Vlade Divac defends his choice of Marvin Bagley III over Luka Doncic

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hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#61
But this isn’t really a discussion of who to trust or not. The fact of the matter is that a large amount (probably the majority) of the basketball world’s projections of Luka didn’t match up to what he has become. While he should be commended for it, it’s not like everyone out there saw Luka’s transformation coming AND getting back to the root discussion in this thread, him figuring out that NBA refs will more often than not call fouls in favor of offensive players even when they initiate the majority of the contact and deciding to jack up step back threes at a rate unseen in NBA history doesn’t make Marvin Bagley a lesser human being for some reason.
This was really the crux of the argument though, from way back in the early days of 2018. We'd all observed that the NBA officials were overwhelmingly calling fouls to favor the ballhandler, even if they had initiated the contact themselves. James Harden was well on his way to winning the league MVP award that year largely on the strength of his improved step-back three. None of the top teams in the league were winning with defense. All the dominoes were lining up for Doncic's game to go over like gangbusters in the NBA, all it took was a bare minimum of imagination to see it.

When it comes to the draft, NBA front office people are largely guilty of living in the past and failing to look at prospects with an eye for the future. That's why you get guys like Giannis and Steph Curry later in the first round while all the teams at the top swing and miss chasing after the flavor of the week. Most mock drafts are nonsense for this reason. It's all groupthink and confirmation bias. Vlade had a different problem though - - one enormous blind spot in his talent evaluation. If there was a projectable big man on the board, he was taking them no matter what even if we already had more big guys on the roster than we knew what to do with. Bagley was the ultimate example of the springy pogo stick big guys Vlade talked himself into every single year. None of them have worked out. 2018 gets the most attention because of that #2 pick but it was a problem for Vlade every year. The 2017 draft should have been an absolute slam dunk: take Fox at #5 and his Kentucky teammate Bam Adebayo at #10. Those two picks alone should have propelled us to the playoffs. But Adebayo was a bruiser not a pogo stick so we got Harry Giles instead, and didn't even pick up his fourth year option.

None of this is to say that Marvin Bagley III is a bad player. He's a perfectly adequate if flawed young big man who needs a lot of time in the weight room and a coach to be in his ear every day about defensive rotations. Based on past history Sacramento is possibly the worst place for him to be to develop as a player since we don't coach defense nor are we cutting age in our application of resistance training. He's going to be free to chuck away to his heart's content and expend the minimum level of effort on defense until the fans or the front office eventually turn on him. It's already happened over and over again with similar players. It may even happen with De'Aaron Fox.

The nuance that seems to have been lost in most of these discussions is that looking objectively at who a player is and where their weak spots are and concluding that it ain't really going to work out for them here is not the same thing as rooting for a guy to fail. If we hired our own Tom Thibodeau and imported the Golden State model of cutting edge data-driven physical development, maybe... (I thought this was the plan actually when Vivek first took over and brought Mike Malone with him, but I digress) Failing that? I'm sorry Marvin, you deserve better but sometimes that's just how things go. Some guys luck into perfect situations and some don't. A skilled offensive player who can dictate the pace of the game by their ability to get their shot off against anyone and create easy shots for their teammates with exceptional court vision is more or less foolproof. You can surround them with spot up shooters and defensive role players and win big. But as impressive as a pogo stick athletic big guy may be against college competition, if they can't create off the dribble or punish the defense with elite passing ability to beat double teams they're going to require a system catered specifically to their needs to maybe lead a team anywhere. Just ask former "best young player in the league" Anthony Davis about that. If ever there was a player Vlade couldn't resist despite all of the data pointing toward the young James Harden clone tearing up the Euroleague, Marvin Bagley was it and Bagley who played no role in putting this roster together, hiring the coaching staff, or designing the broken offense is going to be the one who suffers for that unfortunate reality.
 
#62
This was really the crux of the argument though, from way back in the early days of 2018. We'd all observed that the NBA officials were overwhelmingly calling fouls to favor the ballhandler, even if they had initiated the contact themselves. James Harden was well on his way to winning the league MVP award that year largely on the strength of his improved step-back three. None of the top teams in the league were winning with defense. All the dominoes were lining up for Doncic's game to go over like gangbusters in the NBA, all it took was a bare minimum of imagination to see it.

When it comes to the draft, NBA front office people are largely guilty of living in the past and failing to look at prospects with an eye for the future. That's why you get guys like Giannis and Steph Curry later in the first round while all the teams at the top swing and miss chasing after the flavor of the week. Most mock drafts are nonsense for this reason. It's all groupthink and confirmation bias. Vlade had a different problem though - - one enormous blind spot in his talent evaluation. If there was a projectable big man on the board, he was taking them no matter what even if we already had more big guys on the roster than we knew what to do with. Bagley was the ultimate example of the springy pogo stick big guys Vlade talked himself into every single year. None of them have worked out. 2018 gets the most attention because of that #2 pick but it was a problem for Vlade every year. The 2017 draft should have been an absolute slam dunk: take Fox at #5 and his Kentucky teammate Bam Adebayo at #10. Those two picks alone should have propelled us to the playoffs. But Adebayo was a bruiser not a pogo stick so we got Harry Giles instead, and didn't even pick up his fourth year option.

None of this is to say that Marvin Bagley III is a bad player. He's a perfectly adequate if flawed young big man who needs a lot of time in the weight room and a coach to be in his ear every day about defensive rotations. Based on past history Sacramento is possibly the worst place for him to be to develop as a player since we don't coach defense nor are we cutting age in our application of resistance training. He's going to be free to chuck away to his heart's content and expend the minimum level of effort on defense until the fans or the front office eventually turn on him. It's already happened over and over again with similar players. It may even happen with De'Aaron Fox.

The nuance that seems to have been lost in most of these discussions is that looking objectively at who a player is and where their weak spots are and concluding that it ain't really going to work out for them here is not the same thing as rooting for a guy to fail. If we hired our own Tom Thibodeau and imported the Golden State model of cutting edge data-driven physical development, maybe... (I thought this was the plan actually when Vivek first took over and brought Mike Malone with him, but I digress) Failing that? I'm sorry Marvin, you deserve better but sometimes that's just how things go. Some guys luck into perfect situations and some don't. A skilled offensive player who can dictate the pace of the game by their ability to get their shot off against anyone and create easy shots for their teammates with exceptional court vision is more or less foolproof. You can surround them with spot up shooters and defensive role players and win big. But as impressive as a pogo stick athletic big guy may be against college competition, if they can't create off the dribble or punish the defense with elite passing ability to beat double teams they're going to require a system catered specifically to their needs to maybe lead a team anywhere. Just ask former "best young player in the league" Anthony Davis about that. If ever there was a player Vlade couldn't resist despite all of the data pointing toward the young James Harden clone tearing up the Euroleague, Marvin Bagley was it and Bagley who played no role in putting this roster together, hiring the coaching staff, or designing the broken offense is going to be the one who suffers for that unfortunate reality.
This has been a common weakness of many posters on this board, no doubt due to the large influence by certain posters in the past. This insistence on trying to break the mold, this yearning for smashmouth basketball that simply does not exist anymore. This pipe dream that the Sacramento Kings, grand losers of the century will be the ones to rise up and redefine the modern NBA led by a team of random 7 foot molluscs posting up and backing down from the free throw line.

It's clear as day the direction that the league is heading in, and while you may not be a fan of that overall direction, it is very hard to sail against the wind. Wings/Guards >>>> Bigs. It's not the 90s anymore. Offense >>> Defense. You're not winning a championship with grit and grind - all you'll be doing is giving James Harden or Kevin Durant or Doncic or whoever it is 50 free throws a game. There was some talk maybe two years ago that the "death of the big man" was simply due to a lack of talented bigs - pointing to Davis, Embiid, Porzingis, KAT as changing that trend. All of these guys came into the league far better than Bagley, and with the exception of Embiid still haven't won squat without star wings next to them, and I'm not pinning my hopes on getting a big as good as Embiid any time soon. Well I guess we can see what happens with Zion, but again he's not a post player per-se.

Hey I hate that guys like Harden get so many free points. But instead of sitting here whining while trying to build a 90s championship team, how about getting a good perimeter player who can score and shoot, hype him up, and reap the same star call benefits as all these other guys? It looked like we were on the right path with Fox and Hield...
 
#63
Yeah, I think the focus should be less on what Luka has become because I doubt few expected that he would be THAT good.

The bigger issue is that we took a guy whose skillset is not matching with what modern day NBA basketball demands, and who was clearly a project, while the organization was in win-now mode. I also believe (could be wrong) that Bagley was mostly considered in the 5-9 pick tier, and not a top 3 player.

It is stupid for people not wanting him to succeed, because that would hurt the team, but I cannot blame people for questioning his ability to become an above average starter. I have serious doubts myself, that go beyond the health concerns.
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#64
I also believe (could be wrong) that Bagley was mostly considered in the 5-9 pick tier, and not a top 3 player.
Everything I remember seeing had Bagley as a top-tier guy. Coming into the college season, the top three guys were considered Ayton, Bagley, and Porter in some order, with Doncic on some radars as a dark horse. Porter, of course, got hurt, and Trae and JJJ worked their way up into the discussion. Still, by draft day I don't remember seeing anybody suggest Bagley would fall out of that top tier. I suspect that the Magic (picking at #6) would have been VERY surprised to find Bagley (or Ayton/Doncic) available at their pick, and somewhat less surprised to find JJJ or Trae there as there was at least some thought that Bamba could slip into the top five. But the top three, in whatever order, seemed pretty solid I think even weeks prior to the draft.
 
#65
Everything I remember seeing had Bagley as a top-tier guy. Coming into the college season, the top three guys were considered Ayton, Bagley, and Porter in some order, with Doncic on some radars as a dark horse. Porter, of course, got hurt, and Trae and JJJ worked their way up into the discussion. Still, by draft day I don't remember seeing anybody suggest Bagley would fall out of that top tier. I suspect that the Magic (picking at #6) would have been VERY surprised to find Bagley (or Ayton/Doncic) available at their pick, and somewhat less surprised to find JJJ or Trae there as there was at least some thought that Bamba could slip into the top five. But the top three, in whatever order, seemed pretty solid I think even weeks prior to the draft.
Doncic was absolutely not a dark horse before the draft. Every scouting site I saw had him too 5 with most top 3 and the two most respected had him at 1 draftexpress/Stipien.
 
#66
Everything I remember seeing had Bagley as a top-tier guy. Coming into the college season, the top three guys were considered Ayton, Bagley, and Porter in some order, with Doncic on some radars as a dark horse. Porter, of course, got hurt, and Trae and JJJ worked their way up into the discussion. Still, by draft day I don't remember seeing anybody suggest Bagley would fall out of that top tier. I suspect that the Magic (picking at #6) would have been VERY surprised to find Bagley (or Ayton/Doncic) available at their pick, and somewhat less surprised to find JJJ or Trae there as there was at least some thought that Bamba could slip into the top five. But the top three, in whatever order, seemed pretty solid I think even weeks prior to the draft.
Yea, Bagley was consistently 3-5 in that draft. Bamba got some love after video leaked of him bombing threes, but he was never ahead of Bags. Young was usually around 5 and as low as 7 to the bulls, but not much lower. I missed on Young. Thought he was a future bust (though I take Fox over him any day still). Porter Jr. went from a potential #1 to a leper. Most assumed he would end up with the Clips, who picked a different diamond in Shai.

Barring injuries, at a minimum, I had Bags pegged as someone who would have a Richaun Holmes/Steven Adams
Iike impact. He could’ve been, if he chose to be so (assuming no injuries). But then I had visions of Thomas Robinson in Summer League when he could only go left, was a black hole, & looked a bit undersized. But then had Giannis like dreams when he went coast to coast a few games early in his rookie season. Those injuries had another say and so did the lack of physical development and the lack of an expansion to his game entering season 2. Expansion in terms of, if he’s a quick learner, you’d expect him to work on his right and to make quicker decisions—yet he repeated the same robotic tendencies, in the 13 games that he did play. Maybe Marvin 2.0 had too much of an influence or maybe his trainers didn’t do enough (who are they; when did he fire them? :)) or maybe he shouldn’t be blasting rap album n calling out a legit star like Dame, who built his rep on the court first...

At the end of the day, Vlade is not here because he missed on Luka. Made worse because 99% of fans wanted Luka. And appropriately, Vlade, Peja, n Wiilisms are no longer here because of that decision. Let’s hope Bags redeems them a bit (or a whole lot) next year. But I’m skeptical until proven otherwise.
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#67
Doncic was absolutely not a dark horse before the draft. Every scouting site I saw had him too 5 with most top 3 and the two most respected had him at 1 draftexpress/Stipien.
That's probably right, I don't recall specifically. But Givony is good to very good at what he does, and it's his full time thing. But I believe the more mainstream sites like CBSSports and such hadn't yet caught on to Doncic as the college season was starting.
 
#68
That's probably right, I don't recall specifically. But Givony is good to very good at what he does, and it's his full time thing. But I believe the more mainstream sites like CBSSports and such hadn't yet caught on to Doncic as the college season was starting.
I think that’s why Givong was highly regarded most other mocks have hidden agendas
 
#69
Yeah, I think the focus should be less on what Luka has become because I doubt few expected that he would be THAT good.

The bigger issue is that we took a guy whose skillset is not matching with what modern day NBA basketball demands, and who was clearly a project, while the organization was in win-now mode. I also believe (could be wrong) that Bagley was mostly considered in the 5-9 pick tier, and not a top 3 player.

It is stupid for people not wanting him to succeed, because that would hurt the team, but I cannot blame people for questioning his ability to become an above average starter. I have serious doubts myself, that go beyond the health concerns.
I just looked this up because I'm board at work/my house.

Sports Illustrated had Bagley rated #4 overall
BleacherReport had him #6
SportingNews had him #3
CBS Sports had him #3
WashingtonPost had him #3
ESPN had him #5
Business Insider had him #4
The Ringer had him #2
247 Sports had him #2
NBADraft.net had him #3

At least a third of these sites had him slotted over Doncic on their big boards. I know it's hard for us to look back on it now, but Bagley was a very hyped prospect in this draft and had a 0% chance of falling outside of the top 5. His pro comparisons were a mix of Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, and Michael Beasley. I don't fault Vlade at all for being intrigued with Bagley even if he was a project player, but he made the #1 mistake bad teams make when drafting, and that's drafting for fit.
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#71
Not everything needs to be a conspiracy. People can just be wrong.
Or, as I had in the back of my mind but didn't say explicitly in this instance, "not terribly thorough". Outside of mocks made by people like Givony who make the NBA draft their primary specialty, I don't think most mocks at the beginning of the college season have had very much effort put into them.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
#72
Or, as I had in the back of my mind but didn't say explicitly in this instance, "not terribly thorough". Outside of mocks made by people like Givony who make the NBA draft their primary specialty, I don't think most mocks at the beginning of the college season have had very much effort put into them.
The depth of their thoughts generally extends to who has the best mixtape and who had the best measurements at Nike Camp. Also occasionally who looked good on the U-19 team.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#75
Or, as I had in the back of my mind but didn't say explicitly in this instance, "not terribly thorough". Outside of mocks made by people like Givony who make the NBA draft their primary specialty, I don't think most mocks at the beginning of the college season have had very much effort put into them.
Also the completely uneven nature of High School level competition makes it very hard to get a decent read on prospects before they play college basketball. For example, Harrison Barnes was hailed as a Kobe Bryant clone coming out of HS. After two years of being underwhelming at UNC he settled into a mid lottery ranking which is more accurate to his subsequent career as a solid NBA starter who lacks the personality to propel himself into the All-Star conversation.

I had Bagley as a top 2 pick and Doncic somewhere around 5 or 6 at the start of that college season too. By May/June of 2018 having seen a lot more games from both of them I had Doncic #1 and Bagley closer to #10. Talent-wise Marvin Bagley is absolutely worthy of a top 3 pick in the 2018 draft or just about any other draft but talent isn't always what matters the most. Plenty of guys with ridiculous upside failed to even make it as reliable NBA starters for all sorts of reasons. And in the case of Bagley, his college stats were off the charts impressive too. It was more of a gut feeling, reading between the lines, looking at the process rather than the results thing which soured me on him as a prospect.

But that's why I don't see there ever being a statistical model which accurately predicts the transition from prospect to pro. Different players have different growth curves and sometimes it will just click for a player who up to that point had been middle of the pack and they wind up being an unexpected superstar. This year's draft is a great example of that. Anthony Edwards and James Wiseman are the HS prodigies everyone was raving about but I would bet some guy in the mid to late lotto ends up being that unexpected superstar just because they have that "it factor" that makes them work harder and want it more than everyone else.
 
#76
This was really the crux of the argument though, from way back in the early days of 2018. We'd all observed that the NBA officials were overwhelmingly calling fouls to favor the ballhandler, even if they had initiated the contact themselves. James Harden was well on his way to winning the league MVP award that year largely on the strength of his improved step-back three. None of the top teams in the league were winning with defense. All the dominoes were lining up for Doncic's game to go over like gangbusters in the NBA, all it took was a bare minimum of imagination to see it.

When it comes to the draft, NBA front office people are largely guilty of living in the past and failing to look at prospects with an eye for the future. That's why you get guys like Giannis and Steph Curry later in the first round while all the teams at the top swing and miss chasing after the flavor of the week. Most mock drafts are nonsense for this reason. It's all groupthink and confirmation bias. Vlade had a different problem though - - one enormous blind spot in his talent evaluation. If there was a projectable big man on the board, he was taking them no matter what even if we already had more big guys on the roster than we knew what to do with. Bagley was the ultimate example of the springy pogo stick big guys Vlade talked himself into every single year. None of them have worked out. 2018 gets the most attention because of that #2 pick but it was a problem for Vlade every year. The 2017 draft should have been an absolute slam dunk: take Fox at #5 and his Kentucky teammate Bam Adebayo at #10. Those two picks alone should have propelled us to the playoffs. But Adebayo was a bruiser not a pogo stick so we got Harry Giles instead, and didn't even pick up his fourth year option.

None of this is to say that Marvin Bagley III is a bad player. He's a perfectly adequate if flawed young big man who needs a lot of time in the weight room and a coach to be in his ear every day about defensive rotations. Based on past history Sacramento is possibly the worst place for him to be to develop as a player since we don't coach defense nor are we cutting age in our application of resistance training. He's going to be free to chuck away to his heart's content and expend the minimum level of effort on defense until the fans or the front office eventually turn on him. It's already happened over and over again with similar players. It may even happen with De'Aaron Fox.

The nuance that seems to have been lost in most of these discussions is that looking objectively at who a player is and where their weak spots are and concluding that it ain't really going to work out for them here is not the same thing as rooting for a guy to fail. If we hired our own Tom Thibodeau and imported the Golden State model of cutting edge data-driven physical development, maybe... (I thought this was the plan actually when Vivek first took over and brought Mike Malone with him, but I digress) Failing that? I'm sorry Marvin, you deserve better but sometimes that's just how things go. Some guys luck into perfect situations and some don't. A skilled offensive player who can dictate the pace of the game by their ability to get their shot off against anyone and create easy shots for their teammates with exceptional court vision is more or less foolproof. You can surround them with spot up shooters and defensive role players and win big. But as impressive as a pogo stick athletic big guy may be against college competition, if they can't create off the dribble or punish the defense with elite passing ability to beat double teams they're going to require a system catered specifically to their needs to maybe lead a team anywhere. Just ask former "best young player in the league" Anthony Davis about that. If ever there was a player Vlade couldn't resist despite all of the data pointing toward the young James Harden clone tearing up the Euroleague, Marvin Bagley was it and Bagley who played no role in putting this roster together, hiring the coaching staff, or designing the broken offense is going to be the one who suffers for that unfortunate reality.
I don't know, that seems like revisionist thinking when it comes to Bam Adebayo. Choosing him at 10 would have been a reach at the time and if anyone looked like an outdated big man, it was him. No one could have realistically seen him going from less than 1 assist per game in college to over 5 at the NBA level.
 

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
#77
I don't know, that seems like revisionist thinking when it comes to Bam Adebayo. Choosing him at 10 would have been a reach at the time and if anyone looked like an outdated big man, it was him. No one could have realistically seen him going from less than 1 assist per game in college to over 5 at the NBA level.
Although Calipari-system bigs turning out to be above average passers that just simply never had a chance to show that skill in college has been a recurring theme for more than a decade now.
 
#79
We need to start evaluation how important speed and leaping ability actually is. You need baseline speed and jumping ability but there have been quite a few guys that weren’t speed demons and pogo sticks that still get to the hoop whenever they want and can finish well.

a lot of these Uber athletes have a difficult time translating this so called ability into tangible production. Skill is what matters most to go along with baseline athleticism. Strength is also very underrated.

You don’t need to blow by people if you can keep people on skates with your slick ball handling, and threat of a jump shot and just get the defender on their hip and bully them to the basket.
 
#80
We need to start evaluation how important speed and leaping ability actually is. You need baseline speed and jumping ability but there have been quite a few guys that weren’t speed demons and pogo sticks that still get to the hoop whenever they want and can finish well.

a lot of these Uber athletes have a difficult time translating this so called ability into tangible production. Skill is what matters most to go along with baseline athleticism. Strength is also very underrated.

You don’t need to blow by people if you can keep people on skates with your slick ball handling, and threat of a jump shot and just get the defender on their hip and bully them to the basket.
Good point. I remember Mark Jackson as a player was really slow and quite unathletic, but he somehow managed to get to every point on the court; with body and head fakes, change of (relative) speed and direction, finding angles and using his body to shield defenders.

I don't know if that is what you call a skill, but one of the things that make Doncic special is his insane body control; the ability to change direction, stop on a dime, pass or shoot at difficult angles while up in the air and finish with contact.
And he also has an uncanny BBIQ and ability to read the court. The games slowed for him early in his rookie season, where other guys take years to adjust to NBA speed.
 
#83
I just looked this up because I'm board at work/my house.

Sports Illustrated had Bagley rated #4 overall
BleacherReport had him #6
SportingNews had him #3
CBS Sports had him #3
WashingtonPost had him #3
ESPN had him #5
Business Insider had him #4
The Ringer had him #2
247 Sports had him #2
NBADraft.net had him #3

At least a third of these sites had him slotted over Doncic on their big boards. I know it's hard for us to look back on it now, but Bagley was a very hyped prospect in this draft and had a 0% chance of falling outside of the top 5. His pro comparisons were a mix of Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, and Michael Beasley. I don't fault Vlade at all for being intrigued with Bagley even if he was a project player, but he made the #1 mistake bad teams make when drafting, and that's drafting for fit.
I actually happened to be on the Ringers site the other day and looked at this old draft so I wanted to provide a slight correction.

The Ringer's mock draft had him at #2, but their three analysts (Kevin O'Connor, Danny Chau, & Jonathan Tjarks) had their own prospect ranks. I prefer to look at an analyst's rankings vs. mock drafts (since mock drafts tend to try and predict what will happen vs. what they believe should happen). Below was the Top 15 for each of them:


Kevin O'Connor
  1. Luka Doncic
  2. DeAndre Ayton
  3. Mo Bamba
  4. Jaren Jackson Jr.
  5. Wendell Carter Jr.
  6. Marvin Bagley
  7. Kevin Knox
  8. Michael Porter Jr.
  9. Miles Bridges
  10. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
  11. Trae Young
  12. Zhaire Smith
  13. Troy Brown Jr.
  14. Lonnie Walker
  15. Mikal Bridges

Danny Chau
  1. Luka Doncic
  2. DeAndre Ayton
  3. Jaren Jackson Jr.
  4. Mo Bamba
  5. Marvin Bagley
  6. Trae Young
  7. Mikal Bridges
  8. Miles Bridges
  9. Michael Porter Jr.
  10. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
  11. Lonnie Walker
  12. Wendell Carter Jr.
  13. Robert Williams
  14. Zhaire Smith
  15. Kevin Huerter

Jonathan Tjarks
  1. Luka Doncic
  2. Jaren Jackson Jr.
  3. DeAndre Ayton
  4. Miles Bridges
  5. Marvin Bagley
  6. Michael Porter Jr.
  7. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
  8. Mikal Bridges
  9. Trae Young
  10. Wendell Carter Jr.
  11. Mo Bamba
  12. Robert Williams
  13. Kevin Knox
  14. Zhaire Smith
  15. Lonnie Walker

They all had Luka Doncic at #1 and Bagley was between #5-6.


Below is their high level summary on Bagley:
A complicated prospect: He’s a modern tweener who has athletic center skills but an unreliable jump shot and the body of a forward.
That seems right on the money from what we have seen thus far.
 
#84
Below is their high level summary on Bagley:

That seems right on the money from what we have seen thus far.
Bingo, he wasn't hard to project at all. I did a write up on him before the draft explaining why I was so low on Bagley and wanted nothing to do with him.

"
The only players that are high impact game altering offensive players A. Create shots for themselves B. Create shots for others. B is out of the question, it's extremely rare for a big and Bagley has not shown the chops. As far as creating offense for himself, post offense is inefficient.

In fact, offense creation is the domain of wings and guards. Very, very few “bigs” can be high impact offensive game changers because they cannot create for themselves and they usually cannot create for others. There is historical proof of this.

In NBA history having a Box Plus/Minus (OBPM) of +5 is the mark of an elite offensive player and +6 is the domain of the game changing offensive players. There have been 243 individual seasons in which a player has posted a Box +/- of +5 or higher and only 116 in which a player has had a +6 season.

Here are all the non wings/guards to have a Box Plus/Minus season of +6 or higher

Barkley 4 times, Shaq 2, KAJ 1, KLove 1, DROB 1, Jokic 1, Karl Malone 1. That’s only 11 out of 116 times or about 9.5% of all such player seasons.
If you look at all the bigs who had a Box +/- of +5 or higher, you wind up with a total 32 out of 243 or about 13.2% of all such player seasons.


Wings and guards have created the best offense (especially since 1980) but teams just didn’t know it. The highest all time OBPM for non wings and guards is Barkley at #13 and #21 all time. This was when he was in Philly and played like a big since he had far fewer assists than those at the top of this list. Kareem at #36 is the highest ranking traditional big.

The story is the same for offensive RPM.

2018: 16 players over +3 (Jokic and KAT the only bigs), 10 Over +4 (Jokic the only big), 5 Over +5 (ZERO bigs), 2 Over +6 (ZERO bigs).

2017: 24 players over +3, ( Blake, KAT, BOOGIE, Jokic), 14 over +4 (Jokic), 7 over +5 (ZERO bigs), 4 over +6 (ZERO bigs), 1 Over +7 (ZERO bigs)

2016: 16 players over +3 (Jokic), 9 over +4 (ZERO bigs), 7 over +5 (ZERO bigs), 4 over +6 (ZERO bigs), 2 over +7 (ZERO bigs)

2015: 22 players over +3 (LMA, AD), 13 over +4, (ZERO bigs), 5 over +6 (ZERO bigs), 3 over +7 (ZERO bigs). 1 Over +8 (ZERO bigs)

2014: 24 players over +3 (Ryno, Love, dirk, Frye), 13 over +4 (Dirk), 6 over +5 (ZERO bigs), 4 over +6 (ZERO bigs), 1 Over +8 (ZERO bigs)

ORPM TOTALS from 2014–2018: There’s never been a big with an ORPM over 5.

+3 ORPM: 92 player seasons overall, only 13 bigs (14.1%)
+4 ORPM: 59 player seasons overall, 3 bigs (5.1%)
+5 ORPM: 33 player seasons overall, ZERO bigs
+6 ORPM: 19 player seasons overall, ZERO bigs
+7 ORPM: 7 player seasons overall, ZERO bigs
+8: ORPM: 2 player seasons overall, ZERO bigs


A big HAS to become a defensive force to become a game changer because he won’t be on offense. A guy like KAT who can post (least useful in today’s game) and shoot like a guard (look at his %s on open threes) is going to cap out at a +4ish on offense unless he can create for others which seems unlikely. A guy like Jokic is a +4 to +5 Player on offense because of his passing ability. KAT isn’t a defensive anchor but is actually a liability relative to other centers. If KAT were a better defensive player, he’d be a top 3-5 player."

https://community.kingsfans.com/threads/marvin-bagley-iii.69457/page-15#post-1378708
 
#85
He's been playing pro ball for years. I'd be concerned if he hadn't made this adjustment quickly.
Yeah, like every Euro draft pick does?

Also, the stories that the speed, athleticism, length and physicality in the NBA are on a whole different level then Europe are just that; stories?
 

Warhawk

The cake is a lie.
Staff member
#86
Yeah, like every Euro draft pick does?

Also, the stories that the speed, athleticism, length and physicality in the NBA are on a whole different level then Europe are just that; stories?
You guys are acting like I'm ripping Luka or something. I wanted us to pick him. His pro experience was a plus in my book.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#87
I don't know, that seems like revisionist thinking when it comes to Bam Adebayo. Choosing him at 10 would have been a reach at the time and if anyone looked like an outdated big man, it was him. No one could have realistically seen him going from less than 1 assist per game in college to over 5 at the NBA level.
A trade down might have got us better value for that #10 pick, but he ended up going at #14 right before the first of the two picks we got from Portland so we outsmarted ourselves if we thought we could still get him at #15. I certainly thought he was one of the 10 best prospects in that draft. I wanted him and/or OG Anunoby with the second pick and his pre-existing chemistry with DeAaron Fox made him a no-brainer as a package deal. Donovan Mitchell is the best pick in retrospect, regardless of positional redundancy, but I wasn't one of the people in on him before the draft. I know a lot of people here were.
 

gunks

Hall of Famer
#90
Well, this thread is about to get locked. :rolleyes:

Anyways, I've been thinking about it, and after finishing The Last of Us 2, I've decided it's for the best to just forgive Vlade. Pain begets pain.

And it's not like anyone (well, maybe his mom) thought Luka was going to arguably be the best player in the league at 21, a HOF lock, and already in the GOAT conversation (admittedly that's mostly crazt Mavs fans and stat-head prognosticators, but still).

I'm lowkey sippin on the "Bagley has a high ceiling" cool aid myself, if only to stay sane. Now if only Bagley could sip on some damn milk and hit the weights this summer...
 
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