NBA GM’s and Their Obsession
So I was looking over the NBA draft list yesterday and I saw the usually list of high schoolers, early entry college guys, and random foreign names that nobody has ever heard of (except maybe Pavel Polkodzine, who somehow was in the draft last year and again this year, he is the 7’5 Siberian guy). I then got to read an article about this Croatian kid who grew up in Sweden and is best friends with Maciej Lampe (what a great pick he was). He has been playing with some euro league team for the lat 3 years but there is no tape on him and scouts have not seen him play because he never got in the game!!! The best guy on his team was Scoonie Penn, and this slob couldn’t get off the bench. So apparently he came over here to work at some strength clinic that helped NENE a couple years ago, and now he put on 20 pounds so he is a star, basically he is a foreign guy who nobody has seen who is 19 and has a “Nowitzki” game. If he had a “Nowitzki” game he would have been playing over guys like Scoonie Penn.
This ridiculous article prompted me to do some serious research over the last 3 NBA drafts and check out just who are the right guys to pick and how if you are slotted as a second round pick you should choose another line of work. This is going to be a tremendous amount of numbers so be sure and get your slide rule out and follow along.
The 2001 draft where Kwame Brown was the #1 pick there were 20 Early Entry (EE) 6 Foreigners (F) and 5 High Schoolers (HS) picked, that is a whopping 58% of the guys drafted. Of those 32 drafted 11 are longer in the league and the ones that are in the league are mediocre at best. In that group the 3 foreign guys drafted in the first round have had the most impact, scoring 11.6ppg and starting 35 games a year, which is still not that good. Eight of the EE guys are not even in the league anymore and the 2 second round foreign guys are nowhere to be found. The EE guys in the 1st round averaged 9.3ppg over three seasons, and the second round guys 6.4ppg in a big 26 games a year. Never mind the high school kids, the one second round guy is not in the league and the four 1st round guys are starting 28 games a year and scoring a pultry 6.9ppg. So basically those guys in that draft where not worth drafting, they have had three years and there impact has been minimal, but as the number of drafted gets higher the numbers get worse.
Now we come to the Yao draft of 2002, which I call the Early Entry draft. This one was unbelievable 39 of the draftees were EE, F or HS which is 67%, that is a staggering number. There were 24 EE’s and 5 of those have already disappeared, 14 F’s and 8 of those (all second rounders) are not in the league and one high school guy, Amare Stoudamire who has done well for himself. There were 15 EE’s taken in the first round and through two seasons the one with the highest ppg. is Caron Butler at 12.5ppg. (This next sentence said in a Hubie Brown to Dick Stockton TNT analyst voice) The average for these young men is 6.1ppg in 17.8mpg. As for the foreigners there were 6 first round guys who are dominating the league with 7.9ppg in an average of 37 starts a season. However, Yao and NENE have both been solid players, so if you do not get obsessed with taking every foreign talent or high school kid out there you can have a some decent picks, as you see with the amount of EE guys the more you pick the more chance there is for failure, but last year GM”S were overrun with stupidity and drafted ridiculously bad people.
In 2003 we all know there were some marvelous young talents out there and a few of them have done very well for themselves and still the numbers are way down. The numbers breakdown this way 11 EE’s, 19 F’s and 5 HS’s for a grand total of 34 which is 57% of the draftees. Out of those 34 does anyone know how many averaged double digit points? 4, that’s it 4, LeBron, Carmelo, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade. Even with LeBron’s lofty numbers if you average him in with the other HS’s they drag him down like a D in psychology 101. The HS’s averaged 11.8mpg and 6.2ppg while playing in a measly average of 28 games this season. There were 19 F’s drafted and there superstar was the great Mickael Pietrus who scored 5.3ppg on the 37 win Warriors. Almost half of those foreign guys have yet to make an NBA roster for one reason or another, 9 of the 19 are nowhere to be found and the ones that are here have played in and average of 50 games, started an average of 9 of those games and scored a whopping 4.2ppg. Those are just superb numbers, now I see why coach’s get fired every 6 minutes in the NBA, how about giving them something to work with. Orlando used a second round pick on Zaur Pachulia from Georgia, not the University the country, the Atlanta Hawks who recently fired there coach used a first round pick on soon to be perennial MVP candidate Boris Diaw, who played 25mpg and scored 4.5ppg. Here are some proven 4 year college guys picked after Mr. Diaw, Josh Howard who scored 8.5ppg, Kyle Korver who scored 4.5ppg in only 11mpg, and Steve Blake who averaged 6ppg in 18mpg. But apparently it is Terry Stotts fault that the Hawks are no good. Now for the Utah Jazz, who left the cupboard pretty dry for Mr. Sloan, they drafted Aleksander Pavlovic (14.5mpg 4.8ppg) and Maurice Williams (13.5mpg 5ppg) and he almost made the playoffs in the Western Conference, he should be given a lifetime contract.
So what is my whole point in this incoherent rambling nonsense? I have no point, just that the GM’s should be held accountable sometimes. It seems to me that when teams do poorly they escape most of the blame. When you think about the fact that every Eastern Conference team switched coach’s in the last 15 months, yet the GM’s have drafted such superstars as Zoran Planicic, Darko Milicic, Carlos Delfino, Dajuan Wagner, Jared Jeffries, Marcus Haislip, Jiri Welsch, Nenad Krstic, DeSagana Diop, Joe Forte, and Samuel Dalembert over the past three seasons. I demand my NBA back and I do not want to see Damir Omerhodzic, Cleiton Sebastiao, or the ever popular Pavel Polkodzine drafted in any round.
This ridiculous article prompted me to do some serious research over the last 3 NBA drafts and check out just who are the right guys to pick and how if you are slotted as a second round pick you should choose another line of work. This is going to be a tremendous amount of numbers so be sure and get your slide rule out and follow along.
The 2001 draft where Kwame Brown was the #1 pick there were 20 Early Entry (EE) 6 Foreigners (F) and 5 High Schoolers (HS) picked, that is a whopping 58% of the guys drafted. Of those 32 drafted 11 are longer in the league and the ones that are in the league are mediocre at best. In that group the 3 foreign guys drafted in the first round have had the most impact, scoring 11.6ppg and starting 35 games a year, which is still not that good. Eight of the EE guys are not even in the league anymore and the 2 second round foreign guys are nowhere to be found. The EE guys in the 1st round averaged 9.3ppg over three seasons, and the second round guys 6.4ppg in a big 26 games a year. Never mind the high school kids, the one second round guy is not in the league and the four 1st round guys are starting 28 games a year and scoring a pultry 6.9ppg. So basically those guys in that draft where not worth drafting, they have had three years and there impact has been minimal, but as the number of drafted gets higher the numbers get worse.
Now we come to the Yao draft of 2002, which I call the Early Entry draft. This one was unbelievable 39 of the draftees were EE, F or HS which is 67%, that is a staggering number. There were 24 EE’s and 5 of those have already disappeared, 14 F’s and 8 of those (all second rounders) are not in the league and one high school guy, Amare Stoudamire who has done well for himself. There were 15 EE’s taken in the first round and through two seasons the one with the highest ppg. is Caron Butler at 12.5ppg. (This next sentence said in a Hubie Brown to Dick Stockton TNT analyst voice) The average for these young men is 6.1ppg in 17.8mpg. As for the foreigners there were 6 first round guys who are dominating the league with 7.9ppg in an average of 37 starts a season. However, Yao and NENE have both been solid players, so if you do not get obsessed with taking every foreign talent or high school kid out there you can have a some decent picks, as you see with the amount of EE guys the more you pick the more chance there is for failure, but last year GM”S were overrun with stupidity and drafted ridiculously bad people.
In 2003 we all know there were some marvelous young talents out there and a few of them have done very well for themselves and still the numbers are way down. The numbers breakdown this way 11 EE’s, 19 F’s and 5 HS’s for a grand total of 34 which is 57% of the draftees. Out of those 34 does anyone know how many averaged double digit points? 4, that’s it 4, LeBron, Carmelo, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade. Even with LeBron’s lofty numbers if you average him in with the other HS’s they drag him down like a D in psychology 101. The HS’s averaged 11.8mpg and 6.2ppg while playing in a measly average of 28 games this season. There were 19 F’s drafted and there superstar was the great Mickael Pietrus who scored 5.3ppg on the 37 win Warriors. Almost half of those foreign guys have yet to make an NBA roster for one reason or another, 9 of the 19 are nowhere to be found and the ones that are here have played in and average of 50 games, started an average of 9 of those games and scored a whopping 4.2ppg. Those are just superb numbers, now I see why coach’s get fired every 6 minutes in the NBA, how about giving them something to work with. Orlando used a second round pick on Zaur Pachulia from Georgia, not the University the country, the Atlanta Hawks who recently fired there coach used a first round pick on soon to be perennial MVP candidate Boris Diaw, who played 25mpg and scored 4.5ppg. Here are some proven 4 year college guys picked after Mr. Diaw, Josh Howard who scored 8.5ppg, Kyle Korver who scored 4.5ppg in only 11mpg, and Steve Blake who averaged 6ppg in 18mpg. But apparently it is Terry Stotts fault that the Hawks are no good. Now for the Utah Jazz, who left the cupboard pretty dry for Mr. Sloan, they drafted Aleksander Pavlovic (14.5mpg 4.8ppg) and Maurice Williams (13.5mpg 5ppg) and he almost made the playoffs in the Western Conference, he should be given a lifetime contract.
So what is my whole point in this incoherent rambling nonsense? I have no point, just that the GM’s should be held accountable sometimes. It seems to me that when teams do poorly they escape most of the blame. When you think about the fact that every Eastern Conference team switched coach’s in the last 15 months, yet the GM’s have drafted such superstars as Zoran Planicic, Darko Milicic, Carlos Delfino, Dajuan Wagner, Jared Jeffries, Marcus Haislip, Jiri Welsch, Nenad Krstic, DeSagana Diop, Joe Forte, and Samuel Dalembert over the past three seasons. I demand my NBA back and I do not want to see Damir Omerhodzic, Cleiton Sebastiao, or the ever popular Pavel Polkodzine drafted in any round.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home