I'm clearly not explaining this well... if a GM says there aren't prospects at #30 I like... but every year there are nba players drafted at or after #30 that become something... then they may either be scared or not diving deep enough to find something "good enough" to draft.
If you are DL and trade the #35th pick for a future pick because you didn't like what was left on the board... and then 5 nba players are drafted in the next 12 or so picks... and one of them is the mvp of the league... then you are either scared or not great at identifying nba talent. The draft is unpredictable... so take the best shot at getting lucky. Deferring to next year leaves you about the same chances of landing a pick as this year... no matter how you feel about the players available.
I think we are at a critical time right now. Landing a good young player at this point would be a huge boost to our chances at extending our window and keeping Donovan around. Chances are slim... this draft has just as good a chance as another draft in the future. If we think there is a trade out there then maybe you get that future first... but it would be a win now short term move. Not sure we have the trade fodder to get something using just that firs and one of our rotation players.
Picks are like cash to me... are there reasons to save cash? for sure. If you have a ton of excess cash (like OKC with picks) you may not find enough good investments so kicking the can down the road a little is fine. So do we hold cash right now? What is the meaningful change to the market that we are waiting for? Or do we take a chance on a stock that may help us retire? We are also cash poor so maybe getting a little savings makes sense. If I took some cash to my investment guy and he said "les just stay in cash here" he had better have a good reason why. If the market got 10% like it normally does I'd have some issues.
You can definitely trade the pick and have it be a bad move. You can also make the pick and have it a bad move. I don't agree with saying it shows weakness or cowardice to not make the pick. Trading it or keeping it all has it's pros and cons and obviously depends on what you get out of either option. If you make the pick and draft bad, bad move. Trade the pick and it doesn't amount to anything, also bad move. There's no automatic win/loss here. I'm not even calling for us to punt back, I just don't fundamentally see an issue with the process of either route.
I get that this is sports, but I seriously don't understand why people have to throw cowardice into everything. If you trade the pick because you didn't like the options, that's not cowardice that's actually just trusting your scouting. "You didn't have the balls to draft someone you don't like, what a coward!" Seriously, that can't be how we operate. Drafting at #30 is a high risk proposition, so it is risk aversion. But I also don't think you are a coward if you don't take the riskiest route every time and trading the pick for another pick isn't without risk, especially when it comes to your favorability/job security.
Trading the pick also doesn't mean bad scouting. Trading the pick means you don't like the options available. That could be good or bad depending on the draft. It's not inherently good or bad to think the draft is strong. Good scouting means that you have a good read on the strength of the draft and just because there is a player that pops in a draft that you think is bad doesn't mean the scouting is bad and you didn't look hard enough. Good/bad scouting informs the decision to trade or not, but it is not slanted towards keeping or trading.
As far as our situation, I would agree that it's a critical time. I think we're 2-3 years away from Donovan demanding out and then our time of winning lots of games is over and landing on #30 would be a huge win. Resources are scarce and the pick has to hit in some way. I'm hoping we can cut the salary without Favors and use the pick to move Favors and return.
If I'm being honest, however, I thought the pick would be moved to dump Favors if Conley was coming back and all signs point to that so that's all it will probably amount to. In all these scenarios, salary has to be cut one way or another. So first you have to find a way to cut salary, then you think about making the team better. Favors dump looks wayyyy more likely than Bogey/Ingles IMO.
