specialsauce wrote:The only thing he’s improved in his per 36 minute stats are his points. He has not improved significantly as a player otherwise in any statistic.
So what? He is a scorer. The fact that he has significantly improved at scoring, what we want from him, is good, yes?
I am not saying he has become an all-star or a phenomenal NBA player. I'm just saying that you can't simply dismiss him when you talk about our FO drafting and developing young players. He was a late 1st-round pick and has FAR exceeded expectations. Additional credit to the FO for getting him to sign to a very reasonable 4-year, $50m contract.
well, actually....
He was the 14th pick. Late lottery, not late first round.
The league needs heroes, villains... and clowns. -- Aztec Sunsfan
Charlie Smithy! wrote:For whatever reason, it's funny to me that, as a franchise, we seem to do better with our later draft picks.
It's funny to me that, as a franchise, we've had two top-three picks in our 50-year history (Armon Gilliam, #2, 1987; Neal Walk, #2, 1969). The Cavs have had six #1 picks, including four in the last fifteen years. Draft reform should balance out that crap. There is no justification for us being inflicted with such a competitive disadvantage for such a long period of time.
Charlie Smithy! wrote:For whatever reason, it's funny to me that, as a franchise, we seem to do better with our later draft picks.
It's funny to me that, as a franchise, we've had two top-three picks in our 50-year history (Armon Gilliam, #2, 1987; Neal Walk, #2, 1969). The Cavs have had six #1 picks, including four in the last fifteen years. Draft reform should balance out that crap. There is no justification for us being inflicted with such a competitive disadvantage for such a long period of time.
Amen brotha! This is imo the least luckiest teams in the league. You need luck to win the lottery and luck to win a title. If Joe Johnson gets paid prior to 2004-05 season or doesn't break his face, or Raja Bell get shot in the calf by a sniper, or Ced getting injured, or Danny Manning having Joe Kline fall on him, the Suns maybe have a title by now.
"When we all think alike, nobody is thinking" - Walter Lippmann "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." ~ Frederick Douglass
I agree with the preceding posts. I don't like "wheel" systems that just give teams picks on a set schedule, because I do like having some allowance for getting help to teams that need it. But I also don't like punishing teams that are consistently successful, nor so clearly rewarding teams that do poorly for years in a row.
I think I would like some kind of system similar to what we have now, only with some changes such as the following:
- a flatter probability curve at the top end (e.g. getting the worst record doesn't give you very much of a better chance at #1 than, say, having the #5 worst record)
- more picks drawn in the lottery rather than just 1-3 (say, the top-7 picks being drawn using the ping-pong balls)
- a bit of an inverse weight applied to the non-lottery teams where the past N years are taken into consideration. Each additional year the team has been out of the lottery gives the team a bit of a bonus that helps that team's pick position. e.g. If both San Antonio and Houston end up the season at around 55-27 but SA has been in the playoffs for 5 years straight and Houston has been only 2 years straight, San Antonio gets rewarded and picks before Houston.
I would merge your 1st and 3rd propositions into a more intricate but rewarding one:
Keep the current probability distribution, (or next year as well) but take away percentual points from teams repeating in the lottery and transfer them to the new arrivals, kind of the luxury tax repeater penalty.
Philly could have stayed on the lottery for as long as they considered fit, but beginning on year two or three, instead of being rewarded with a 25% chance to land the N° 1 pick, the would lost 3 percentual points, 5 if they stay for year 3, and so on (7 points in year 4, etc). You can set it for every position in the lottery (to prevent teams from going all the way to the bottom), or a flat penalti (let's say 3 points for every returning year), but in such case you should split in half the field, with a flat penalti taking 3-5 points away from teams in the bottom 7 and 1-3 points from teams in the upper half, so just barely missing the playoffs for some years in a row doesn't punish you as much as going full tanking.
Overall record during the last five-eight years would be in play to receive the points penalized to the returning teams with maybe some sort of leveling in favor of those teams in the upper half of that particular year, to prevent a San-Antonio-going-all-the-way-down-for-Duncan scenario. No team would be allowed to exceed some agregated odds total and perhaps, after 8 years, you get stripped from your total odds, and get the 11th pick by default.
In my example Philly would eventually be out of incentive to stay in the lottery, while teams like Memphis, and just until recently Dallas would be rewarded for trying to stay in the playoffs hunt.
Keep the current probability distribution, (or next year as well) but take away percentual points from teams repeating in the lottery and transfer them to the new arrivals, kind of the luxury tax repeater penalty.
I think I like this. Punish teams for blatantly tanking for 5 years straight ("process"). You can imagine a scenario where a team would be upset about this, like if they got a #1 pick but he suffered a horrible injury, and now the next year that team is still really bad and needs help. But the argument would be, you can still get a great player at #2, #3, etc. if you draft well. Or you could possibly imagine injury exceptions in all of this. Either way it'd be better than what we currently have.
I think a less mathy way to do it would be that first year lottery teams go first, then 2nd year, then 3rd, etc. (Or an average of last 3 seasons to prevent the Spurs scenario for Duncan)
It would really cause a havoc in trades of picks, but really it would heavily encourage teams to make the playoffs at least every other year or so.
Charlie Smithy! wrote:For whatever reason, it's funny to me that, as a franchise, we seem to do better with our later draft picks.
It's funny to me that, as a franchise, we've had two top-three picks in our 50-year history (Armon Gilliam, #2, 1987; Neal Walk, #2, 1969). The Cavs have had six #1 picks, including four in the last fifteen years. Draft reform should balance out that crap. There is no justification for us being inflicted with such a competitive disadvantage for such a long period of time.
