2018 NBA Draft Thoughts

I wanted to write up some thoughts on the 2018 NBA Draft, but I’m not going to do a deep analysis of the entire draft like I do for the NFL.  I don’t even want to do a standard “winners and losers” article either.  This is simply me putting pen to paper (aka keyboard to computer screen) regarding my thoughts of what unfolded during the 2018 NBA Draft.

Luka and Trae

The consensus seems to be the Mavs pulled off a masterpiece with this trade and that the Hawks really blew it.  I agree with 50% of that.

The protections on the future first the Dallas is sending to Atlanta are: 2019 – top 5 protected, 2020 – top 5 protected, 2021 – top 3 protected, 2022 – top 3 protected, 2023 – unprotected.

I’m not sure yet what Doncic’s salary will be for 2019-2020, but his salary for this season is $6.63 million.  Without factoring in Doncic’s salary, the Mavs could open up $66.555 million in cap space in the summer of 2019.  Let’s just use a round $60 million for the purposes of this conversation.

Dallas now has the ability to entice two max players next summer to join forces with Dennis Smith Jr., Luka, and Harrison Barnes.  If Dallas wants to speed up that time line, they have the ability to open up $31.8 million this summer and have been a team rumored to offer Capela a max contract.

My point is the pick owed to Atlanta is probably going to convey in either 2019 or 2020, meaning best case scenario for the Hawks is they have the 6th pick as a result of this trade at some point during the next two drafts.  Kevin Pelton has created a draft value chart, akin to the one in football, to quantify the value of each draft pick.  These values will change next season due to the rise in the cap and therefore the rise in rookie salaries, but it’s what we have to work with for now.

Let’s do Atlanta’s best case scenario.  If Dallas gave up the 5th pick this year and the 6th pick in 2019 or 2020, then the Mavs shipped out 4,450 points of draft capital for the 3rd pick, which is worth 2,640.  In theory Dallas gravely overpaid for the pick and Atlanta hit a home run.

But if you value Doncic as the best player in the draft then it is fair to assign him the value of the first pick.  The first pick is worth 4,000 points of draft capital, so Dallas overpaid by 450 points, which is equivalent to the 43rd pick in the draft.  I am making that trade for Luka Doncic (or any first pick not named Anthony Bennett most likely) every single time.

Anyway, the Mavericks’ future looks really bright after last night.  Doncic was the best player in the draft for me and Dallas got him at the third pick and the compensation they sent to Atlanta was fair.

The consensus on the Atlanta side is where I strongly disagree with most pundits.  The Hawks seem to be getting killed for this trade.  I do agree with it from the perspective that I would not have given up the opportunity to draft Luka since I thought he was the best player in the entire draft.

But, since they did decide to forego selecting Doncic, I think they got a decent return.  The single biggest reason for the discrepancy in how I view this trade for Atlanta and how most others do is that I am much higher on Trae than most others.  I think Trae was the third best prospect in this draft, and Atlanta got him with the 5th pick.

If we go back to the math we just outlined, in terms of draft capital, moving down from the 3rd pick to the 5th pick to potentially add the 6th pick next year is exceedingly worth it.  It gets dicier when you value Luka as the best player, but what if we value Young as the third best player?

If, in theory, the Mavs shipped out the 3rd pick (Young) and the 6th pick (2019) for the 1st pick (Doncic) then Atlanta profied 820 points of draft capital in the trade, which is halfway between the values of the 26th and 27th picks.

Look, I would rather just have Doncic no matter how we slice the trade.  It’s the NBA, just get the best player.  But the Hawks got a fair trade package and still ended up with a player that I am very high on, so while I would have just drafted Doncic and called it a day, I’m neutral on this trade from the Hawks perspective.

The Suns Won

Even though the Suns took who I considered the 2nd best prospect with the first pick, they still had the best draft.  After selecting Ayton they traded up to get Mikal Bridges, a plug and play 3 and D wing who I think has a very good chance of becoming a 90% version of Robert Covington.

They then got a massive steal with the 31st pick when they selected Elie Okobo from France.  Okobo is someone I believed should have gone in the late teens, but the Suns got him with the first pick of the second round.  The Suns now have a five-man young core of Okobo, Booker, Bridges, Jackson, and Ayton, with T.J. Warren and Dragon Bender as well.

The Suns may have a massive amount of cap space in the summer of 2020, as Brandon Knight comes off the books that summer, following Jared Dudley and Tyson Chandler coming off the books in the summer of 2019.  The only guaranteed contracts for Phoenix as of right now for the summer of 2020 are T.J. Warren, Josh Jackson, and an impending Devin Booker extension.  The future is quite bright in the desert.

Philadelphia Is All In for Summer 2018

When the trade between Phoenix and Philadelphia was first announced I was outraged.  Mikal Bridges was quite literally the perfect player for the 6ers to add to their roster, and that’s not even including the sentimental reasons.  Yea sure maybe I would have swung for the fences and added Porter, but Bridges was the perfect plan B.

But this line of thinking basically illustrates why I wait to write opinions, and validates my Twitter bio.  The 6ers want a max free agent and they want him this summer.  Even though they will still have cap space in 2019 if they don’t land a guy this year, Philly wants to speed up their competitive curve.

Trading down from the 10th pick to the 16th pick saved the 6ers about one million dollars in salary.  When you are trying to carve out max space for people named LeBron, every dime matters.  The team still needs to shed the Jerryd Bayless contract, but they’re a little closer than they were yesterday.

They also picked up an unprotected 2021 draft pick that could be used in a Kawhi Leonard trade package.  In fact, perhaps now Philadelphia’s trade offer is Fultz, Zhaire Smith, Bayless (for salary matching purposes), and that 2021 Miami pick, which could be the draft class where the one-and-done college stars and elite high school seniors are all in the same draft class.

So Close!

In my final mock draft I had the 6ers trading down from the 10th pick with the Suns.  I said the cost for the Suns to move up to #10 would be the 16th and 31st picks, as well as taking Jerryd Bayless.  Instead Phoenix sent the 16th pick and the unprotected Miami 2021 first rounder.  I’m also surprised the 6ers didn’t find a way to dump the Bayless contract during the draft.

I Can’t Quit Contemplating Indiana’s Potential Cap Space

I seriously have a sickness.  When I toggled to my calculator earlier to do some Pacer’s cap space math, the number that was already there from the last time I used the calculator was 34.974909, which is the amount of cap space the Pacers could have this summer if things break their way.

Well, now that they have Aaron Holiday, their point guard depth chart is quite crowded.  The team now has Darren Collison, Cory Joseph, Joseph Young, and Aaron Holiday.  Darren Collison only has $2 million of his $10 million salary for this season guaranteed.  If the Pacers wanted to, they could waive Collison or trade him, and let Joseph be the starter.  They could also trade Joseph to a team in need of a backup point guard, and considering Joseph is a serviceable backup point guard the Pacers shouldn’t have to attach an asset to him as if it were a salary dump.  If the team had the cap space to absorb Young Indiana could just send him there for “free.”

So what are the Pacers looking at?  If the team waives Collison and stretches Al Jefferson, Indiana would have $24.854 million in cap space.  It is basically an identical number if they keep Collison and find a taker for Cory Joseph.  Declining Lance Stephenson’s and Joseph Young’s options would get the team up to $30.811 million in space.  If Thaddeus Young then opts out the Pacers would have $44.575 million in space this summer.

This just adds a really intriguing team to the mix of very few teams that have cap space this summer.  While the Pacers won’t land a big fish, they are an interesting possibility for people like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Jabari Parker, Derrick Favors, Isaiah Thomas, Aaron Grodon, Dante Exum, and Tyreke Evans.  Stay tuned.

Kings Gonna Kings

Denver Made the Right Decision

If you miss on the 14th pick, especially in a class like this that is pretty deep with guys that project as solid contributors, it is going to hurt looking back on it in a few years.  However, Denver absolutely made the right decision rolling the dice on Michael Porter at #14.

Had Porter been allowed to enter the 2017 draft out of high school he would have been in the mix for the #1 pick.  That is the type of talent Denver just landed with the last pick of the lottery.  I’m sure you know by now that he slid amid concerns over his medical evaluations, but even if he red-shirts his rookie season, (and subsequently has division rival Donovan Mitchell letting him know his “rookie season” isn’t really his rookie season) the risk/reward proposition was worth it.

Denver’s core three building blocks are Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, and Nikola Jokic, who are 21 years old, 23 years old, and 23 years old, respectively.  Porter is currently 19, soon to be 20, and if he reaches his potential the Nuggets have the best core four of early – mid 20-somethings this side of Boston.

Yes, Denver’s defense isn’t good and Porter’s defense isn’t good, so logistically this isn’t the best fit.  But the projected rise in level of play, based on their aging curve, lines up pretty well with the projected declination in level of play, based on the Warriors aging curve.  Just sayin’.

Biggest Steals

These are the biggest steals of the draft, according to me, but what the hell do I know?

(In order of draft slot)

Mavs – Luka Doncic
Hawks – Trae Young
Suns – Mikal Bridges
Hornets – Miles Bridges
Nuggets – Michael Porter
Spurs – Lonnie Walker
Celtics – Robert Williams
Warriors – Jacob Evans (what an absurdly perfect pick, of course this happened)
Nets – Dzanan Musa (I’m a Nets fan now)
Suns – Elie Okobo (Just kidding I’m a Suns fan now)
Magic – Melvin Frazier
Pistons – Khyri Thomas
Wolves – Keita Bates-Diop

filed under: NBA

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