Moving on from the young players hurts because they were fun, but in recent years we missed several opportunities to draft the kind of players that would have changed the franchise.

In 2017, we drafted Ntilikina 8th over Donovan Mitchell (13th). Anunoby was also drafted 23rd that year. In 2018, we drafted Knox 9th over SGA (11th) and Mikal Bridges (10th). In 2020 we drafted Obi 8th over Haliburton (12th) and Tyrese Maxey (21st). Sad to remember those blunders but we are not the only team that committed them.

they hung on to RJ and IQ and Obi until the last possible second to see a breakout and simultaneously find a suitable vet… IQ was going to get traded no matter what…

this whole hybrid strategy needs to be wiped from the vocabulary… very obvious at the time and now in hindsight that was never the plan…

I’d be more upset if we really broke up a promising young core, but honestly we never had that.

Not so much for OG, who I like, but just thinking about how Leon’s first draft was Obi and IQ and now both are gone.

Obi was a bad pick but Leon made up for it with IQ. But then he gave RJ that dumb extension. Extension of not you’d still have the issue of Brunson blocking a lot of IQ’s minutes but if we’d not given that extension to RJ, we maybe could have gotten OG without giving up IQ, who is the best young player we’ve drafted in forever.

IQ and Brunson would work with a long wing like OG.

And it feels like the “hybrid” method is now leaning squarely towards the “sign and trade for vets and free agents” method. Like who we got that is homegrown now? Grimes and McBride and Mitch? This time last year it was those three plus IQ, RJ and Obi.

All I know is while in happy to get OG here in a little bummed the youth movement is over for the most part. And whatever big move Leon makes next, I hope he has some picks left over so we can get back to drafting players again, preferably at least one in this upcoming draft.