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

[payitforward]

Would you guys rather have picks 1, 5, and 32 or 2, 15, 29, and 50....

Is this a trick question? The former of course.

Would you give 5 & 32 for 15 & 29? No.
Would you give 1 for 2 & 50? No. Not unless you felt an extremely high degree of confidence that you knew whom your trade partner would pick at 1.

IOW, I'd trade Banchero for Holmgren right now. But that's trading players not picks.

...How about 2, 7, 28 vs next years 12, 15, 18 and a 2030 FRP.

No.

...How about 1st this year vs 2027 9th and 11th. How about 2029 5th pick vs 2033 1st....

No.

Why do you want to do these deals? Or... do you?

[payitforward]

How about this back at you AFM --

would you trade 2 & 5 for 1 & 15?

[NatP4]

https://www.tankathon.com/players/compare?players=daron-holmes-ii--pascal-siakam

[AFM]

How about this back at you AFM --

would you trade 2 & 5 for 1 & 15?

No of course not. Unless it was a year like last year and Wemby was an obvious #1.

[nate33]

If Jamal Shead is still on the board at #51, I'd grab him. That dude is the next Pat Beverley. He is an awesome defender and not a bad playmaker at PG with a solid A:TO ratio. Can't shoot though.

[Dat2U]

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.

I gotta disagree. Atlanta's problem is a lack of talent and a poor mix of the talent they have - not Trae Young.

Yes, Trae is obviously a poor defender but also a top 20 offensive player yearly (probably could be higher in a better situation). His best teammate is another ball dominant PG who struggles off the ball. James Johnson is probably their 3rd best player and he's a playmaking wing who's best with the ball in his hands. None of them are really putting out a high level effort defensively.

Trae Young isn't the reason they aren't drafting mid-to-high lottery. I think pairing Young with better complimentary talent & interior defense and we'd see good things happen.

Garland is a different case and he's suffering from a change in his role as they've had Donovan Mitchell on the ball more in Cleveland this year. I think partly to placate Mitchell with the talk of him not really wanting to extend. Some guys operate best with the ball in hands and playing Garland off the ball is not really the best use of his skillset. Before this year, Garland was clearly on the ascent and I think playing him his natural position would get him back to that all-star caliber level.

As for defense, you need a strong rim protector more than anything else. A shot deterring big can cover up alot. Cleveland has two in Allen & Mobley to compensate for both Garland & Mitchell being poor on-the-ball defenders and Atlanta has Capela & Okongwu who honestly have struggled at defending the position the past few years.

Atlanta would be better off addressing the C position and trading Dejounte than blowing it up and moving off Trae.

[Dat2U]

I'll always err offense over defense when it comes to guards & forwards. The guard or wing would have to be hyperathletic freak for me to consider them otherwise (like Amen Thompson)

I'll always err defense over offense when in comes to Cs. A guy would have to be incredibly skilled like a young Jokic or even Tristan Vukcevic who I was fond of last draft cycle. Where you let his offensive skills shine while hopefully he works to improve defensively over time.

[NatP4]

Have gone back and forth all year between Topic and Sheppard, still so close. Sheppard is a legit candidate for the top pick.

Watch on YouTube

[Dat2U]

Reed Sheppard I like alot but with caveat that your not getting a high volume shot creator or elite facilitator. He's the definition of the 'straw that stirs the drink'. A potentially high level role player that can be a key cog on a winning team. I see alot of Fred VanVleet or the mature version of Mike Conley Jr. Your getting a guy who plays a step ahead relying on IQ, pinpoint passing & deadly shot making. What your not getting is an ISO guy capable of breakdown defenses. He'll run alot of P&R but mainly he'll live from the perimeter.

On defense he's chop suey on the ball ... much like Dillingham, maybe even more so. Where he excels is off the ball as he has great hands and an instinct for timing in cutting off passing lanes.

I think with most guards with modest athleticism. It will be an adjustment period. I would expect him to struggle, especially with the speed of the game at first. By his 3-4 year, I can see him settling into being a solid starter. I don't think he's #1 pick material in any year. I would feel more comfortable at 5 or 6.

[nate33]

I'll always err offense over defense when it comes to guards & forwards. The guard or wing would have to be hyperathletic freak for me to consider them otherwise (like Amen Thompson)

I'll always err defense over offense when in comes to Cs. A guy would have to be incredibly skilled like a young Jokic or even Tristan Vukcevic who I was fond of last draft cycle. Where you let his offensive skills shine while hopefully he works to improve defensively over time.

My view is that if you can't defend, you're not a starter unless you are a legit #1 option or at least a #1B on offense. Give me a Josh Hart over a Tyler Herro. Give me a Jaden McDaniels over a Kyle Kuzma.

If you can't defend, you better be James Harden/Kyrie Irving tier good on offense.

[The Consiglieri]

...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!

Nobodies changed their mind about this class in the year since those projections came out, indeed I'd argue that people are even more downcast now than they were a year ago because nobody really blew anyone away and thoroughly upset expectations over the past year.

As an example, the view of the MLB draft for '24 vs '23 is nearly identical to the view of the NBA draft from for '24 as compared to '23 a year ago. No consensus #1 overall, the top of the draft is kind of meh, in particular the high school options are significantly worse than usual and pitching is very weak, the early consensus was: doesn't look good, 1-5 don't look much different than 6-15, there are a top 15 we'd rank that way, but not really enthused. A year later, and it's pretty similar to that view, but one big difference has been that a guy did lay down a marker, and currently locked down the #1 as of mid April (before college world series, playoffs, injuries can hit etc): Charlie Condon blew by competitors with one of the better hitting seasons anyone has seen in a while. He was not consensus #1 six months ago or a year ago, indeed, he wasn't in many top 3's, but he's a lock as the best player even if he isn't selected (baseball has a very weird slot money system that rewards teams for taking risks by paying out less, and allowing for a larger signing pool to be allotted down the line and more monkey business beyond that).

That didn't happen w/Basketball. None of the Euro's layed down a marker, none of the college guys blew up and seized #1 status. They continued to look like they did through summer '23, unappealing. Just a great big glut of guys that would normally go in that 7 or 8-21 zone. So you probably get decent value the lower you are as things really flatten but at the top there's no real value like there normally can be in many years. Instead, it just looks like slop.

I don't agree w/your ideas to begin with, I think your system is great for finishing touches (complimentary player max valuing outside of the blue chip zone) but it isn't a particularly good way to build a team with difference making talent, especially in a league where either you have the truly elite top 5-15 guys (multiples) or you do not and you don't matter. I do agree w/you from the perspective that in general I think teams don't have much clarity on how to project talent the further down the board they go, especially outside the initial two blue chip zones, but in truth I think that's pretty true in all sports, the further down you go, the harder it gets to project. And yes, sometimes teams find the best players outside of the top 1 or 2 or 3 but that shouldn't be surprising, you literally have 57 different players, plus undrafted free agents in the pool of guys who could outperform the top 2-3, it's inevitable that that will happen sometimes, not terribly surprising, even inevitable that will happen more than a minority of the time.

But as for crappy drafts, like 2000, 2013 was on point as a crappy draft, not nearly on 2000's scale (and nobody thought it was that bad even at the time) but it was a hugely disappointing class where the bulk of the hits were your favorite, the ones way down the line, like Giannis and Gobert. But it was a giant collection of whiffs for the bulk of the lottery, and not much better after beyond the 3 hits which were pretty randomly distributed.

[The Consiglieri]

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.

Of course but who cares? They are also pretty consistently right about class evals, its pretty rare the ones they think are hot garbage are great, and the ones they think are great are hot garbage, I'd argue exceptionally rare. It's between the #'s that blips and burbles happen.

Like I can say right now: The 2024 NBA draft is largely horse ---- compared to other drafts historically.

I can also say: The 2024 NBA Draft probably houses 1 or 2 guys that could become an all star or at least top 30-40 players in the league between 2025-2035...I can't say I'm 100% sure there's a guy in the class that will be that good, but there probably will be. Even during the 2013 draft, while I knew it was crap, I also was reasonably confident somebody in there, maybe 2 or 3 somebodys, maybe 4, would turn out to be worth a top 3-5 pick in an elite draft rather than the craptacular 2013 one, down the line, that somebody might become an all star or even better because there's 60 guys plus UDFA's. Its damn hard for all of them to suck, or disappoint (like most of 2000).

The 2024 draft probably has a couple of guys that will matter. But nobody knows who the hell they are, which is what makes it such a hard draft and a crappy draft. There is no guy that clearly looks like a stud at the next level. Nobody. There are guy(s) plural who will probably turn out good or better, but because they haven't performed like it in Europe, with the ignite in college whatever, there's no way to reliably know, and know perfect model to help us most accurately project. That's what makes it so much harder than usual. Usually these guys give you enough data to reasonably project: Oh, this is a Wenbenyama, a Duncan, a Durant, a Tatum, a Doncic, a Anthony-Towns. This draft has literally none of that. Nothing is exploding off the page, which doubles the value of having a quality FO in place rather than the recently departed clown show that gifted us complimentary floor players for half a decade (at best), but its still murderously difficult, and I think the odds are, even if we do everything right, only blind luck will give us a chance at landing something more than a complimentary 4th or 5th best guy on the team if we landed the 1.01. Which is why this draft sucks.

[The Consiglieri]

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).

There's a fundamental misunderstanding when some of us (definitely me) mention 2013 sucking, 2001, or 2020 or 2024 and you nail it down. You can build a winner in this league with Giannis, literally every single other player mentioned in Nat's list is not a first or second piece on a winner, period, and if you're trying to build a winner, you usually are only likely to be dipping into the top of the lottery 1-3 times (1 if your those lucky scumbag spurs), so on your trips to the lottery, Oladipo's mean ---- all. You have to have multiple top 15-20 or 25 players in the league and most of those guys are either found top 3ish, or purely blind luck, randomness like Giannis. It is damn hard to land them, and telling me the '13 class, or '00 or whatever was fine because it had 11 role players that were a grat 4th man on a 3rd place team in a conference is utterly meaningless. The list above is a list of guys who had careers in the league, but who actually mattered? Who actually influenced the direction of the league from '13? Giannis. Nobody else (unless your counting Gobert as the physical embodiment of the national understanding of the spread of covid).

Thats why I find this so silly. '13 was bad period. The top of the draft was a mix of total ---, and role players. The elite talent in the draft was largely blind randomness (Giannis) and a guy a lot of us felt slipped too far even at the time (Gobert) inbetween, yeah, you could get a good third or fourth guy like McCcollum or Oladipo the healthy version, but they weren't needle movers at all.

Good Drafts are made of guys like Doncic, Tatum, Wenbanyama, Edwards, Morant, Zion if he gave a ----, Anthony Davis, LeBron, Durant etc. Those guys are franchise moving talents. When somebody lists a bunch of complimentary guys like the above in '13, its silly. That's literally an example of exactly what a finished build needs, not a dumpster fire like ours. We've mastered the art of once a decade landing Rip Hamilton's like that, inbetween the piles of busts, and floor picks, but getting transformative talent? We've done that literally never in my time of watching the wizards and bullets (wall and beal are close, but they were at their peak, like 4th team NBA guys, never top 10-15 ever) other than via trade and that's what makes you a contender. Getting the Garnett, Jordan, Hakeem, Duncan, Robinson, Barkley, Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Durant and the newer iterations...The rest is just elements of the sauce of a champion.

There's no evidence the 2024 class has that guy at all, and if it does (which is definitely possible) nobody has any clue who he is, so somebody's gonna get him through blind luck, like Milwaukee got Giannis, not by genius team building. It can happen, the Niners got a QBR #1 guy in round 7, the Patriots found Brady in round 5, the Cowboys found Romo as an undrafted free agent. Exceptions exist, but they are acquired through a mix of blind luck, and scouting (with the emphasis on luck, as the team would have taken them round 1 up top, if they were as big a believer as they later like to pretend).

[payitforward]

Consiglieri -- the first thing I want to say is that it's really great that you are participating so actively & enthusiastically. Guys like you are what make this Board so consistently interesting -- thanks!!

As to bad drafts & good... well, it goes w/o saying that every once in a while there's a stinker, & every once in a while there's one that's over the top great. But... things that are easy to know by looking back are usually impossible to know looking forward. If that weren't true, why would Kawhi have gone #15 instead of #1 in 2011? & why would Jimmy Butler have gone #30 instead of #2?

Those are obvious cases, but overall it's true at most picks in almost every draft. & if the individual pick by pick sequence is rarely close to optimal, how can we possibly know how an overall draft class will look in a few years? We can't.

Common sense says we have to try -- which is why there are so many prognosticators. But reality says we won't get it right very often.

Now... that said, it's obvious we had a h#ll of a good rookie class in '23-24. But, largely that was driven by guys who way outperformed expectations.

Even high picks did. Leave Wemby aside for a moment. Amen Thompson came in w/ a lot of questions being asked about him, but he was one of the most productive rookies in the last 15 years! & his twin brother was better than expected right away as well.

Then add in Trayce Jackson-Davis, Brandin Podziemski, Cason Wallace, Dereck Lively & a couple of others, & it was a home run rookie class.

There's not going to be a Wemby in this draft. & it's unlikely there'll be a Chet Holmgren either. But as to the rest... all bets are off. We just don't know yet.

[NatP4]

There's not going to be a Wemby in this draft. & it's unlikely there'll be a Chet Holmgren either. But as to the rest... all bets are off. We just don't know yet.

And we really don’t even know this. People said the same thing in 2017 after the 2016 Ben Simmons draft. A few years later, Simmons looks like a total bust of course. Tatum clearly has the better career.

Holmgren will have to stay healthy, same with Wemby. So many other factors. Who knows just how good the Thompson twins/Bilal or others could become?

[DCZards]

Good Drafts are made of guys like Doncic, Tatum, Wenbanyama, Edwards, Morant, Zion if he gave a ----, Anthony Davis, LeBron, Durant etc. Those guys are franchise moving talents.

I judge the quality of a draft, which you really can’t realistically do until at least 3-4 years after it takes place, not by the two or three all-stars that came out of it but by the number of players from that draft who turn out to be good players or regular rotation guys for their teams.

Were Tatum, Doncic, LeBron, Durant etc. drafts “good drafts” or were they just simply drafts that had one or two great players in them. A draft should be judged by its depth and not by its top end, imo.

I agree with those here who suggest that absolutely no one--not even the draft experts or top NBA scouts--know for sure whether the 2024 draft will turn out to be good, bad or average. I believe that's unknowable at this point.

[closg00]

Great content from these guys.

Watch on YouTube

[closg00]

Watch on YouTube

[gesa2]

Good Drafts are made of guys like Doncic, Tatum, Wenbanyama, Edwards, Morant, Zion if he gave a ----, Anthony Davis, LeBron, Durant etc. Those guys are franchise moving talents.

I judge the quality of a draft, which you really can’t realistically do until at least 3-4 years after it takes place, not by the two or three all-stars that came out of it but by the number of players from that draft who turn out to be good players or regular rotation guys for their teams.

Were Tatum, Doncic, LeBron, Durant etc. drafts “good drafts” or were they just simply drafts that had one or two great players in them. A draft should be judged by its depth and not by its top end, imo.
….

That approach is fine from the perspective of league history, but from where we stand in the early days of a rebuild, high end talent is all that matters Zards. I’d take a player with a 10% chance of all NBA over a player with a high floor but low ceiling and live with the more likely bust. We won’t be anything good until we get a tentpole, and little else matters. Monte Ellis and Andris Biedrins didn’t make Golden State any more likely to win a chip, it took Steph and Klay.

[payitforward]

There's not going to be a Wemby in this draft. & it's unlikely there'll be a Chet Holmgren either. But as to the rest... all bets are off. We just don't know yet.

And we really don’t even know this. People said the same thing in 2017 after the 2016 Ben Simmons draft. A few years later, Simmons looks like a total bust of course. Tatum clearly has the better career.

Holmgren will have to stay healthy, same with Wemby. So many other factors. Who knows just how good the Thompson twins/Bilal or others could become?

In fact, you are 100% correct.
Still, it would be fair to say that "a Wemby in this draft" is pretty unlikely -- in that "a Wemby" is unlikely in any draft!