I am a bit worried that it is said that Knox does not a have a good motor, as I think that characteristic does not usually improve. However, I trust the FO with the decision. A lot of draft projections fail, no matter if they are stat based or scouting based, specially with such young players. And I think in the last drafts, the return has been good respect to the position we were drafting (although we might have drafted better), so our FO might be doing something right, perhaps measuring players and physical traits, perhaps using workouts correctly, or perhaps by dumb luck. So for now, I will support the kid and not judge the decision for a couple of years until we see Knox developed.

Also, workouts are the smallest sample size ever. Also a small sample size? An entire NCAA season. Every FO that didn’t pick Doncic when he was available is staffed by complete fucking morons.

I really can’t believe that the Hawks actually preferred Trae Young to Doncic. Man, did the Mavericks luck out.

Pick the players who are already good!

You’re success rate is gonna be way lower than 50%. NCAA stats are the best indication we’ve got of NBA success but they are still miss a lot, mostly because the range of competition varies so much, from really good to absolute shit. If you’re not controlling for strength of competition, age (because players get older while their opponents average the same), and coaching (can somebody out of Virginia run the floor? Cause Virginia doesn’t do that, ever).

What I know best about draft picks is I’m horrible at predicting future success. I’m not convinced anyone is actually good at it.

More difficult than it seems based on past performance

I think there’s a little bit too much obsession with what makes a “modern” basketball player and not enough focus on whether the player is actually good or not.

This is precisely the point of the “tweener” argument going on some months back.

A player can be 6’7″ and be DPOY as a rim defender (Draymond Green). A player can be 7’0″ and be the worst center to play in the modern NBA (Bargnani).

It’s sort of like if you bought a car without a non-functional engine because it looked like a flashy sports car, knowing that you’d have to put a ton of work in under the hood to make it street-ready, while there were fast cars out on the market that you passed on (idk, Tesla Model 3?) because they looked like a normal commuter car.

I think that a viable draft strategy is to flip players and picks outside of, say, the top 3 for a huge number of picks. You then select as many highly-productive college players as you can, and settle for a 50% success rate. Pick the players who are already good!

Obviously, the calculation was that this kid has a high upside and that his situation at Kentucky wasn’t indicative of his future. He was playing two guard there. Maybe the experience helped him with his handle and will make him a better three now…

As to NYK, they have clearly been playing people out of position for years, so, that’s one thing I’d like to see corrected. I’m pleased coach Fiz doesn’t see Lee or TH as threes for example. He wants a forward that’s a forward. Maybe the experience playing the two will benefit Knox on switches…

Maybe we see KP play the five now for reals and not trying to summon his inner Jamal Crawford so much.

Maybe we see Frank get to play 30 plus minutes at PG for a stretch, so we KNOW whether he can do it or not and we don’t have to talk about his potential night after night.

Maybe we stop kidding ourselves that our veterans can keep up with other teams in the NBA.

Looking back I’m amazed I gave coach H a pass so much of last season. He really was shitty.

I’m all good if we just play the kids and even better if we find some one year deals for our high paid guys that are on the team beyond next season. We need to find some players who have a great chance to develop and we need a top five pick next year.

The big selling point for Knox is his size, that he’s 6’9″ and thus he can play power forward, but he really doesn’t do power-forward like things. I think there’s a little bit too much obsession with what makes a “modern” basketball player and not enough focus on whether the player is actually good or not.

Mikal has been an efficient scorer his entire college career, a sky-high eFG% player who also contributes on defense. Sure, he’s older and he’s more of a 2/3 than a 3/4 but he’s GOOD AT BASKETBALL. That’s like, pretty important. For those of y’all talking about Mikal’s age vs Knox’s age, I’d submit that Mikal was better as a freshman than Knox. Mikal had way better efficiency, got twice as many blocks and steals and even had the same TRB%.

Why not just draft the guy who is already good at stuff instead of the guy who might someday get good at stuff if you use him in the right role?

that’s what everyone said about guys like wiggins… barnes…. james young…. and jeff green…. maybe the 15th try is when the upside kicks in?

it’s pretty ironic guys like battier and otto porter and trevor ariza actually perform better than all the guys with higher upside… how do ordinary guys like that manage to do that?

yea it’s a gamble… but not the one you think you might be taking….