Ainge's draft record

smastroyin

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I realize this is oft-discussed, but recently I read an article from some random talking head (and I see some of the same talk here) that Ainge's drafting record has been absolutely putrid and therefore while it's nice the team is playing well, they aren't due for any kind of rise to the top unless they trade because Ainge isn't going to get anything useful out of their collection of picks.

I thought it might be worth taking another look at his picks since the 2007 failure of the ping pong balls (just imagine what people would think if he'd drafted Oden) being turned into the major coup of adding Garnett.

2008 - JR Giddens (30th), Semih Erden (60th). Giddens never did muchAfter him, there were three significant players taken in Mario Chalmers (34th), DeAndre Jordan (35th), and Goran Dragic (45th). Giddens was really terrible, and only played a total of 247 NBA minutes. But aside from that, I think it's hard to find fault in not getting much out of the 30th pick. The second round had those three successes but mostly a bunch of guys whose only difference from Giddens is they were playing more on crappy teams.

2009 - Lester Hudson (58th). There's nothing to say about this draft, they gave up their first round pick for KG, noone would ever want to undo that, and complaining about getting a dud with pick 58 is just complaining for the sake of complaining.

2010 - Avery Bradley (19th), Luke Harangody ((52nd). OK so I guess here is where evaluation of Bradley is the biggest question. Regardless, for my part, the only players taken after him that I would want are Trevor Booker (23rd) or Hassan Whiteside (33rd) and even then, when it comes down to it those guys weren't valuable when the C's needed it either. The biggest knock on Bradley is that it took him 3-4 to really develop into a useful player. And obviously Whiteside had similar issues (too bad Danny didn't also grab him off the scrap heap two years ago).

2011 - JaJuan Johnson (27th) - a draft day trade down to grab an extra 2nd round pick (The C's actually drafted MarShon Brooks at 25). The big miss was obviously Jimmy Butler (30th) and Lil' Zeke (60th), but the only other useful non fungible player taken after 27 is probably Chandler Parsons.

2012 - Jared Sullinger (21st) Fab Melo (22nd, RIP), Chris Joseph (51st). Jae Crowder (34th), Draymond Green (35th) are the only two players distinguishable as more useful than Sullinger drafted outside the top 7. Melo is an odd pick, and big reason, I think, for a lot of the questioning of Ainge's recent record.

2013 - Kelly Olynyk (13th, through trade). the Greek Freak (15th) and Rudy Gobert (27th) are the only players drafted after him that I would take ahead of Olynyk at this point. You could convince me on a couple of others, but it's a toss-up. People like to call this a huge miss, Danny jumped three spots and gave up the C's first and both seconds to specifically draft him. But even with that, he was the 13th overall pick in a weak draft.

2014 - Marcus Smart (6th), James Young (17th). Whatever you think of Marcus Smart, at this point it's hard to call him a bust. Sure, he was a disappointment of ping pong balls (and as people like to complain about here, the C's winning 2 or 3 useless games too many the previous season), but as the 6th guy taken in what was generally regarded as a 5 player draft, how bad as he been? Obviously it's too soon to tell, but I don't think any of the other guys taken 6-15 would be much better on the C's right now. Young is obviously still a project, he's as young or younger than most college seniors. Similarly, it's hard to compare to the guys drafted after him because it's just too soon.

2015 and 16 are still way too early, but I guess if you hate Rozier, Hunter, and Brown it would fuel your Ainge draft hatred.

Regardless, going through this exercise it seems that the general criticism of Ainge's drafting is that the Celtics didn't have good enough picks. I guess you could argue for a few guys instead of Brown but it's too soon for that IMO.

The other case you could make is the often cited "perfect drafting" case, where Ainge would have selected DeAndre Jordan, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green, but you could say that about every other GM.

The other side of course is that there is no reason to think Ainge is especially good at the draft, which I think was his green shaded rep after Jefferson and Rondo turned out so well.

Anyway, I know this is well trodden ground, I just felt the need to take another look after reading some piece of crap article about Ainge's terrible drafting, and didn't want to use the comments section. Pardon my self-indulgence.
 

Curll

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I think there's plenty of caveats to this.

First, the bulk of the time was spent trying to find players that "fit" into an All-Star, championship contending team. Second, Ainge is now trying to find "system players" that Brad Stevens can maximize. His talent evaluation and decisions were never driven by "build a franchise" around one of these players -- and there weren't any slam dunks (ha!) available for the Celtics when they drafted.

Like you said, the "perfect drafting" is always a fantasy. And even when you can do that, like the 76'ers or Cavs, it obviously doesn't always work out. And that fantasy scenario may have lead to Stevens not being hired, or Stevens blowing up the trio.
 

BigSoxFan

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I think Ainge has generally done a good job. There are always going to be misses (I wanted Jordan in 2008) but he has yet to make a really costly draft mistake. Jaylen Brown looks to be a nice piece to the puzzle and I'm confident that our 2017 pick, if we end up making it, will be a good one.
 

bowiac

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Without going line-by-line:
  • I'm not sure ignoring everything before 2008 is "correct"
  • You seem to be giving Ainge a pass on a lot of recent whiffs (Rozier, Hunter, Young), which seems charitable to me.
I think Ainge is fine as a drafter. He's not particularly good, but not bad either. I'd say clearly above average overall, but also clearly outside of the top tier of GMs at this. His aversion to foreign talent is my biggest complaint overall.
 

Cesar Crespo

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I don't see many people here thinking Ainge's track record is putrid. It's just that sometimes he plays too safe and goes for the limited Olynyk instead of the upside of Greek Freak. He also avoided drafting international players for quite awhile.

Plus, if you are going to judge him for missing Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler then you have to also knock every other GM in the league for the same thing. Most of his picks have netted a useful player for that spot in the draft.
 

BigSoxFan

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Without going line-by-line:
  • I'm not sure ignoring everything before 2008 is "correct"
  • You seem to be giving Ainge a pass on a lot of recent whiffs (Rozier, Hunter, Young), which seems charitable to me.
I think Ainge is fine as a drafter. He's not particularly good, but not bad either. I'd say clearly above average overall, but also clearly outside of the top tier of GMs at this. His aversion to foreign talent is my biggest complaint overall.
I don't see how you can call Rozier a whiff. He is playing a role on a playoff team. I mean, I guess you can call Young and Hunter whiffs but the pickings when Ainge drafted them were extremely thin.

As for the foreign thing, yes, I wish we had gotten the Freak but we have 2 intriguing foreign players stashed at this very moment. So he's clearly learned if he had an aversion.
 

Cellar-Door

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Ainge is basically an average or better NBA GM in terms of drafting, some hits some misses. So far no busts on his few high picks, and a few real hits late.
 

Eddie Jurak

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2013 - Kelly Olynyk (13th, through trade). the Greek Freak (15th) and Rudy Gobert (27th) are the only players drafted after him that I would take ahead of Olynyk at this point. You could convince me on a couple of others, but it's a toss-up. People like to call this a huge miss, Danny jumped three spots and gave up the C's first and both seconds to specifically draft him. But even with that, he was the 13th overall pick in a weak draft.
Olynyk is a reasonable pick at #13 in a weak draft. More valuable than the numbers alone suggest because he is a stretch 5.

However, I hate that the took him here - I think they went into this draft using bad strategy (as opposed to bad tactics). They were at the very end of the KG/PP/Doc era (Doc was already gone, and the Brooklyn trade was 2 weeks away). The team was obviously headed for a major rebuild, yet they chose the safe pick (Olynyk) instead of the swing for the fences pick (either Giannis or Schroder). Huge mistake, IMO.
 

smastroyin

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I started with 2008 because it was already a long post and it seems to me like a good demarcation point in terms of the franchise overall, and mostly your opinion is going to sway by giant amounts based on whether you think McHale simply bailed Ainge out completely with the KG trade. For instance, the Randy Foye pick/trade all depends on thinking that Ainge didn't need Telfair and the Ratliff expiring to get the KG (or similar) deal done, and the worth of Al Jefferson all depends on whether the Wolves incorrectly overvalued him by way more than the rest of the league.

I'm not giving a pass on the recent guys, it's just too soon to tell both for them and for anyone you might say Ainge "should have" drafted.

That said, I also agree on the foreign aversion.
 
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Cesar Crespo

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Also, to call Kris Middleton indistinguishable from Jared Sullinger is laughable. I'm guessing you missed Middleton was the 39th pick in the 2012 draft. I'd also take Dennis Schroder over Kelly Olynyk every single day of the week. Im guessing you missed him being taken 17th in the 2013 draft. You mentioned a bunch of guys are arguable, but I don't think Schroder is arguable. It's his first year as a starter and he's putting up 17.4ppg, 6.3apg while shooting .462/.347/.835. His usage has gone up along with his efficiency. Also, Zack LaVine was drafted 7 spots after Smart and I think he's a no brainer as well. Oh, and some guy named Nikola Jokic was drafted that year 41st and he could arguably be the best player to come out of that incredibly stacked draft, especially given the health concerns of Jabari and Embiid and Wiggins stagnating. 2015 and 2016 are too early to tell.

If you are going to judge Ainge for missing guys, make sure you catch all the guys he's missed. Middleton is a two way stud, Schroder is a starter on any team, Zack LaVine is a lights out shooter and Nikola Jokic is looking every bit as good as Anthony Davis, Embiid and KAT. Over his last 20 he's at 22.9 ppg, 10.1 rpg, 5.3 apg, 1.0 spg, 1.0 bpg on .597/.400/.841 shooting.

edit: A bunch of the players he missed on are internationals, though he did miss a few native born players.
 
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Big John

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Without going line-by-line:
  • I'm not sure ignoring everything before 2008 is "correct"
  • You seem to be giving Ainge a pass on a lot of recent whiffs (Rozier, Hunter, Young), which seems charitable to me.
I think Ainge is fine as a drafter. He's not particularly good, but not bad either. I'd say clearly above average overall, but also clearly outside of the top tier of GMs at this. His aversion to foreign talent is my biggest complaint overall.
Mine also, although he appears to have discovered the European continent in 2016.
 

Cellar-Door

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BTW..... I think Kelly Olynyk has been and still is a better player than Dennis Schroder.
 

smastroyin

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I'll give you Jokic, but he was taken 41. I was trying to stay within reasonable spots of where the guys were drafted (other than lil' Zeke because he's lil' Zeke). So yeah, he's a big miss but he's a big miss that literally every team with a draft choice missed, and several of them missed twice - Philadelphia 3 times). The Euro connection is really tough to deal with because essentially Danny was part of a very large group of GMs not taking advantage. So he missed a "market inefficiency" which is too bad, and that puts him behind a guy like Connelly, but doesn't make him terrible in and of itself, in my opinion.
 

Montana Fan

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I'll leave it to others to review his misses. What I've seen quite often this season is some combination of Smart, Olynyk, Rozier and Jaylen on the court at the same time. Whether the 4 of them or combinations of 3 of them have good +/- ratios is to be determined but it seems like there are usually good outcomes when those guys are on the floor. Granted they're often performing against the other team's bench but they're playing regularly, playing well and I'm in the camp that thinks Jaylen is going to fall somewhere into the Kawhi, Paul George, Gordon Hayward career path and level. He was a very good choice.
 

luckiestman

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Also, to call Kris Middleton indistinguishable from Jared Sullinger is laughable. I'm guessing you missed Middleton was the 39th pick in the 2012 draft. I'd also take Dennis Schroder over Kelly Olynyk every single day of the week. Im guessing you missed him being taken 17th in the 2013 draft. You mentioned a bunch of guys are arguable, but I don't think Schroder is arguable. It's his first year as a starter and he's putting up 17.4ppg, 6.3apg while shooting .462/.347/.835. His usage has gone up along with his efficiency. Also, Zack LaVine was drafted 7 spots after Smart and I think he's a no brainer as well. Oh, and some guy named Nikola Jokic was drafted that year 41st and he could arguably be the best player to come out of that incredibly stacked draft, especially given the health concerns of Jabari and Embiid and Wiggins stagnating. 2015 and 2016 are too early to tell.

If you are going to judge Ainge for missing guys, make sure you catch all the guys he's missed. Middleton is a two way stud, Schroder is a starter on any team, Zack LaVine is a lights out shooter and Nikola Jokic is looking every bit as good as Anthony Davis, Embiid and KAT. Over his last 20 he's at 22.9 ppg, 10.1 rpg, 5.3 apg, 1.0 spg, 1.0 bpg on .597/.400/.841 shooting.

edit: A bunch of the players he missed on are internationals, though he did miss a few native born players.
Zach Lavine over Smart?
Schroder is not better than Olynyk, cmon.


We are watching two totally different sports
 

the moops

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Also, Zack LaVine was drafted 7 spots after Smart and I think he's a no brainer as well.
I don't think there was a single person who advocated for LaVine to go anywhere in the top 10. I find it hard to fault any GM missing on a guy who goes in a completely different tier
 

Cesar Crespo

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I don't think there was a single person who advocated for LaVine to go anywhere in the top 10. I find it hard to fault any GM missing on a guy who goes in a completely different tier
How can you fault a GM for missing Draymond Green? That's kinda my point. You can't. Also, apparently some people think Smart is better than LaVine anyway. He talks about reasonable spots but who is taking Draymond Green 22nd?

Figured the Schroder thing would have opposition but really surprised people would take Smart over LaVine pre injury anyway. Then again, people were taking Smart over Jabari Parker last year.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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How can you fault a GM for missing Draymond Green? That's kinda my point. You can't. Also, apparently some people think Smart is better than LaVine anyway. He talks about reasonable spots but who is taking Draymond Green 22nd?

Figured the Schroder thing would have opposition but really surprised people would take Smart over LaVine pre injury anyway. Then again, people were taking Smart over Jabari Parker last year.
Replace Smart with Lavine on the Celtics, and Lavine with Smart on the Wolves: what happens?
 

Cesar Crespo

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Replace Smart with Lavine on the Celtics, and Lavine with Smart on the Wolves: what happens?
Smart would fit the Wolves roster better and LaVine is largely redundant on the Celtics when Bradley is actually healthy and Bradley actually plays defense. I already said I think the Wolves will be better going forward without LaVine. That team needs to move one of Wiggins/LaVine. Building from scratch, I take LaVine.

edit: Although Smart is kinda redundant on the Wolves too. You couldn't play Rubio and Smart together.
 
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lexrageorge

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Seems like a lot of the criticism of Ainge's drafting is that he missed some 2nd round gems, which is like blaming the Pats for passing on Brady 5 times. And the rest of his picks have played as expected or slightly better based on their draft slot. That's hardly "putrid".

If you want to consider recency bias: OK, James Young was a true swing and a miss. Rozier has established himself firmly in the backup rotation, and could still develop to be a decent rotation PG. Hunter was a miss, but not a surprising one given he was 28th. Jury is still out on Jordan Mickey, but he was always projected as a longer term project. I'm not sure I'd prefer any of the players available when the Celts selected Jaylen Brown, and there's still a better than 50/50 chance he ends up being the class of that group by a wide margin. Again, he was projected by the experts to be a D-league player most of this season, and he has already blew through that. Nothing stinks of putridity in those picks outside of perhaps Young.
 

Koufax

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Too early to say on Young because he's still, well, young. Hunter was a miss for sure.
 

luckiestman

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Too early to say on Young because he's still, well, young. Hunter was a miss for sure.

I wonder what Ainge is going to do with Young. The kid is still only 21. Any idea how he plays in practice. I don't remember any recent stories about that.
 

Big John

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Seems like a lot of the criticism of Ainge's drafting is that he missed some 2nd round gems, which is like blaming the Pats for passing on Brady 5 times. And the rest of his picks have played as expected or slightly better based on their draft slot. That's hardly "putrid".
It has little to do with 2nd rounders IMHO. The huge whiff was Giannis Antetokounmpo, a player that both Danny and Austin Ainge scouted extensively.

Olynyk is a useful (and improving) rotation player. Giannis is a 22 year-old superstar.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Anyway, I know this is well trodden ground, I just felt the need to take another look after reading some piece of crap article about Ainge's terrible drafting, and didn't want to use the comments section. Pardon my self-indulgence.
My gut tells me that although hasn't hit on a foundational player since 2008 - then again, how many teams picking outside of the top 5 have? - he's an extremely good judge of NBA talent and seems to get value out of his draft picks. I mean how many other teams have been basically whiffing on mid-range picks each year?

BTW, if people care, Winderman's latest column has some stuff from Givony on draft results, including this:

"I mean," Givony said, "all I can go off is history, and this is something that we've really studied. And I can tell you that once you get outside of the Top 10, you are, in all likelihood, drafting backups.

"In the last 15 years, there have been four All-Stars drafted in 11 through 20. Whereas, one through 10, there have been 40. So you have a 10-times higher chance of an All-Star. But that's not fair because one is obviously is very different than 10. So you can really break it up. But once you get outside of the Top 10, you have to really hit a home run to get an impact guy."

* * * *

"I'm looking at this right now," he continued of drafting in the teens. "Fifty percent of the time you get a guy who is a career backup. Twenty-one percent of the time you get a guy who is just a fringe NBA player, that spends most of his career at the end of the bench or is out of the league. And then there's a couple of guys who didn't even play in the NBA in the 11 through 20 range. It's dicey territory. Yeah, you could get Kawhi Leonard. But I wouldn't count on it."​
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I wonder what Ainge is going to do with Young. The kid is still only 21. Any idea how he plays in practice. I don't remember any recent stories about that.
Ainge won't be able to sign Young - I suspect some team will take a flyer on him (the Nets should) and I think he will be a useful player who can score but with defensive limitations that will prevent him from being as valuable as he could be.

Something like a younger version of Gerald Green, which apparently even GG sees.
 
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MarkBT

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There's talent there with Young, but he still seems a ways away from contributing on the defensive end. In the limited court time he's received recently, he still seems lost on defense.

As for Ainge... I don't see his drafting record as a real "plus" nor a "minus." As the Gioveny piece highlights, its really tough to find truly impactful players drafting outside of the Top 10. I think we all wish Marcus Smart was "more"... but with two year's of hindsight that looks like a 3 player draft. Is there anyone after Smart you'd rather have. I'll pass on LaVine.. but maybe Hood, Capella, or Saric?

Same with Terry Rozier.. we picked 15th in a draft that was actually pretty stacked up to the end of the lottery.

As a drafter, his biggest "sin" in my opinion is Olynyk over Giannis. Given where the team was at the point, they should've swung for the home run. That said, hindsight suggests Giannis should've gone #1 that year, so it's not like the C's were the only team that missed.
 

Sprowl

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Why is Rozier being dismissed so quickly? He hasn't translated last summer league's performance to NBA regular season play, and Smart beat him out as the backup point guard (or lead playmaker, since IT is being used increasingly as the off guard running his defender ragged off screens so that he can get more open 3-point shots). But Rozier clearly has the physical tools to play in the NBA -- his shot is competent and getting better from distance, he has a gift for acrobatic flip shots on the contested layup, and his quickness on defense and rebounding are better than the young Rondo's. Yes, he's missing a click on defensive rotations, but I expect that will come with time. He's likely to be somewhat better than a career backup, and he certainly won't be out of the league any time soon.

Given the competition in that draft, Ainge's choice of Rozier in the mid-teens looks pretty good, despite being widely panned at the time.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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Young is still young, but doesn't have any athleticism to dream on and is still just a 3 and D guy who has shown little ability to do either at this level.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Young is still young, but doesn't have any athleticism to dream on and is still just a 3 and D guy who has shown little ability to do either at this level.
Can't argue with any of this but the way the league is going, guys who can score will always find someone who wants to gamble on them. Young will bounce around for a while and I think he'll end up getting it.

But because this a thread about how well Ainge drafts, this is one pick everyone loved. Particularly

 

bowiac

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Why is Rozier being dismissed so quickly? He hasn't translated last summer league's performance to NBA regular season play, and Smart beat him out as the backup point guard (or lead playmaker, since IT is being used increasingly as the off guard running his defender ragged off screens so that he can get more open 3-point shots). But Rozier clearly has the physical tools to play in the NBA -- his shot is competent and getting better from distance, he has a gift for acrobatic flip shots on the contested layup, and his quickness on defense and rebounding are better than the young Rondo's. Yes, he's missing a click on defensive rotations, but I expect that will come with time. He's likely to be somewhat better than a career backup, and he certainly won't be out of the league any time soon.

Given the competition in that draft, Ainge's choice of Rozier in the mid-teens looks pretty good, despite being widely panned at the time.
The book isn't written on Rozier, but he's not especially young. He looks lost on defense, he hasn't been able to finish successfully, and he's still not generating steals like you want a player with his physical profile to do. Could turn it around obviously, but when use a draft pick on a relatively old player, you'd like to see a bit more by this stage.
 

Devizier

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Here's a relevant chart from Nylon Calculus. You can get some variant of the same thing from other sources, it doesn't really matter.

 

slamminsammya

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I generally agree his drafting has been mixed bag - above average, but can we all take a moment to admire once more that he turned the 15th, 24th, and 25th picks in 2004 into Al Jefferson, Tony Allen, and Delonte West?
 

Koufax

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Here's a relevant chart from Nylon Calculus. You can get some variant of the same thing from other sources, it doesn't really matter.

That "Bust" line must mean "not a bust".
 

smastroyin

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I don't even want to say he's above average, maybe he is, just that he's not some kind of black hole, which seems to come a lot from recency bias and utter hatred of the Olynyk pick. I think there is a lot of luck, and if you took a similar look at most GMs draft record, you will find many similar hits and misses. Even Presti, who I think has to be near the top of anyone's list, has had a mixed bag in recent years, after a huge run to start his career (Durant, Westbrook, Ibaka, Harden, Bledsoe, Jackson)

2012: He drafted Perry Jones 28th, but missed (like everyone) Crowder and Green.
2013: He drafted Steven Adams 12th, who's a decent guy but just about as valuable as Olynyk, and also missed the guys we kill Ainge for missing. He drafted Archie Goodwin 29th, he's been a JAG.
2014: He drafted Mitch McGary 21st, Josh Huestis 29th, and just like Ainge missed two opportunities to draft Jokic. McGary is already out of the league and Huestis is a 25 year old who's played 7 NBA minutes this year.
2015: He drafted Cameron Payne with the 14th pick, does he have that much more potential than Terry Rozier?

I guess my point is, I'm not at "In Ainge we Trust" levels for his drafting acumen, but I also don't think he's as bad as the Carr/Pitino/Wallace triumvirate (for instance). Luckily for the Celtics Pierce fell in the 1998 draft and they didn't buy into whatever caused him to fall.
 

NoXInNixon

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If you're going to evaluate someone's draft record by how many times they failed to make the best possible draft pick in hindsight, you will conclude that everyone sucks at drafting.

Instead, you should evaluate a drafter based on the delta between each pick's draft position and the ranking of how good their NBA career was relative to their draft class.
 

finnVT

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A lot of these examples of late drafted guys that took a while to develop don't even seem fair to include. It seems like for guys like Green, DeAndre Jordan, even guys like Leonard, who took 3+ years to do much of anything, their success needs to be largely attributed to player development and not just drafting. Put another way, even if the C's had taken these guys, there's no guarantee they end up the players they are today.

It's "bust or better". But the fact that it's not 100% means there is a level below bust?
Unsigned?

If you're going to evaluate someone's draft record by how many times they failed to make the best possible draft pick in hindsight, you will conclude that everyone sucks at drafting.
Instead, you should evaluate a drafter based on the delta between each pick's draft position and the ranking of how good their NBA career was relative to their draft class.
Even this doesn't seem right, because you end up killing Philly for taking Iverson because Kobe was in the same draft, but giving the clippers a pass on taking Lorenzen Wright even though Kobe was on the board for them too. I'd think the best approach would be to compare each pick to the median outcome of players at that pick over time and see how he's done. I.e., comparing Ainge's pick to the values derived here would be a start, though I'd still prefer comparison to median rather than mean, since a single outlier late in the draft can really skew things.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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A lot of these examples of late drafted guys that took a while to develop don't even seem fair to include. It seems like for guys like Green, DeAndre Jordan, even guys like Leonard, who took 3+ years to do much of anything, their success needs to be largely attributed to player development and not just drafting. Put another way, even if the C's had taken these guys, there's no guarantee they end up the players they are today.
Obviously it's hard to take into account but a valid point. I.e., Giannis. He has flourished because he's been able to play a lot of minutes for a bad team - plus in the last couple of years, he's been given the ball to control. That wasn't going to happen on the Cs. And maybe if Giannis does mature, he does so at the expense of IT4.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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It's "bust or better". But the fact that it's not 100% means there is a level below bust?
Below Bust = Anthony Bennett. Bust = 0 VORP using peak years; Bennett's peak years at the time of writing was -0.1. See article here: http://nyloncalculus.com/2016/06/17/freelance-friday-expected-value-in-the-nba-draft/
If you're going to evaluate someone's draft record by how many times they failed to make the best possible draft pick in hindsight, you will conclude that everyone sucks at drafting.

Instead, you should evaluate a drafter based on the delta between each pick's draft position and the ranking of how good their NBA career was relative to their draft class.
Bowiac did this a few years ago. See, e.g., http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/nba-draft-game-thread-spoilers-allowed.9944/page-13

But isn't it true that the evidence seems to be that drafting well isn't a repeatable skill? I've read from the Ravens that their studies show that drafting well is a function of the number of draft picks, not that any particular team is more skilled than another. See, e.g., https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-team-can-beat-the-draft/
 

PedroKsBambino

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The other point to remember in draft assessment (which several people have alluded to) is that teams are looking for different things. The Spurs are (by most measures) good at drafting. However, like the Patriots they also have the advantage of having 'infrastructure' in place and having the ability to draft for specific roles sometimes.

A guy like Olynyk is a good % bet to be a useful rotation player, and so if a team is a contender (or just has the starts in place) he's a great pick; a team that is looking for a moonshot arguably should be looking for higher delta players. I can't kill Celtics for not taking Giannis, and I think a lot of the expectations people have for picks outside the top handful are not really realistic.
 

moondog80

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But isn't it true that the evidence seems to be that drafting well isn't a repeatable skill? I've read from the Ravens that their studies show that drafting well is a function of the number of draft picks, not that any particular team is more skilled than another. See, e.g., https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-team-can-beat-the-draft/
I think about this a lot. Is hitting on a bunch of draft picks any different than going 8 for 10 in a doubleheader?

Also, is some of what we call successful drafting really just successful development? Would Kawhi Leonard be Kawhi Leonard if the Kings drafted him?
 

PedroKsBambino

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I think about this a lot. Is hitting on a bunch of draft picks any different than going 8 for 10 in a doubleheader?

Also, is some of what we call successful drafting really just successful development? Would Kawhi Leonard be Kawhi Leonard if the Kings drafted him?
Highly unlikely he would---that's what I was getting at with 'infrastructure'

My instict (and that is all it is) tells me that draft skill is not actually random, though the sample sizes are so small and the variables so many that it's really a tough question to answer with confident analytically.
 

Cesar Crespo

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2 1st overall picks never played a game in the NBA either. But you have to go waaaaayyy back to 1947 and 1951. Clifton McNeeley went right into coaching and Gene Melchiorre was banned for point shaving before he played a game.
 

bowiac

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I think about this a lot. Is hitting on a bunch of draft picks any different than going 8 for 10 in a doubleheader?
Probably something close to that; good hitters will go 8 for 10 more often than bad hitters, but there's a lot of variance. This is obviously compounded by the fact that many GMs don't get to make 10 draft picks, so comparing GMs purely on a "results" basis is going to be incredibly noisy.

It's fun evaluating based on success rates like this, but I don't think it's that useful by itself.
 

finnVT

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I'd think the best approach would be to compare each pick to the median outcome of players at that pick over time and see how he's done. I.e., comparing Ainge's pick to the values derived here would be a start, though I'd still prefer comparison to median rather than mean, since a single outlier late in the draft can really skew things.
So actually, it's relatively easy to extend the methodology I linked to above to get estimates for each pick, at least based on WS (if anyone knows how to get basketball-reference to return each player's PER for a given draft class, I could run that instead). But basically, can fit the exponential fit derived in that article to the WS values for each draft class to get an absolute WS estimate for each pick. Then compare the estimated value of each Celtics pick to what they've actually gotten. Since you're comparing relative to their own draft class, this works pretty well across draft years (where players have had different #s of years to accumulat WS), though still not great for the most recent ones. But basically, you get something like this:


(sorry i can't figure out how to embed a table)

Basically, Olynyk and Sullinger have been the big hits, whereas the misses have actually come from low picks in drafts that produced decent talent at low levels (Melo, Johnson, Giddens). I guess that's sort of a quirk of this analysis, and how you think you should deal with boom-or-bust type outcomes.

Overall it means that Ainge grades out as below average, but without any glaring hits or misses... his misses seem to be an inability to get role player production from lower picks (Erden is really the only example; Giddens is his biggest miss mainly because of the overall talent that draft produced), and not having found any of those superstars in the rough (which would include: 2008: Ibaka, Batum, Hill, Jordan, Dragic; 2009: Lawson, Teague, Gibson, Green; 2010: Henry, Booker, Whiteside; 2011: Leonard, Faried, Butler, Parsons, Thomas; 2012: Crowder, Green, Middleton; 2013: Giannis, Dieng, Plumlee, Gobert; 2014: Still probably too early to tell). Not that these guys were all available when the C's picked, but that's 24 players outside the top 10 that have greatly exceed their expected value-- finding 1 of these sorts of guys over the course of 5-6 years could really turn his record around (all of those guys exceeded expected value by 10+ WS, which would cancel Ainge's -12). Maybe Rozier, Yabu or Zizic becomes that guy, time will tell.

The takeaway here, I think, is that there are 3 keys to being an excellent drafter: (1) don't miss on your high picks, (2) find role players at the end of the first round/early second, (3) once in a while (once a decade?), find a star with a non-lottery pick. Smart and Brown are really Ainge's first cracks at (1) (at least in a while) and it's too soon to tell on them, but he doesn't really grade out particularly well on (2) or (3), other than Olynyk and Sullinger.
 

Captaincoop

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As a drafter, his biggest "sin" in my opinion is Olynyk over Giannis. Given where the team was at the point, they should've swung for the home run. That said, hindsight suggests Giannis should've gone #1 that year, so it's not like the C's were the only team that missed.
He's alternated between making the "not swinging for the home run" mistake with making the "not taking a high floor role player" mistake.

He swung for a home run in 2008 with Giddens, when Mario Chalmers was available and could have played a needed role as backup PG for the late-KG Celtics teams.

He made the safe choice with Olynyk in 2013 when the team was rebuilding and in hindsight the Greek Freak would have been a game changing pick

Then the following year, he swings for the fences again with James Young when Gary Harris would have been a nice piece for a team that was back in the playoffs that year.

I hate hindsight draft critiques, because it's just too unfair to look at drafts that way. But those three specific choices were heavily debated in the moment here and elsewhere.

Overall, my impression is that the Celtics have done average to slightly below average drafting talent in the Ainge era. But they've been tremendous on trades.