, and 32 or 2, 15, 29, and 50. How about 2, 7, 28 vs next years 12, 15, 18 and a 2030 FRP. How about 1st this year vs 2027 9th and 11th. How about 2029 5th pick vs 2033 1st. If you don't have immediate answers to these you are not a REAL GM!!!!

There's an old saying...

a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

[payitforward]

The weak 2013 class produced: Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cj McCollum, Giannis, KCP, Nerlens Noel, Alex Len, Steven Adams, Kelly Olynyk, Dennis Schroeder, Tony Snell, Tim Hardaway, Rudy Gobert, Dieng, Roberson, Muscala, Neto, Rob Covington, Seth Curry, Dedmon.

So. With the notable exception of the Freak (1st ballot HOF) and one-time all-star Gobert you ended up with a bunch of role-players and journeymen. I'd say that seems pretty weak compared to the better drafts.

Giannis breaks the curve of course. And any team would love to draft a 3xDPOY in Gobert. But those two took a while to grow into their success, with Giannis earning MIP in his 4th year, and Gobert not even reaching double digit scoring until year 4. No obvious standouts who produced big numbers early in their careers.

Fair to say compared to many drafts that one was ID'ed as weak for a reason. The stronger drafts have both a high hit rate of successful players, obvious all-stars coming in, or a few guys at the top who produce early in their careers and improve on that rate. You won't find a draft that had zero players. But in that above group only Giannis was the key player on a winning team with the team that drafted him. (Otto and KCP have rings, but only after they bounced around a bit).

Are there more than 1 or 2 drafts about which you could not construct the same narrative? Especially about R1 -- we'd all agree that getting a multiple all star in R2 is no more than luck: no one is that skillful -- e.g. no one who "knew" how good Jokic was going to be would have laid low to take him late!

Moreover, your critique of 2013 also applies to 2014. & 2015. & 2016.

For that matter, if we look only at R1, it also applies to 2012: a bust at 2, a bust at 4, a bust at 5, then a first ballot HOFer at 6? Followed by probably the most undistinguished group I've ever seen go from 7 through 30. Followed by multiple all stars in R2.

Or consider the 8 players taken from 2-9 in 2010. Followed by Paul George. Then review the next 20 who filled out R1 that year. Yet, Nemanja Bjelica, Hassan Whiteside & Lance Stephenson had way better careers overall than at least 16 of those guys.

Above all, really, there is just nothing much to debate here. Sure, some drafts are better overall than other drafts. But, usually, it's because 1 or 2 guys blossom beyond expectation! & that happening is, by definition, something we can't possibly know in advance.

Don't get me wrong: the upcoming draft may be terrible! It's just that we have no idea whether that will or won't be the case.