Nah, I just hate posters who post obvious BS without any thought or intelligence.
How well does Danny work the draft?
- Thread starter The Jazz Wonderbra
- Start date
I think you misunderstood the strategy employed by Presti. He is working for the small-market, undesirable OKC team. Nobody is going to sign with them if they have other options. So, instead of going for the almost guaranteed future solid starters he often swings for the fences hoping to draft a player who could become a future star even if they have a high bust potential. Pokusevski and Giddey fall into that group. You are bound to have many misses but it is the only way to get some homegrown stars in a bad location (well, actually, you can also do via shrewd trading and Presti did it with SGA). Also, he could have had way more success if his team owner had not been so cheap and had not forced him to trade Harden. But such is the fate of small-market teams in bad locations.
I'm not even calling him bad, just somewhat overrated and you feel the need to apologize for him?
Also the schrewd trading with SGA comment is silly, since Kawhi Leonard had more to do with OKC getting that package than Presti. Clippers paid that price to get 2 stars and its well documented that Presti knew it and that one of the conditions for the deal to go through is that Leonard signs as well. Cant call it shrewd when you have 100% of the leverage and its essentially a gimmie.
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I think you may want to step back and take a broader look: compared to other small-market teams with stingy owners (like, say the Jazz) Presti achieved way, way more. Also, you can call the PG-SGA trade a gimmie but to have this gimmie you first need to somehow acquire PG in the first place. Presti took a risk and traded for George on the expiring contract when everybody believed that George would bolt for the Lakers in several months. And there were several more deals like that. Presti consistently creates opportunities by getting and flipping good players, he is very good at that.
He has gotten incredibly lucky with trade demands from players working in his favor
Dude you are trying way too hard to argue against my vanilla take of "somewhat overrated". Its not me who needs to step back.
Grant Williams, Payton Pritchard and Aaron Nesmith aren't busts considering where they were drafted. They're all decent rotation players.
I'd argue that drafting top-5 consensus players in any draft doesn't require above-average drafting acumen. To judge a GM's drafting decisions requires considering context. Kevin Durant and Chet Holmgren were no-brainer picks at #2 in their respective drafts. James Harden was probably considered a reasonably conservative #3 pick as well. What's admirable about the Thunder is their willingness to tank and acquire top-5 picks, imo. Whereas, Ainge showed real acumen by trading down from #1 to #3 to draft Tatum, while also acquiring another pick from the Sixers.
The key is to draft BETTER than your counterparts in the same draft. I think the Jazz have done that in the past two drafts, though I don't know how much of that is Ainge and how much is Justin Zanik. Getting Keyonte at #16 and getting Cody at #10 are really solid picks. Getting Filipowski at #32 is also a great pick. Those guys should all have 10+ year careers.