Can we get a quality player in the 2023 draft?

Spike · Jun 10, 2023

I actually see it the opposite way. The more we narrow the possibilities of who we're looking for, the smaller the pool is, which narrows the amount of success we could potentially have. If we assume that we don't need a PG (which is an accurate assumption), and the highest talent left on the board is a PG, then we are decreasing our chances of hitting on a winner.
Another way to think about it: if there are 10 wings on the board at the start of the draft, and the top 5 (tier 1) are taken, we're guessing which of the tier 2 remaining wings could potentially be the "maybe" that becomes a "definitely."

That doesn't mean we can't grab a successful player - it happens ALL THE TIME. We just need the player with the right work ethic, because I believe that we have the environment to help said player reach their potential, and our scouting seems to have made a big leap in the past two years.

Kingz19 · Jun 10, 2023

Yes we can. There will be multiple starters, rotation players and even future all stars available at 24. We just don’t know who they are yet. We’ll see if the Kings draft one of them

miltonap · Jun 10, 2023

The thing I like about the draft is that you can really find a superstar anywhere imo.

Yes odds change the deeper you get in the draft statistically speaking but I don't see why you can't get a gem at 24

Jokic was picked at 41 right?

Case closed

Capt. Factorial · Jun 11, 2023

miltonap said:

Since 1947 - that's 76 years worth of drafts so far - there have been a grand total of 5 players drafted later than #30 who accumulated 100+ Win Shares in their career. They are:

#117 Artis Gilmore (107.4 WS)
#57 Manu Ginobili (106.4 WS)
#65 Bill Laimbeer (105.6 WS)
#91 Elgin Baylor (104.2 WS)
#36 Maurice Cheeks (103.5 WS)

Jokic currently has 94.5 Win Shares, and has been racking up 15 WS per year for three straight years, which means he's due to pass ALL five of these guys in value next year, in his age-28 season. By the end of his career it would not be surprising if Jokic touches 200 WS. Jokic is literally a Once-In-76-Years-And-Counting phenomenon.

Ozymandias · Jun 11, 2023

Spike said:

This is very very silly. Sounds like the type of argument someone who wants to coinflip the drafts would make, thats not scouting sry.

This logic applies to the Keegan Murray selection last season? I think not... Did we get really really really lucky narrowing down the possibilities to Keegan ---- OR was he an outrageously obvious selection, whos chances at instant success with the Kings were greatly increased due to a tailor-made situation for him to 'hit the ground running'? Cuz to me it's muuuuuuuch more the latter.....

At this very time last year people were telling me that Jaden Ivey was a better long term fit for the team around here n other half-baked fantasies like comparing Keegan to Elton Brand. Narrative bias holds dominion in this arena, people get some vague idea in their head n start making up/filling in their own details to make it sound realistic.

IDK when I see your explanation it looks like a feeble attempt at trying to subtract the scouting part from the equation.... why do we pay all these talent evaluators? why do all these teams even at lesser levels of play pay so many talent evaluators? Imagine we draft Ivey and then try to find a starting SF for what we end up paying Malik Monk as the backup SG?? the Kings arent nearly as good last season, the streaks still alive, no playoffs, no reason to trade for Huerter, the Sabonis trade probably would look like a massive L, the list goes on and on..

The ripple effect from the draft is massive.. Look at how the Kings Marvin Bagley selection affected this years finals!!! Michael Porter Jr falls to the Nuggets at #14 that draft!!! and now their a game away from winning the finals with him as their starter... The Kings assisted them with that selection by pushing MPJ down the board further... U might not wanna recognize it, but thats how it is. So its not just a matter of hitting or missing like this is baseball, a miss will likely push a would-be-hit down to our competition, so its more like hot potato.

The draft is not a matter of minor consequence, just because the Kings draft basically duds every year unless their coached by Callipari, doesnt mean thats how it is, thats how it was... Who gives a crap about chances the pick hits, thats meaningless. What matters is many of OUR COMPETITON will hit on their picks n so we are tasked with keeping up with them... So the whole idea of bracing the fanbase for the 1st rd pick to be less than 50% chance of hitting --- I hate it, sounds like a sign of weakness to me for no reason. the Kings will surely hold their cards much closer to their chest than that.

Sitting here explaining why theres reason for optimism to a bunch of pessimists is a waste of my time. I'm here to talk about the players n their circumstances, ive said plenty in this thread already, probably far too much, so i'll leave it there.

ya know --- your telling me the 37% chance goes down the more research we do? thats preposterous. I refuse to believe that one. So busting our butts to learn more results in less than 37% and if we sit around n pick our noses n collect pay checks for no work, then we'll have about a 37% chance anyways?! idk that sounds like the conclusion of someone whos given up, who's looking for an easy alternative, or just someone whos a pessimist trying to project their worldview onto others, there's no way thats actually real, sounds like fanfiction to me.

Cuz what it all boils down to is patterns. and there are patterns, all around you, Take for example; The cycling of disease epidemics, the wax and wane of caribou populations, sun spot cycles or the rise and fall of the Nile. I believe there's patterns out there for the Kings scouting department to find, that'd increase our chances above 37%, to me an argument against that is hella ignorant, at best its an appeal to the status quo, at worst its simple laziness. I say wake up n smell the roses..

Its just like, why even pay scouts if what your saying is true? why not pay Miss Cleo or some popular tiktok psychic quack? At least the tiktoker would boost our social media engagement

What about the fact that we have a great PG here in Sacramento? or the fact that our starting C averaged 7.3 assists per game? Does that not affect the chances of whichever SG/SF/PF we select in the 1sts chances of swimming over sinking? or It's all just 37%? I dont believe that. If we draft some limited offense backup C who can only dunk the ball, I'd argue De'Aarons presence here and his potential fit with said player are in fact a matter of great importance...

ppine · Jun 11, 2023

The Kings have been notoriously bad at making draft picks even when they have picks 1-10 in the first round.
Mike Brown may change that. I hope so.

Ozymandias · Jun 11, 2023

Lets say picks 2 thru 23 are total duds, the equivelant of Yinka Dare, Chris Washburn, Darko, Thabeet, Anthony Bennett, Olowokandi, Jay Williams, Jonny Flynn, Sam Bowie, Joe Alexander, Adam Morrison etc. wouldn't that increase the Kings chances of a quality player at 24 immensely? So why am I to believe in a static 37% as some measure of quality, when forces outside of the kings control will obviously sway things dramatically.

I find the premise to this thread to be highly idealistic. we drafted MB3 cuz we thought he was quality and then he treated us like we did him wrong because he thought he was of even higher quality than we regarded him, ya dig? its a slippery slope, we dont need to hunt just quality, just help De'Aaron and Sabonis at this point, n see how far they can take us. Harry Giles was a pick in the vein of hunting for quality, Skal and WCS too. I could go on and on but I'll stop right there, Frank Mason and Jahmius Ramsey were supposed to be quality picks..

Haliburton, definitely a quality pick that hits if there ever was one, however with him being a 6'5" starting PG, scarcity becomes a big factor n thats why his trade value remained so high n so we get to cash out that quality though next summer we're gonna have to pick up a mighty big salary over it. Fox obviously mega quality as well, even beyond Haliburton he's basically untradable.

Whats flawed is the idea were drafting just "A quality player", thats too narrow, because honestly when you look at what Monte's done here, especially the recent trends, the priority isn't just quality, this is a matter of killing multiple birds with one stone, clearly problem solving, filling in need, hunting for value not only on the depth chart but as a potential cost cutting measure going into the FA period but also on multi-year outlooks as far as guys we might be looking to hold restricted rights to, that is of high priority and both Keegan and Davion are in that mold. So to me a much better way to ask the question, more pertinent to our 23-24 playoff run is;

"Can we get a player who can give us quality minutes immediately in a role that might cost us more to fill in free agency, that we might also want to really be holding the restricted rights to in the summer of '27 as we did with KM('26) and Davion('25)?"

"A quality player" is in fact quite vague, are we talking a quality player in the year 2032 or 2024? That alone not being defined is a pretty big deal given the Kings will push for the 2nd rd and beyond next season. There are certainly players it stands to reason they will take longer to develop, there was always a train of thought that most 7-footers dont really start to peak til their mid 20's. All sorts of things happen we've seen the Tyreke Evans types that shine bright and flame out early, then there's the flipside to that - a 2nd rder like Lou Williams who became the oldest to ever average 20ppg for the first time in his NBA career when he was 31 or 32.

Davion for example he's a quality player, at a certain price. at 45million dollars per season, not only would he not be quality anymore but we're fkin screwed.. so the further you overpay the further the quality degrades and vise verse.. meaning quality per dollar is far more important than just quality. Davion doesnt profile as a starting PG in the NBA to me, he looks like he's in a great spot to thrive right where we've got him. We have stars in place which means a bulk of our salary is accounted for, so it is infact prudent to look for maybe not the highest quality but more players who fit the timeline and the depth chart and salary structure.

I pointed out during the season many months ago when Dereck Lively was being projected in the 2nd round that if the Kings were to take him with the 1st rd pick and then he performs well, given his size and athletic grade n shotblocking ability, he might end up fetching very large offers in restricted free agency leaving the Kings between a rock and a hard place given Sabonis will cost a ton --- though this can all be alleviated of course by having a player like Lively polish up and then you trade him for draft assets to a team looking for something more polished, and the Kings make out like bandits snowballing assets while still in the playoff hunt. I made this same argument for Bilal Coulibaly who also now has risen way out of our range.. As far fetched as those scenarios might seem, essentially that is what the Kings did with Haliburton.

This whole "witchhunt for a quality player"can be seen in the comments about the 2nd rd pick that got traded last year, everyone is worried about a quality player but really that player Jaden Hardy who got selected there, doesnt fit our kings team the way Terence Davis does, Terence Davis is a veteran who can sit on the bench games in a row then drop 30, Hardy's a guy who needs as many reps as possible. The incredible Luka and the 2nd rd pick that wasnt meant to be didnt make the playoffs and we did though. Coach Brown called on TD in game 7 to guard steph curry, clearly the Kings are hunting peices that fit matchups and deficiencies or to add to our weaknesses, its not really a matter of "BPA" we're not building from the ground up here, most importantly were looking for complimentary peices to help our stars/the quality players weve already got have an easier time.

My stance that Keegan Murray will start every game (before we even drafted him) was met with a lot of doubters round here last summer n to me this thread is in a similar vain of unwarranted doubt. We've got people celebrating Monte McNair's Executive of the Year award n then we're simultaneously not giving him any benefit of the doubt in a thread such as this? Or is this another case of setting expectations ridiculously low so you can act surprised and enthused and like everyone involved is a genius when those low expectations are exceeded? --- that to me seems particularly whats going on here.. like "wow we hit on our 1st rd pick n its such a longshot, gee wiz isnt that amazing? what will monte mcnair do next -- cure cancer?"

Warhawk · Jun 11, 2023

Ozymandias said:

No.

You are assuming that every draft has a certain number of "quality players" to choose from. They don't. Draft to draft the numbers vary. Some quality players fall, the vast majority don't.

kingsfan101 · Jun 11, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

I looked into this a bit yesterday, and didn't really want to post it in one of the draft threads because

it's kinda wet blankety.

But I thought it was at least worth a discussion.

First off, in order to ask this question I'm going to have to define what a "quality player" from the draft is. Obviously this is a pretty subjective measure. Some might think a quality player means an All-Star, some might think think it means a starter, some might think it means a 7-year rotation player, and some might think it means nothing more than a guy who can give you needed spot minutes for a few years at the league minimum rather than using part of the MLE to sign a free agent who's going to spend most of his time on the bench. That's a wide range.

But given the excitement that we usually see around draft season in the fanbase, I think that we should at least have a moderately high bar - it should really be a guy that the entire fanbase can look back on in 10 years and say, "yeah, that was a pretty good pick". Not to get technical about it (because I didn't) I decided to take a look at a criterion of 10,000 career minutes. Pretty much, if a guy plays 10K minutes in the NBA, he earned them. And, of course, it's a really, really simple criterion for doing an analysis.

To hopefully convince you that 10,000 minutes isn't completely half-baked as a criterion of quality, I'm going to list all of the players the Kings have drafted between 1988 and 2017 (30 years) who either hit the 10K minutes criterion, or who missed it but did beat 4000 minutes (I'd have used 5000, but there were just too many guys between 4000 and 5000 to leave out). Less than 4000 minutes, you don't even get considered.

10,000 minutes ("Quality Player"): De'Aaron Fox, Ben McLemore, Isaiah Thomas, DeMarcus Cousins, Hassan Whiteside, Tyreke Evans, Omri Casspi, Jason Thompson, Spencer Hawes, Francisco Garcia, Kevin Martin, Gerald Wallace, Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Williams, Anthony Johnson, Peja Stojakovic, Corliss Williamson, Brian Grant, Michael Smith, Walt Williams, Randy Brown, Lionel Simmons, Pervis Ellison, Vinny Del Negro (24 players)

4,000-9,999 minutes ("Sorry"): Justin Jackson, Willie Cauley-Stein, Nik Stauskas, Thomas Robinson, Jerome James, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Tyus Edney, Lawrence Funderburke, Bobby Hurley, Pete Chilcutt, Duane Causwell, Anthony Bonner (12 players)

While there are a few players in the 10,000 minute club that don't exactly roll off the tongue when talking about players we can look back on and say we were happy to draft, for the most part these guys are solid NBA players with at least decent careers. The next list, not so much. WCS was recent so we still might think about him, and Funderburke was there in the early years of the Glory Days, so I'll always have a soft spot for him. To me, this looks like just about as natural of a cutoff as you could find with a nice round number.

So what did I do then? First, I picked the latest draft where basically everybody has sorted into "Made 10K minutes" or "Not gonna make 10K minutes" categories. I chose 2013, a draft whose players have ten years in the league. Technically Michael Carter-Williams is 58 minutes away and could make it, but he only played 44 minutes last season so he's not on pace and he's not under contract, so we'll just call him a no. Then I went back through 20 years worth of draft data from there and sorted players into the following categories: (A) Selected 1-5, (B) Selected 6-10, (C) Selected 11-20, (D) Selected 21-30, (E) Selected 31-45, (F) Selected 46-60. (In a few earlier drafts when there were fewer than 30 NBA teams I adjusted the C/D and E/F midpoints accordingly but kept the first round/second round distinction between D and E because I think the guaranteed first round contract could play a role in minutes allocations.) I also determined whether they were members of the 10,000 Minute Club, AKA "Quality Players". The breakdown of how likely all NBA teams were to draft a Quality Player in the various draft ranges (finally, the meat!) went as follows:

(A) 1-5: 87%
(B) 6-10: 72%
(C) 11-20: 50%
(D) 21-30: 37%
(E) 31-45: 19%
(F) 46-60: 8%

As you can see, the odds of picking up a quality player at any given draft pick are already against you by the time you get to the 20s - a pick just outside of the lottery is already a coin flip. But the Kings aren't even picking that high - in fact we're basically smack-dab in the middle of tiers D, E, and F with our three picks. I know we'd all love to "hit" on all three of our picks, but the raw probability of doing that looks to be between 5 and 6 percent. Not too likely. In fact, we're at about 47% odds (so basically a coin flip) of getting NO quality players assuming we stand pat and draft at #24, #38, and #54.

So, hope for the best, but if things don't turn out in our favor on this one, well, we shouldn't be too surprised.

I must admit that I'm slightly surprised by this statistic. Somehow I felt (probably the few success stories had a disproportionate influence on my thought process), that successful organizations somehow manage to get quality draft picks even with lower picks, while bad organizations manage to screw up even top picks. Given that teams picking 21-30 are likely to be the better teams, they will make wiser choices. Of course, was not stupid enough to realize that that would compensate for the talent differential completely, but was still surprised with the large disparity between 87% from 1-5 and 37% from 21-30. Was expecting a smaller difference, particularly when the criteria for quality player per this thread is a decent career instead of an elite career.

Capt. Factorial · Jun 11, 2023

kingsfan101 said:

Yeah, the data turned out maybe a bit more top-heavy in the first round than I expected. But I have spent a decent amount of time perusing the results of past drafts and while I can't say I was using an explicit 10K minute criterion, you can usually see the "elbow" between the good players in the draft and the guys who didn't cut it if you sort by any of various stats (MIN, PTS, WS, etc.), and it seems that elbow usually comes between about 15 and 25 guys. So most drafts are likely to have at least 15 guys who have a pretty good career, but few are likely to have more than 25. So I knew that the number of "quality players" was going to be reasonably limited, but the low percentage of lotto "busts" was a bit surprising, and of course that eats away from the quality available at the back of the first round.

The second round was a bit less surprising. Over that 20 year span, there were about 4 guys a year on average in the second round that had productive careers, and that seems about right.

SacTownKid · Jun 11, 2023

ppine said:

The biggest impediment to any draft pick is opportunity. This team where it sits, with Brown's history on youth, it's going to be a tough to come by much with the Kings at least in the short term. If the player fills an immediate need, like a Jackson-Davis perhaps, it could increase the odds dramatically but even then who knows. Heck, we still have to see if Keegan is going to break beyond his role player status under Brown next season.

Spike · Jun 11, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

FWIW, Jokic wasn't even the first center picked by the team that drafted him.

Spike · Jun 11, 2023

Also, no one claimed Ivey was the better long term fit. Those clamoring for Ivey were saying he was the "better talent." (Screams when he dunks.)

kingsfan101 · Jun 11, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

Interesting. Again, I assume that 25 would be significantly rare. Assuming 6 second round guys have a good career (giving a 50% bump to your analysis for a good year), 19 of 30 FRPs being good would be quite a rarity.

To clarify on my earlier post, my surprise was not at the number of guys who end up having decent careers (honestly, didn't analyze that), but at the difference between top 5 and 21-30. I had allowed my prejudices to condition myself to estimate that the gap would be much lower. Never analyzed any data obviously, or would have realized it sooner. Thanks for your efforts in this regard.

miltonap · Jun 11, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

Hey man.

Tell that to the Denver Nuggets.

They obviously were able to see something that all other teams didn't.

Or was it luck?

Because if we want to get even more technical, how many actual teams have the capability to spot talent when it comes along?

So perhaps you could also isolate good organizations from bad ones.

I'm sure there are some organizations that have drafted players with accumulated win shares higher than others.

When you throw everything in a melting pot however, I think it becomes a mess.

There are just too many variables here, but if you were to tell me the Kings of 2014 had the opportunity to spot an amazing talent at #41 vs the Kings of now being able to spot that, I would say odds would also change drastically.

Some organizations are just better than others and that makes me feel happy now that at least I can have semi belief that the organization could make a right decision if an opportunity comes across.

Maybe the pick won't be a gem, but if the player could at least be serviceable that's a win.

Serviceable is pretty useful for our team now imo

Capt. Factorial · Jun 11, 2023

miltonap said:

Well, that would be like quoting the PowerBall odds to someone who just won the PowerBall last week. Where would that get us?

From the point of view of Denver selecting Jokic, how could we know? We can probably assume that Denver didn't think he was going to be better than Jusuf Nurkic or Gary Harris, whom they took at #16 and #19 in the same draft. If they believed that Jokic was going to be a 100 WS player, they would have selected him at #16 instead of goofing around and hoping he would fall to #41.

Certainly Denver saw something that made them want to draft Jokic. But Jokic wasn't their #1 option at either #16 or #19, so the fact that he turned out to be so much better than either of their earlier picks would suggest that Jokic outperformed their scouting assessment. I don't know if you would consider that to be "luck", but it seems like a reasonable turn of phrase.

But there is another point of view here, and that is in regard to how uncommon it is for a player of Jokic's ability to be available at all in the second round. It turns out that finding a player of that caliber in the second round is very uncommon - only five other comparable players can be found in 76 years of drafts, and barring injury it is all but certain that Jokic will be the best of that bunch by a long shot by the time his career is over. Typically, NBA evaluators are actually pretty good, at least in the aggregate, and although a very talented player could be missed by one or two organizations, they are very unlikely to be whiffed on 40 times before finally finding a home. Denver was very, very lucky to have the opportunity to draft Jokic at 41. Then they made the right decision.

We know that some teams will do a better job of drafting than others, that's not in dispute. But there is something like an aggregate ability of NBA teams to draft, and if nothing else, the analysis I did serves to give an approximate shape to that ability, in terms of determining how many "quality" players are likely to be available in various draft ranges.

You're right on that - the Kings went from a very good drafting franchise in the early and middle Petrie years to a very poor drafting franchise in the late Petrie years and through a series of front offices culminating in the Divac departure. I would say it's probably too early to make much of a conclusion on the Monte McNair era yet. He hasn't made a drastic mistake with three first round picks, though Haliburton was dreadfully obvious and how Davion ultimately turns out is a bit unsettled as yet. Certainly Keegan had a great freshman year, and McNair stuck to his guns on him when the consensus would have had us selecting another player, so that's a good sign. On the other hand, I don't think McNair has gotten much value at all out of his second round picks to this point. Woodard and Ramsey have already flushed out of the league, Queta has not looked very good in his few appearances against NBA competition, and Keon Ellis (though not technically a draft pick, since we signed him seemingly minutes after the draft concluded he might as well have been) is still a pretty unknown commodity.

But I'm with you in wanting to be optimistic that the McNair front office is going to be better at identifying talent in the draft than we've seen out of the Kings for a few decades. Hopefully that will turn out to be true. But no matter how good McNair might end up being at picking out the wheat from the chaff later in the draft, he still can't do anything without talent being available.

kingsfan101 · Jun 11, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

I am firmly of the belief that it's not just drafting, but also player development that ultimately defines draft success.

I seem to be contradicting my earlier posts, where I said that I was of the opinion that successful teams do a better job of identifying and developing talent, but the data belied that assumption. So, yes, I understand the contradiction to some extent. OTOH, Petrie's "performance" from the Adelman years to later ones suggests otherwise.

Rick didn't really give much chance to rookies, or even youngsters. We had amazing talent cooling their heels on the bench, eventually turning all-star performances for other franchises. Despite that, it's amazing to see so many players drafted when Rick was the coach end up having excellent careers despite being low draft picks, and then the sudden fall, even with lottery picks, immediately after he left. This was despite having the same GM at the helm for several years.

Did the game pass Geoff by? Did he lose some interest? Were some micraps inevitable after such a string of successes? Who knows? But it's like chalk and cheese between the two eras.

miltonap · Jun 12, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

Well, that would be like quoting the PowerBall odds to someone who just won the PowerBall last week. Where would that get us?

From the point of view of Denver selecting Jokic, how could we know? We can probably assume that Denver didn't think he was going to be better than Jusuf Nurkic or Gary Harris, whom they took at #16 and #19 in the same draft. If they believed that Jokic was going to be a 100 WS player, they would have selected him at #16 instead of goofing around and hoping he would fall to #41.

Certainly Denver saw something that made them want to draft Jokic. But Jokic wasn't their #1 option at either #16 or #19, so the fact that he turned out to be so much better than either of their earlier picks would suggest that Jokic outperformed their scouting assessment. I don't know if you would consider that to be "luck", but it seems like a reasonable turn of phrase.

But there is another point of view here, and that is in regard to how uncommon it is for a player of Jokic's ability to be available at all in the second round. It turns out that finding a player of that caliber in the second round is very uncommon - only five other comparable players can be found in 76 years of drafts, and barring injury it is all but certain that Jokic will be the best of that bunch by a long shot by the time his career is over. Typically, NBA evaluators are actually pretty good, at least in the aggregate, and although a very talented player could be missed by one or two organizations, they are very unlikely to be whiffed on 40 times before finally finding a home. Denver was very, very lucky to have the opportunity to draft Jokic at 41. Then they made the right decision.

We know that some teams will do a better job of drafting than others, that's not in dispute. But there is something like an aggregate ability of NBA teams to draft, and if nothing else, the analysis I did serves to give an approximate shape to that ability, in terms of determining how many "quality" players are likely to be available in various draft ranges.

You're right on that - the Kings went from a very good drafting franchise in the early and middle Petrie years to a very poor drafting franchise in the late Petrie years and through a series of front offices culminating in the Divac departure. I would say it's probably too early to make much of a conclusion on the Monte McNair era yet. He hasn't made a drastic mistake with three first round picks, though Haliburton was dreadfully obvious and how Davion ultimately turns out is a bit unsettled as yet. Certainly Keegan had a great freshman year, and McNair stuck to his guns on him when the consensus would have had us selecting another player, so that's a good sign. On the other hand, I don't think McNair has gotten much value at all out of his second round picks to this point. Woodard and Ramsey have already flushed out of the league, Queta has not looked very good in his few appearances against NBA competition, and Keon Ellis (though not technically a draft pick, since we signed him seemingly minutes after the draft concluded he might as well have been) is still a pretty unknown commodity.

But I'm with you in wanting to be optimistic that the McNair front office is going to be better at identifying talent in the draft than we've seen out of the Kings for a few decades. Hopefully that will turn out to be true. But no matter how good McNair might end up being at picking out the wheat from the chaff later in the draft, he still can't do anything without talent being available.

That brings me to an interesting point.

How much talent really IS available.

I would have to think there is some amazing talent that's playing in Sudan right now or some amazing talent that is playing in Poland, who knows that is not on ANYONES radar.

What happens to these people?

Are there some like unknown leagues that scouts keep eyes on?

miltonap · Jun 12, 2023

kingsfan101 said:

I am firmly of the belief that it's not just drafting, but also player development that ultimately defines draft success.

I seem to be contradicting my earlier posts, where I said that I was of the opinion that successful teams do a better job of identifying and developing talent, but the data belied that assumption. So, yes, I understand the contradiction to some extent. OTOH, Petrie's "performance" from the Adelman years to later ones suggests otherwise.

Rick didn't really give much chance to rookies, or even youngsters. We had amazing talent cooling their heels on the bench, eventually turning all-star performances for other franchises. Despite that, it's amazing to see so many players drafted when Rick was the coach end up having excellent careers despite being low draft picks, and then the sudden fall, even with lottery picks, immediately after he left. This was despite having the same GM at the helm for several years.

Did the game pass Geoff by? Did he lose some interest? Were some micraps inevitable after such a string of successes? Who knows? But it's like chalk and cheese between the two eras.

Very interesting point

The_Jamal · Jun 12, 2023

Spike said:

Yeah, the talent bros were all over Ivey because of his athleticism. And thank goodness none of them were in charge because we'd be having a vastly different conversation this year about how to fit in Ivey with our guard glut and where we're going to find 2 starting wings this off-season.

sactowndog · Jun 12, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

Well, that would be like quoting the PowerBall odds to someone who just won the PowerBall last week. Where would that get us?

From the point of view of Denver selecting Jokic, how could we know? We can probably assume that Denver didn't think he was going to be better than Jusuf Nurkic or Gary Harris, whom they took at #16 and #19 in the same draft. If they believed that Jokic was going to be a 100 WS player, they would have selected him at #16 instead of goofing around and hoping he would fall to #41.

Certainly Denver saw something that made them want to draft Jokic. But Jokic wasn't their #1 option at either #16 or #19, so the fact that he turned out to be so much better than either of their earlier picks would suggest that Jokic outperformed their scouting assessment. I don't know if you would consider that to be "luck", but it seems like a reasonable turn of phrase.

But there is another point of view here, and that is in regard to how uncommon it is for a player of Jokic's ability to be available at all in the second round. It turns out that finding a player of that caliber in the second round is very uncommon - only five other comparable players can be found in 76 years of drafts, and barring injury it is all but certain that Jokic will be the best of that bunch by a long shot by the time his career is over. Typically, NBA evaluators are actually pretty good, at least in the aggregate, and although a very talented player could be missed by one or two organizations, they are very unlikely to be whiffed on 40 times before finally finding a home. Denver was very, very lucky to have the opportunity to draft Jokic at 41. Then they made the right decision.

We know that some teams will do a better job of drafting than others, that's not in dispute. But there is something like an aggregate ability of NBA teams to draft, and if nothing else, the analysis I did serves to give an approximate shape to that ability, in terms of determining how many "quality" players are likely to be available in various draft ranges.

You're right on that - the Kings went from a very good drafting franchise in the early and middle Petrie years to a very poor drafting franchise in the late Petrie years and through a series of front offices culminating in the Divac departure. I would say it's probably too early to make much of a conclusion on the Monte McNair era yet. He hasn't made a drastic mistake with three first round picks, though Haliburton was dreadfully obvious and how Davion ultimately turns out is a bit unsettled as yet. Certainly Keegan had a great freshman year, and McNair stuck to his guns on him when the consensus would have had us selecting another player, so that's a good sign. On the other hand, I don't think McNair has gotten much value at all out of his second round picks to this point. Woodard and Ramsey have already flushed out of the league, Queta has not looked very good in his few appearances against NBA competition, and Keon Ellis (though not technically a draft pick, since we signed him seemingly minutes after the draft concluded he might as well have been) is still a pretty unknown commodity.

But I'm with you in wanting to be optimistic that the McNair front office is going to be better at identifying talent in the draft than we've seen out of the Kings for a few decades. Hopefully that will turn out to be true. But no matter how good McNair might end up being at picking out the wheat from the chaff later in the draft, he still can't do anything without talent being available.

I think this draft will be telling on how skilled Monte truly is. So far he has been largely successful taking point guards (twice) when others reached for wings and drafting high with Keegan.

we shall see what happens with this draft and what he does

sactowndog · Jun 12, 2023

miltonap said:

typically most drafts have about 20 players. I do think as the game goes global that number is trending up and the number of French players in this draft is testimony to that fact. Plus this specific draft seems to be trending as a slightly up draft. So we should be able to potentially find a 3 and D role player at 24. The player or two will be there, we shall see if Monte can find them

dude12 · Jun 12, 2023

Monte has performed well in the draft. I don’t discredit his pick of Haliburton because he was “the obvious pick”. Quite a few teams passed on him, so he gets credit for this

His eye for talent and his analytics crunching has been revealed as good going beyond the draft with the construction of the roster and his trades.

And to be fair, no GM hits on 100% of his picks. Damn near impossible. To me, the teams that I have been super impressed with when drafting late or in their UDFA pick ups has been SA and Miami. I might be missing some teams but these 2 franchises have traditionally been good late and with Miami being unbelievable signing the right UDFA’s for their organization and developing them.

And to be exact, SA has missed many many times.

Yes, we can find a player in this draft that can help but I wouldn’t be surprised to see us making a deal for an established wing, using the draft pick or picks. We need immediate help to get to the next level during this window.

ockingsfan · Jun 12, 2023

dude12 said:

My sentiments also. IMHO, I would prefer that Monte drafts for upside at #24, but I get a feeling he may trade the #24 pick for either established wing help or depth behind Domas.

Kingster · Jun 12, 2023

Capt. Factorial said:

The Kings are drafting 24th. Tony Parker was the 28th pick in the first round and is #63 in Win Share all time.
Dennis Rodman was the 27th pick (#122 WS)
Dennis Johnson was the 29th pick (#151 WS)

No doubt there are other players of very high quality at #24 or below if I wanted to delve into it some more. I'd happily take a player of that quality at #24.

Caccia · Jun 12, 2023

The last several years, NBA teams have gone for "potential," especially men who have completed one year of college and think they know everything there is to know about the game. What that means for teams like the Kings, picking late in the first round and into the second round, is that there are some high-quality, savvy, four-year players who will be totally ignored by the scouts and general managers. Take advantage of the blind spots and snatch one of those talented players who have blossomed after age 19. Not everyone develops physically or mentally at the same pace. It is ludicrous to predicate your business model on the assumption that they do.

206Fan · Jun 15, 2023

Saw this on Reddit. Link to the article: https://theathletic.com/4598473/2023/06/15/ba-mock-draft-wembanyama-henderson-hornets-miller/

This only reinforces what we've been parroting all year: it's a deep draft! This is not an every year occurrence. Lots of talent can be found late in the 1st this year who can contribute day 1.

Can we get a quality player in the 2023 draft?

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