I partly agree with you, partly disagree.
If you're drafting for a star you almost have to go with someone who is extremely athletic, because you can count on one hand the stars in the NBA who aren't also among the top athletes in the league. The stars without top athleticism (Pierce, Nash) have very decent athleticism and very good size for their position. There's really no such thing as a star who is less than an average athlete by NBA standards (except for a few bigs) and there's really really no such thing as a star who is both a below average athlete and has below average height.
Basically: stars are usually very good athletes with very good skills (Kobe, Lebron, Parker, Chris Paul, etc.) along with some superlative athletes with decent skills (Dwight Howard, Rondo). But you don't draft for stardom by taking subpar athletes.
Further in the draft, though, you can find roleplayers who have very good size and skills. Basically guys like Eddie House, Jason Kapono, James Posey etc., who have some skills and can be effective off the bench. There's a place for that, but only as roleplayers.
This is why I would be really nervous drafting Rubio in the hopes he's going to be a star. He's already at a disadvantage athletically. Luckily he has good size, so he still has the potential to be one of those handful of guys who use their size and skills to be a star, but he has a second red flag because he's not a good shooter and scorer. That's a lot of pressure to be so unbelievably fantastic at passing that it compensates for having so many weaknesses in the rest of his game and lacking the athleticism to impose himself on the game.
Lets see if I can make sense of this and somehow come to an agreement. I don't think that there's a simple answer and thats why you have scouts.
Larry Bird, John Stockton, Dave Cowens, Dave Debusschere, John Havlicek, Tom Heinsohn, Dan Issel, Magic Johnson, Jerry lucas, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, Bob Pettit, Wes Unseld, Bill Walton. One thing all these players have in common, is that their in the Hall of Fame. None of them are elite athlete's. I could have named more HOF'ers but I'm sure some people woundn't have heard of them, besides I dated myself enough with this list.
At random, Phil Ford, Vlade Divac, LLgauskas, Toni Kukoc, Bill Laimbeer, Brad Miller, Mike Miller, Yao Ming, Chris Mullins, Dirk Nowitzki, Kurt Rambis, Arvydas Sobonis. No HOF'ers here, at least at the present, but all good to very good players. None of which are elite athletes. Some more athletic than others but for the most part all these guys made their fame based on their skill level. I don't want to argue over each players skill level. Some players are more one deminsional than others. The same could be said for some of the HOF'ers I mentioned.
I went through the entire NBA player data list since its inception. Actually quite boring. But the conclusion I came to was that most of the players on that list were just average athletes. Some a little better than others. The HOF list was split almost even, but I would give the edge to the elite athlete's, which doesn't surprise me.
The league is littered with Rik Smits, Wally Szczerbaik, and Darius Songaila type players. They fill a role, and no team can win a championship without those type of players. And its rare to win without at least one superstar or two or three stars. A superstar persay doesn't always add up to a championship. Just ask LeBron or Wade. Go ask Karl Malone and John Stockton. But having one or two on your team certainly increases your chances. At the very least you get close enough to smell the air.
So, all things being equal, you look for a elite athlete that has a fairly high skill level. There aren't that many around, and the reason is, that we now draft players at a very young age. Back when all players went to school for four years, you had a pretty good idea of what you were getting. If you did your homework. If an elite athlete didn't progress very much between his freshman year and his senior year, he didn't go very high in the draft. Actually, more mistakes were made on skilled players in my opinion. If you didn't make an educated judgement based on the competition and the system they played in, you could make a big mistake. Teams like North Carolina had a knack for hiding the weaknesses of players.
Today its harder. Your forced to take a gamble on elite athlete's in the hope that they turn out to be stars, and perhaps superstars. Four years of college gives you a chance to figure out the mentality of a player to a certain extent. One year of college gives you just a glimpse with a lot of questions. Nine times out of ten, if a player dominates, with emphasis on the word dominate, at the college level, and he's a superior athlete with most of the deminisons required, your going to end up with a very good to outstanding player.
The other side of the coin is the player that dominates at the college level, and doesn't have the athleticism you would desire. AKA Larry Bird. Well, you could get another Larry Bird, or you could get another Lionell Simmons. Neither one is a bad choice, but obviously one is better than the other. The truth is, there are no bad athlete's in the NBA. It probably has the best athletes in the world, and because of that, the one's with the least amount of athleticism are contrasted against the one's with the most. The player sitting at the end of the bench was the best player on his highschool team and may have been the best player on his college team.
So if your a GM and its your turn, and James Harden and DeRozan are both sitting there. Who do you take? I know who I would take, but I'll leave that decision to you. I've been long winded enough, and I don't want to write a book. But I don't think that the answer is to just simply look for athletic players, or to just look for skilled players, but a combination of both those things with the highest rating in both areas that you can find. And if you find a player lacking in lets say height or athleticism or jumping ability, but he still managed to excell, then you look at the competition he played against. You can't just write him off because he failed to meet some of the critiera you might want.
The bottom line is that were dealing with human beings. Not computers or machines. And the human element is really the deciding factor. Its what seperates the wantabe's from the great. The hero's from the cowards, the doer's from the do nots. Give me five skilled players with desire and heart and put them up against five playes with just athleticism, few skills and a care less attitude, and I'll win every time. Of course if you give me five players with great athleticism, skills, desire, and heart, I'll kick anyone's a$$.
