2014 NBA Draft Thread (No Spoilers You Clowns)
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But who would Philly take at 3, and if so, would that guy be there at 6? Do they swap 3 for 6 and 17?MainerInExile said:
If they would now take Exum, or Von/Gordon they could get that guy at 6 and pick up 17.
RedOctober3829 said:
So if the Celtics aren't scared away from Embiid's medical chart, what would be the deal to move up to the 76ers' spot to take him? The Celtics could take back whatever contract they want to dump (Thadeus Young or Jason Richardson?) with the PP trade exception and offer them one of the many draft picks they hold that doesn't necessarily involve #6 pick.
IMO, it would be a premium because Philly is directly competing with Boston in the division. I think the starting point would be 6 and 17 for 3.dylanmarsh said:
RedOctober3829 said:
That's true but the 76ers clearing salary for big free agent splash in '14 or '15 might also appeal to them (while hamstringing the C's cap). Young and Richardson are a combined $15.7M hit in '14 and then $9.7M in '15. Having Noel and MCW in the fold for the next few years, gives them quite a few positive directions to choose from.
having options gives you leverage.
Put together a lowball package for love and put together a lowball package for the #3. Those guys have to sell, we don't have to buy and nobody can put together as good a package as we can. And we don't have to buy. This is the type of situation where Danny the Trader should excel.
Two broken bones in 1 year. yIkes. If we get Embiid start him on a Calcium & Vitamin D regimen. We could put Embiid on the Noel redshirt plan, trade Rondo & Jeff Green for something, be terrible another year and get another high draft pick next year. That would be a perfectly legitimate rebuild plan.
Put together a lowball package for love and put together a lowball package for the #3. Those guys have to sell, we don't have to buy and nobody can put together as good a package as we can. And we don't have to buy. This is the type of situation where Danny the Trader should excel.
Two broken bones in 1 year. yIkes. If we get Embiid start him on a Calcium & Vitamin D regimen. We could put Embiid on the Noel redshirt plan, trade Rondo & Jeff Green for something, be terrible another year and get another high draft pick next year. That would be a perfectly legitimate rebuild plan.
Stitch01 said:
Agreed on all fronts. I don't see a gamble on Embiid's health being all that different from a gamble on Gordon's offense, Smart's jumpshot and so on. Different conversation if the C's had a top 2 pick; at 6 you take him and run. I don't think it happens either, but who knows. Not completely analogous but Noel fell to 6 in a much worse draft.
Absolutely. I think once you get to the 4th or 5th pick in this draft Embiid is worth the risk. While other bigs have historically struggled with door problems, specifically the navicular bone, medicine wasn't at the point it is now.Jed Zeppelin said:
Plus Embiiids upside is so tremendous. Rim protector, a perfect big man for the evolving NBA of today. I would love it if he somehow fell to Boston
The NBA should scrap the lottery. They've had NINE franchises win championships going back to 1980; in that time, 16 different teams have won Super Bowls and that period includes the entire Niners dynasty, 17 teams have won Stanley Cups, and that includes the entire Islanders, Oilers, and Red Wings multi-year runs, and 19 different teams have won World Series titles, and that includes another Dark Age of the Evil Empire.
The draft should help bad teams get better, but the league's paranoia about preventing tanking has gotten in the way of that.
The draft should help bad teams get better, but the league's paranoia about preventing tanking has gotten in the way of that.
What's the lottery have to do with how few teams win titles?
The reason the same teams win titles is because the best team wins a 7 game series extremely often in basketball, so talent rises to the top. It's just the nature of the sport.
The reason the same teams win titles is because the best team wins a 7 game series extremely often in basketball, so talent rises to the top. It's just the nature of the sport.
The NBA has 5 starters and most teams basically play 8-9 players. Individual players dominate in the NBA in a way they don't in any other sport.Remagellan said:
1980-now
Jordan- 6 titles
Magic Johnson- 5 titles
Tim Duncan- 5 titltes
Kobe- 5 titles
Shaq- 4 titles
Larry Bird- 3 titles
Lebron -2 titles
Isaiah Thomas- 2 titles
Hakeem- 2 titles
Teams without one of these surefire first ballot HOFs- 4 titles (76ers with Moses and Dr J, Mavs with Dirk, CELTICS WITH KG PIERCE ALLEN Pistons with garbage.)
Aren't some of Kpbe and Shaq's the same? Where is Kareem on this list? Where is Wade?Cellar-Door said:
Edit: My point is, lots of these individual players won with other great players. I actually dispute the notion that a great individual player wins a title.
Great individual players sometimes get to finals (Lebron, Moses), but winning is a different matter.
yes they did.snowmanny said:
My point was more that those are some of the greatest players of all-time, and they dominate the title wins, and that is why there isn't much parity. Sure it takes more than just that guy, but not having one of those guys makes it so much harder. Those guys are tough to get and that is why the lottery doesn't have much to do with parity.
I'm all for intelligent risk taking but Embiid's risk is way too high. I can't think of a player that has had two fracture injuries and was eventually pretty durable. Then I think of the big centers like Yao and Oden whose body would just not support their basketball career.
Yao played like 500 games that's the ultimate tease. Not a complete waste from the get go like Oden but you get a taste of what things could be like and then it's all over
Really, I think we need some sound medical advice on this one, not anecdotal comparisons. I note in passing that Randle also broke his foot in HS.
Not an orthopedist….. But I'll chime in.
Sucks for Embiid to be sure, and navicular stress fractures for big men are definitely cause for concern. Same injury Yao and Ilgauskas I believe. Certainly the injury can happen to anyone, but it's only natural to wonder if his size, running style, anatomy, etc. are making him prone to it.
I think the red flag is real, and would have a very tough time using a top 3 pick (in a whats likely to be a very good draft) on Embiid. Having said that, this injury doesn't mean he is automatically the next injury-cursed big man. People come back from this all the time (though of course most people who come back are not 7 feet tall). Thats the trick thing with all of these injuries in NBA big men…. there is so little good data and so few data points. A couple of anecdotal cases doesn't tell us much.
That's a long winded way to say I'd be nervous as hell to draft him, but at #6, I'd have a hard time passing him up. If Danny is a big believer in Embiid's talent, I think the risk is worth it. I'd make a pretty uneducated guess he has at least a 50% chance that this is not a major long term, career threatening issue for him. Since I think Embiid could be great, I'd go ahead and say the risk/reward equation makes sense once you get around pick #5 or #6.
Sucks for Embiid to be sure, and navicular stress fractures for big men are definitely cause for concern. Same injury Yao and Ilgauskas I believe. Certainly the injury can happen to anyone, but it's only natural to wonder if his size, running style, anatomy, etc. are making him prone to it.
I think the red flag is real, and would have a very tough time using a top 3 pick (in a whats likely to be a very good draft) on Embiid. Having said that, this injury doesn't mean he is automatically the next injury-cursed big man. People come back from this all the time (though of course most people who come back are not 7 feet tall). Thats the trick thing with all of these injuries in NBA big men…. there is so little good data and so few data points. A couple of anecdotal cases doesn't tell us much.
That's a long winded way to say I'd be nervous as hell to draft him, but at #6, I'd have a hard time passing him up. If Danny is a big believer in Embiid's talent, I think the risk is worth it. I'd make a pretty uneducated guess he has at least a 50% chance that this is not a major long term, career threatening issue for him. Since I think Embiid could be great, I'd go ahead and say the risk/reward equation makes sense once you get around pick #5 or #6.
wutang112878 said:
I think you're setting your ambition for the number 6 pick way too high if Yao wouldn't be a terrific outcome for it.
Oh sure, post over here first.radsoxfan said:
Does the fact this is the second stress fracture he's suffered in six months mean anything? Osteoporosis? I mean, what the hell.
Embiid has a greater chance of being oden than an all star center. Bad foot and bad back? No thank you.
bowiac said:
I think it's because one great player can impact basketball more than any other sport, unless you're talking about a goaltender who is Tim Thomas-esque during a playoff run. So if you have a LeBron, you can make it to the Finals. If you have a great QB but not so good everything else, you've got no chance. Same thing if you have a great center fielder but nothing else.
You're right. I'm crapping on Yao the player when it was really the underachieving team that made him seem like such a tease. I still don't understand how the Yao and McGrady combination could never have even one decent playoff run.PedroKsBambino said:
ivanvamp said:
Agreed, I think the reason there's comparatively few champions is primarily the impact of top players.
I do think it's true that basketball 7 game series are a better gauge of 'true talent' than 7 game MLB series, and certainly more than 1 game NFL playoffs. But the reason true talent wins out in NBA is that the best individual players are such a large component of team 'true talent' level in the NBA relative to other sports, as you note, not because of the series.
SpacemanzGerbil said:
Only so much time in the day!
Anything is possible, but I doubt it. Sometimes big men just put too much pressure on their bones. Some 7 footers' bones can deal with it for whatever reason, and some can't.
Just because it happened once (or twice) doesn't mean it's doomed to automatically happen again. However, as I said, I think it's definitely cause for concern. Navicular fractures can be notoriously tricky since that bones blood supply is tenuous. Definitely makes taking Embiid an even bigger "high risk/high reward" decision.
There's an article on espn.com that looks at the history of big guys with this kind of injury (Michael Jordan missed a ton of games in his second year with it and he turned out OK, but big guys seem to be different). Ity's insider-only so I won't quote from it, but the results are mixed. The success story is Zydrunas Illgauskus. Kevin McHale did OK too (anecdotaly it ruined his career, but his numbers look like a normal aging pattern). Bill Walton and Yao Ming were a mess. Curtis Borchardt was a first round pick who played only 16 games his rookie year, 63 in his second, and then was out of his NBA. He did play overseas, so it's tough to tell how much of that was injury and how much was just that he sucked.wutang112878 said:
So, if this causes him to drop to 6 does Danny jump all over it....or does this injury scare him away? I thought I remembered some really lingering foot injuries to big men...but Illgauskas and Yao are the only ones I can come up with now. Any others I am missing?
Id say Ainge 4-1 favorite or so to take him if they don't move the pick for Love and he slips to 6.
Take Embiid, trade Rondo, tankapalooza another season and go into '16 with Embiid, high pick next year, #17 this year, whatever they get for Rondo, Clippers pick (76ers pick if they catch all the breaks), Sullinger, Olynyk as assets with the Nets picks and financial flexibility to round out the team. Lot of risk around Embiid, and more risky than trading for Love IMO, but that could work.
Take Embiid, trade Rondo, tankapalooza another season and go into '16 with Embiid, high pick next year, #17 this year, whatever they get for Rondo, Clippers pick (76ers pick if they catch all the breaks), Sullinger, Olynyk as assets with the Nets picks and financial flexibility to round out the team. Lot of risk around Embiid, and more risky than trading for Love IMO, but that could work.
There's another fascinating article on espn insider right now from Dr. Mark Adickes - who was the Rockets team physician in 2006-2010 when Yao Ming dealt with his navicular bone stress fracture injuries. He "projects" Embiid to make a full recovery and have a "solid" NBA career. Adickes makes several important points in which Embiid differs from Yao:
One - Ming was huge - significantly larger than Embiid, standing at 7'6, 310ish. This put a significantly higher amount of stress on his feet than Embiid's frame does.
Two - Ming originally suffered the injury in April 2006. At that time, Ming had already been playing professional basketball for almost a decade - first in China and then with the Rockets. He had a lot of mileage and wear and tear on his body which made it harder to heal from the injury.
Three - After Ming's original injury in April 06, he was put on crutches to heal without having surgery. He came back in the 06-07 season, played well and was named second-team All-NBA. He then suffered a recurrence the following year.
Four - Ming had extremely high arches in his feet, which placed added stress on the bones, and which he doubts Embiid has to the same degree.
In short, Embiid is certainly a risk with the back and foot issues at #6 (or even at #3 or 4 if we were able to trade up for that pick with, for instance, the 2015 Clippers pick and #6), but I think he is absolutely worth the risk. He is still quite young, and the upshot is that if he is able to get healthy, his upside as a rim-protector that can play on the post on offense is really phenomenal. If we can't get Love, I would try to figure out a way to get Embiid.
One - Ming was huge - significantly larger than Embiid, standing at 7'6, 310ish. This put a significantly higher amount of stress on his feet than Embiid's frame does.
Two - Ming originally suffered the injury in April 2006. At that time, Ming had already been playing professional basketball for almost a decade - first in China and then with the Rockets. He had a lot of mileage and wear and tear on his body which made it harder to heal from the injury.
Three - After Ming's original injury in April 06, he was put on crutches to heal without having surgery. He came back in the 06-07 season, played well and was named second-team All-NBA. He then suffered a recurrence the following year.
Four - Ming had extremely high arches in his feet, which placed added stress on the bones, and which he doubts Embiid has to the same degree.
In short, Embiid is certainly a risk with the back and foot issues at #6 (or even at #3 or 4 if we were able to trade up for that pick with, for instance, the 2015 Clippers pick and #6), but I think he is absolutely worth the risk. He is still quite young, and the upshot is that if he is able to get healthy, his upside as a rim-protector that can play on the post on offense is really phenomenal. If we can't get Love, I would try to figure out a way to get Embiid.
moondog80 said:
I know I am just remember all the injury prone guys but there just seem to be a lot that had injury warning signs and could never put together a real career. Pervis Ellison could play like half a season at a time. Robert Swift, who did suck, never had a chance at a career because of freakish injuries. Olowokandi had maybe like 3 seasons that werent ruined by injuries. Thats just the only path I can see Embiid going down, he is a little raw and has to fix that fouling problem and if you sprinkle a few more of these injuries into his future I just think there is going to be a failure to launch type of career. I am petrified of the idea of drafting him because the talented injury prone guys almost hold your franchise hostage in a way. Every year you think 'if SoAndSo just stays healthy then we have a shot' and that never happens and your team is just constantly underachieving.
He doesnt have the Embiid ceiling, no doubt about it, but from the risk/reward standpoint I want Love hands down.
Thst seems too long. Randle had a similar injury and was back in three months. If you google "navicular fracture" and read the medical websites, 4 months looks about right. Here is what one site had to say (quoting a study): " The average time for athletes to return to play after surgical intervention compared with conservative management using a non–weight-bearing cast is 3.8 months and 5.6 months, respectively. Typically, surgical intervention consists of screw fixation, with possible bone graft inlay."
Obviously each person is different, but it is possible that Arne Tellum is playing a game here, trying to steer his client away from Cleveland. Milwaukee and other small market teams.
If Danny goes this route, any chance he tries to get another high pick in this draft using future assets?Stitch01 said:
TheDeuce222 said:
Acknowledging that none of these docs have ever seen Embiid, Dr. Ken Jung has a slightly different take here: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2102863-joel-embiids-injury-could-have-devastating-consequences-for-prospects-future#articles/2102863-joel-embiids-injury-could-have-devastating-consequences-for-prospects-future.
Also, the guy who wrote this post specifically asked whether having back-to-back fractures could be indicative of anything. Dr. Jung responded:
Without knowing more, I'd pass (although perhaps it's just because I had enough of this particular injury watching McHale trying to cope with it). Wondering out loud, hopefully the Cs will get to see all the medical information they need between now and draft day . . . .
Well nobody is going to draft him in the top 10 if they don't get a full look at his medical recordswade boggs chicken dinner said:
Stitch01 said:
Think this would be the best course if he slides to #6. I get the (high) risk, but if you get a crack at a franchise center you have to take it and you get the added "benefit" of tanking and getting another high pick next year.
swingin val said:
Obviously they are going to get records of the surgery but I wonder if that is enough.
I didn't know this when I posted but apparently Tellum was playing coy and not releasing Embiid's previous medical records to teams. CLE apparently found out about the fracture when doing a physical exam as part of Embiid's workout.
I'm with Stitch. If Embiid is there at 6 AND you can't get Love and build a winner with the leftovers, you take him. Trade Rondo and Green, play Olynyk and Sullinger, take a PG like Ennis at 17 and tank out the next season. A total rebuild and much like the 76ers this year.
I don't think Embiid will be at 6 though, I think someone will move up to 4 or 5 to get him.
I don't think Embiid will be at 6 though, I think someone will move up to 4 or 5 to get him.
RedOctober3829 said:
I wouldn't mind seeing the Celtics take him at 17. But I also have slight bias being a UConn guy.
Jeff Van GULLY said:
Draft day trades into the Top 5 happen so infrequently (last I can remember is Minnesota acquiring a pick to take Ricky Rubio) that this has to be a longshot almost by definition, especially given that this draft is loaded at the top. I'd say there's a much higher chance of Orlando (especially) or Utah just drafting Embiid than there is of another team trading into that spot.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
How often does a consensus #1 get hurt a week before the draft though? It's a pretty unique situation.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
There are also more trades into and among the Top 5 than one might assume. The thing is almost all of them are for another pick in the Top 5 or just outside of it. There haven't been any since the new CBA (could be just coincidence, could be some reason behind it), but just in the last 10 years there have been three major examples:Jeff Van GULLY said:
2005: Portland trades No. 3 pick (Deron Williams) to Utah for No. 6 (Martell Webster) and No. 27 (Linas Kleiza).
2006: Chicago trades No. 2 pick (LaMarcus Aldridge) and a future second-round pick to Portland for Viktor Khryapa and No. 4 pick Tyrus Thomas.
2008: Minnesota trades No. 3 pick (OJ Mayo), Marko Jaric, Antonie Walker, and Greg Buckner to the Grizzlies for No. 5 pick (Kevin Love), Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal and Jason Collins. Minnesota was able to dump Jaric's bad contract and pick up Miller in addition to getting the guy they wanted all along in Love.
Definitely still a long shot, but I think there is absolutely a possibility that the Celtics, or Lakers, or Charlotte, or Philly could try to trade into the 3-5 range to get a shot at Embiid if he is slipping (or for another player like Exum or Vonleh, if, for instance, Philly misses out on their target of Wiggins and wants to move back).
at the very least next thurs night is going to be must watch TV...and im stuck in a wine conference call w a producer from napa.
I think best case scenario, barring a good trade for Kevin Love, the Embiid injury could cause Noah Vonleh to vall to us. Most had the draft going Embiid/Parker/Wiggins/Exum/Vonleh. Orlando wants a PG and if it starts Parker/Wiggins/Exum they would likely take Smart at 4. That leaves the Jazz deciding between Embiid's upside and Vonleh. If they pull the trigger we could end up with Vonleh.