1996-passed on nash for peja
2001-passed on tony parker and gilbert arenas for gerald wallace
*2002-passed on boozer to draft dan dickau. damn we had nothing to lose with that pick. webbers knee going out that year wouldve been a little easier to deal with.
2005-passed on calderon for garcia
2006-passed on rondo, sergio and farmar for douby
*2009-i'm not even going to get into that....
we passed on 4 all stars, 3 of which are point guards.... rondo might be an all star this season... they are easier to obtain than one might assume.
The whole "we passed up on so-and-so in the draft" is probably the single most tired argument out there. There are several reasons for this. As Telemachus pointed out,
the problem lies not in having a future star available at your draft pick, but rather in being able to identify future stars before they have played a few years in the league.
But what I think is even worse about the argument is that
no other teams are ever held accountable for passing on the guys we passed on. It's as if we're supposed to be perfect in identifying future stars, but the rest of the league is given a pass. But that's hardly fair. So, as an exercise in 20/20 hindsight, let's see what would have happened were ALL teams perfect in identifying future talent (in terms of career win shares):
1996: We would not be complaining about how soft Peja was. Nor would we be worried about having let Nash go by. Instead, we'd be complaining about what a blockhead Antoine Walker was.
2001: We wouldn't need to complain about letting Gerald Wallace go in the expansion draft, because he'd never have fallen to us. Of course, Tony Parker and Gilbert Arenas wouldn't have, either. Rather we would have less-than-fond memories of Michael Bradley, especially since we got him back in the Webber trade only a year after we had dumped him off on Philly in the first place.
2002: We technically didn't pick Dickau, as we selected him for the Hawks, cashing in a future first-round pick that we owed. But, had we decided to hold on to that pick in our GMs-of-infinite-wisdom draft, we wouldn't have passed on Boozer because he'd have been long gone. No, rather we'd all have blithely forgotten about Chris Jeffries.
2005: Instead of debating whether Garcia should be a starter, a sixth man, or used as a value piece in a trade, we'd be rejoicing that Antoine Wright's contract just ended and we freed up some salary.
2006: While Douby was a nothing pick, we would have done only a bit better by taking Shawne Williams as the BPA. No guarantee that Williams would have had his final year picked up any more than Douby did. No Rajon Rondo in sight, of course.
And of course, you didn't mention 2004, but instead of complaining about Kevin Martin's poor perimeter D, we'd be cursing the fact that we couldn't take anybody better than Robert Swift that year.
The point is that if one has the integrity to hold the rest of the league to the same standard one is holding us to, the argument falls apart, because the vast majority of the all-stars we "passed on" wouldn't have been around for our pick in the first place.
Now, I know that this little exercise isn't going to stop people from using the we-didn't-draft-so-and-so argument. But hey, at least it makes
me feel a bit better to point out just how poor of an argument it is.
