The NBA Draft Thread

[frshstunna]

I too thought Bennett was gonna be at least solid , he was so good at UNLV ...but soon as he walked across the stage on draft night, all his talent was gone

I legit think he realized he was the 1st pick and all the pressure/expectations that come with it n he got scared couldn't handle it...the boy was mentally weak ...thabeet just seemed like a dude that checked out once he got that $$

 

[dat dude chris]

I too thought Bennett was gonna be at least solid , he was so good at UNLV ...but soon as he walked across the stage on draft night, all his talent was gone

I legit think he realized he was the 1st pick and all the pressure/expectations that come with it n he got scared couldn't handle it...the boy was mentally weak ...thabeet just seemed like a dude that checked out once he got that $$

Space Jam aliens got him the night before

 

[B Sox]

I'm really not going to hate on Hinkie too much. Obviously there are things he could have done differently, but the team now has a nice young core, that will likely put them in a different trajectory than being a middle of the pack team every year.

I do disagree with some of you regarding Noel and Okafor's trade value though. Noel is going to be a restricted FA next summer, so any team that is going to trade for him needs to be willing to give him a max deal. Simply based off that, he won't fetch the value he would if he had a few more years on his contract. Okafor on the other hand, has a very appealing contract, but he is the type of center that currently isn't a hot commodity in today's NBA. He's young and is definitely going to improve, but he is best suited to play alongside a stretch 4 that can also defend, and there just aren't a ton of teams out there that have that. He's been made widely available, but I just don't think any teams are willing to give Philly any decent pieces for a player who may be suited to just come off the bench, unless you have that perfect PF to play alongside him.

Also, please don't compare anyone's young core to Minnesota. It's completely unfair. In 2014, they robbed Cleveland for Wiggins who is going to end up being one of the league's better two-way wings and then drafted an athletic freak in LaVine who I think is going to be a very good SG for years to come. Then in 2015, they get the #1 pick and are able to pick one of the most transcendent do-it-all big men that have been drafted this decade. Then in this past draft, they have the best PG in the draft fall to them who is completely NBA ready in my mind. This kind of stuff does not happen often. Oklahoma City and Golden State are the only teams in the last 10 years that have really been able to do something like this...

 

[bhzmafia14]

I believed in him too. Thabeet and Bennett probably the worst scouting I've ever done

I can understand thinking Bennett could be something special. But, Thabeet?

 

[polosanddunks]

I can understand thinking Bennett could be something special. But, Thabeet?

man Grizz fans still cant believe they picked this bum

 

[pmatic]

Shout outs to Michael Heisley (RIP).

 

[osh kosh bosh]

Can it still be called a robbery if what the Cavs got for Wiggins locked up with the unanimous MVP in the crucial moments of a Finals Game 7.

 

[tomdiginson]

I too thought Bennett was gonna be at least solid , he was so good at UNLV ...but soon as he walked across the stage on draft night, all his talent was gone

I legit think he realized he was the 1st pick and all the pressure/expectations that come with it n he got scared couldn't handle it...the boy was mentally weak ...thabeet just seemed like a dude that checked out once he got that $$

Cleveland wanted him to be their savior. That's a whole lot of pressure to out on someone. Plus dude should've never been drafted by them in the first place.

 

[buc em]

Can it still be called a robbery if what the Cavs got for Wiggins locked up with the unanimous MVP in the crucial moments of a Finals Game 7.

This statement still annoys me every time people say it. Kevin Love did not "lock up" Curry on that play...Curry could have easily went right past him for a layup. Instead he had it in his mind that he needed to take a three on that play so he stepped back and threw up a bad shot.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

 

[buc em]

Anybody gonna watch that video and tell me he didn't have multiple opportunities off his crossovers to just go right by Love? He crossed Love on that last one and had the lane open for him but stepped back right back into Love to force a bad shot.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

From Yahoo Sports:

Miller didn't make it easy for Philadelphia to draft Porzingis at No. 3. The Sixers wouldn't be afforded Porzingis' physical, nor get a private workout, nor even a face-to-face meeting. After most of the pro day executives cleared out of the gym in Vegas in mid-June, 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie lingered to meet with Miller. Hinkie stopped him in the lobby area and asked Miller about a chance to sit down and visit with Porzingis.

"You said that I would get a meeting with him here," Hinkie told Miller.

"I said, 'I'd try,' and it's not going to work out, Sam," Miller responded.

An awkward silence lingered, the GM and agent, standing and staring. The Porzingis camp wanted no part of the Sixers' situation at No 3. Miller couldn't stop Philadelphia from drafting Porzingis, but he could limit the information they had to make a decision. And did. No physical. No meeting. No workout. The Sixers passed on Porzingis on draft night, clearing the way for the Knicks to select him.

'The Process'

 

[pmatic]

^
To be fair, I think this happens more often than we think.

Just this past draft, we had Dunn ducking Phoenix and Boston (a well run org by all accounts) in hopes of landing with Minnesota. A few prospects didn't visit with Sacramento.

 

[B Sox]

'The Process'

Lol why do you have so much hate for this?

^
To be fair, I think this happens more often than we think.

Just this past draft, we had Dunn ducking Phoenix and Boston (a well run org by all accounts) in hopes of landing with Minnesota. A few prospects didn't visit with Sacramento.

This. It's a power play to put your client in the best possible position. Philly already had Noel, Embiid and Saric. Knicks were a better fit for him both on and off court....Boston and Phoenix both had a million guards, so Dunn's agent saw Minnesota as the best landing spot in order for him to get immediate playing time, unless Philly was going to be able to move up for him. This stuff certainly isn't out of the ordinary.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Lol why do you have so much hate for this?

It just disgusts me bro.

 

[jumpman91023]

It just disgusts me bro.

Yeah I hope they never win **** by tanking like that.

 

[Moheezy]

'The Process'

Lol why do you have so much hate for this?

^
To be fair, I think this happens more often than we think.

Just this past draft, we had Dunn ducking Phoenix and Boston (a well run org by all accounts) in hopes of landing with Minnesota. A few prospects didn't visit with Sacramento.

This. It's a power play to put your client in the best possible position. Philly already had Noel, Embiid and Saric. Knicks were a better fit for him both on and off court....Boston and Phoenix both had a million guards, so Dunn's agent saw Minnesota as the best landing spot in order for him to get immediate playing time, unless Philly was going to be able to move up for him. This stuff certainly isn't out of the ordinary.

I agree with you for the most part. But Hinkie did have the reputation to screw other GMs over with his moves. He's always looking to bargain for the best deal and look for a win lose sutation rather than a win win. A prime example would be trading Holiday for Noel. Hinkie hid part of Holiday's medical report and was later on fined $3 mill.

GMs just don't trust him. All he proved was that he was the best at dismantelling a team and putting them in a position to succeed long term with all the allocated assets, but he never proved that he could actually be successful in the building part of the process which frankly is something I was questioning as well.

I think teams that need to re-build should hire him for two year contracts then bring in someone else to build up the team. He'll be like a downsize specialist

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Hinkie is the guy that goes up to every chick in the club and the first words out his mouth are 'hey, wanna ****?'. Just missing the part of his brain that handles human decency

 

[awwsome]

Hinkie is the guy that goes up to every chick in the club and the first words out his mouth are 'hey, wanna ****?'. Just missing the part of his brain that handles human decency

He just doesn't really have anything in the way of social skills or **** like that. If you've ever heard him in interviews especially long form podcasts it shows.

One of those purely analytical minds, he's probably on the autism spectrum.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

I can definitely see that. He just lacks common sense and a healthy degree of business acumen. It's almost similar to the way trump does business. Doubt he ever gets another gig outside of maybe a consultant.

 

[goldenface]

I still don't get why what the Sixers did had so many ppl in their feelings. They sucked on purpose so that they could stockpile talent. And it was only for a few seasons. You have franchises that have organically sucked for decades. Why are we not mad at them?

 

[outsidethabox]

Hinkie didn't need social skills to make deals in the NBA..If you have an asset people perceive to be worth something
the deals come to you. Then it's basically up to you to find the most desperate and weakest partner to trade with. See the MCW trade with J.Kidd...This isn't new..It's not by mistake Ainge got all those draft picks from the Nets and billy King..GM's know who to pick on.

 

[pmatic]

Funny thing is you can argue Hinkie won every individual trade he participated in.

 

[B Sox]

I still don't get why what the Sixers did had so many ppl in their feelings. They sucked on purpose so that they could stockpile talent. And it was only for a few seasons. You have franchises that have organically sucked for decades. Why are we not mad at them?

Agreed. Sacramento and Minnesota have been awful for the last 10 years. Philly has had 3 really bad years, but have a solid young core now which will be fun to watch and will likely be back in the playoffs in 2017-2018. I'd much rather do what Philly did then have a team like Sacramento or Minnesota.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Philly has had 3 really bad years, but have a solid young core now which will be fun to watch and will likely be back in the playoffs in 2017-2018.

Huh? You know that's next season right? They might have the worst record in the league yet again. I don't see steph curry or any premier free agent signing with them. They have no second round picks and may only have their own 1st rounder this upcoming draft. I don't see how they could be in the playoffs that soon. Outside of Simmons and saric they kinda don't even have a core right now honestly

Funny thing is you can argue Hinkie won every individual trade he participated in.

Too early to tell

Hinkie didn't need social skills to make deals in the NBA..If you have an asset people perceive to be worth something
the deals come to you. Then it's basically up to you to find the most desperate and weakest partner to trade with. See the MCW trade with J.Kidd...This isn't new..It's not by mistake Ainge got all those draft picks from the Nets and billy King..GM's know who to pick on.

If that's the case they wouldn't be having such a hard time moving oak/Noel. It's cool to fleece teams but he backed himself into a corner and put his team in a position where they have to make a deal and have no leverage, same way ainge couldn't get a deal done these past two years hard as he tried. That mcw trade could wind up netting nothing in return. Everybody says the colangelos will ruin it and they probably will but he left them with a mess that he wouldn't have been able to clean up either because of the way he operated.

Hinkie, the story went, was impersonal and aloof -- high school valedictorian, Stanford Arjay Miller Scholar, Bain consultant, a nerd glued to a laptop, an MBA who treated players as commodities. Definitely not a "basketball guy."

The perception of Hinkie had arguably reached a point where it was damaging the Sixers brand. During his time in Philly, he'd developed, for example, a reputation as a dogged negotiator. Knowing that he had unusual leverage -- Philly's unused cap space -- he would aim to extract as much blood as possible in deals. But an industry with only 29 other businesses necessitates dealing with the same people over and over again.

"There has to be a level of understanding, a level of trust between teams," one former GM says. "I think Sam had a hard time opening up in that process. If you are trying to win the deal each time, that's fine, as long as the other side gets a win too. But if you are trying to kill them, then it makes it harder to work with them in the future."

Adds one Western Conference executive: "Sam's a hard-nosed negotiator, which is intimidating to some people. There's a bit of 'what's behind the curtain?' with Sam. People don't know what his factors are. It's not as straightforward as 'I like that guy.'"

Agents had their own concerns. Hinkie became known for drafting players in the second round and signing them to four-year partially guaranteed contracts. Without any leverage, agents were forced to accept those team-friendly terms, but they didn't have to like it.

Those decisions had consequences: Agents and rival GMs were happy to turn Hinkie into the embodiment of every negative stereotype of the analytics movement.

"I think Sam is a pure analytics guy," says David Falk, who gained fame in the late 1980s as Michael Jordan's agent and still represents a small list of clients. "I don't think they had enough pure basketball people. While there's a lot more utilization of analytics, it's like painting by the numbers. And you can't paint a masterpiece by the numbers."

That includes his dealings with agents, which have been infamously prickly. Agents find Hinkie noncommunicative and stubborn. He has lost players, including K.J. McDaniels and Glenn Robinson III, over his insistence they sign four-year, nonguaranteed contracts, and he acknowledges he has probably waived players without first notifying their agents -- a major irritant among player representatives.

"We've tried to communicate clearly with agents, but that has been hard at times," Hinkie says. "We've had a lot of transactions. That's hard. That has caused some angst. Things unfold quickly, and maybe too quickly in that sense."


That's clearly one reason Colangelo is here -- to smooth things over with agents, the league office, and the media. "I've been quiet," Hinkie says. "And in that vacuum, people fill in with their own notions of me and what's going on. If that has painted the organization in a bad light, I don't like that. Jerry and I have already talked about how it would help it I would be more open -- if we did a better job of bringing fans along with us."