Draft Analysis - Is It Really That Bad?
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2020 8:37 am
So the draft file has been here for a while, and from the moment it came online, it was immediately met with cries of despair from rebuilding GMs and looks of disgust from others. It's the latest draft to receive the "Worst Draft Ever" label...but is that true? Are the prospects really that much worse? Is the number of top talent really that much lower than what we're used to? Or is this all just hyperbole brought on by ruined rebuilding plans and cabin fever from an unusually slow and boring postseason?
Well, when you look at the number of blue potential players in this draft (5) and stack it up against previous drafts, you only have to go back to the 2031 draft (this will be the 2037 draft, so just 6 years) to find a draft class that had 5 or less blue potential players (that class had 5). This isn't as much of a damning indicator of this draft's awfulness as you might think though, as on average, it seems like the usual number for blue potential or higher players in the draft is 7 or 8. So 5, while definitely not good, is actually just a few players off from the norm. However, that class also had 17 green potential players as opposed to this class' 11. After that, the next draft class with 5 or less blue potential players is seventeen seasons ago(from now, not from 2031), the 2020 draft. That draft
only had 4 blue potential players, as well as 11 green potential players to closer match this one. However, there's a catch here: While this draft has the same amount of o/b players that 2020 did (2), 2020 only had 3 o/g players. This draft has twice as many, 6. So if you're counting, of the 16/15 solid prospects in both drafts, that's 8 orange current players in this draft as opposed to 6 in 2019-20. That's...not good. But let's see who was actually drafted in 2020. The four blues were World B. Free, Joshua Swan, Cheick Diallo, and Ramsay Bolton. Other players of note were Victor Newman, Billy Kingston, Scott Ramos, Desus Mero, Frank Garden, Christopher Lemke, and Andrew Baldwin. Only Newman and Mero were among those 11 green potential players. Yikes. But, what about the 2031 class? Well, the 5 blues were Norris Turney, Gary Loredo, Jonathan Lewis, Craig Brooks (a rare r/b), and Ronald Haile. And out of the 17 green potential players, we have Robert Bonnett, Michael Thomas, Burt Gibson, Kevin Stephan, and Scot Bulter. So clearly a bad class still has the possibility to turn out excellent in the end, which leads us perfectly into the preview part...
Otto Farias
While I don't dislike the other blues on the board (well, at least most of them), Farias is so clearly the #1 pick it isn't even worth debating otherwise. If you like Luguentz Dort, well here's Dort 2.0, only a bit faster and stronger than Dort was as a prospect. He tends to get a ball to the face every time he tries to rebound, but other than that little x-factor, he's everything you'd want out of a point guard, and a guaranteed future purple.
Barrett Kukyendall
I don't like this guy. All offense with absolutely nothing else to offer at all. He's probably the most likely to be a consistent 20 ppg scorer of the top 5 guys in this draft, but I honestly don't think he's worth it unless the rest of your team is set up to do everything he can't. Probably another future purple if invested in from Day 1.
Brendon Silva
A nice all-around talent who probably needs a boost in QKN before he really takes off. 64 QKN just ain't gonna cut it when you're projected to be a perimeter defender. Reminds me a lot of Carl Howard, actually, only with more potential offensively. That's very promising.
Jeffrey Mitchum
Well if Silva reminds me of Howard, then here's Cam Reddish. Of the two, I'm a bigger fan of Mitchum, as he looks like he could be left alone completely and still turn out to be a key piece in a playoff roster. Invest in him and you'll have an excellent two-way swingman with star potential.
Cornell Fontana
WTF is this guy? Great INS but can't jump, 6'10" with 74 QKN, a C in PRD of all things. There are swiss army knife kinds of guys, and then there are monkey wrench guys. This is the kind of guy you bring in off the bench to screw with whatever gameplan your opponent's running, the kind of guy you start just so other GMs look at your game logs in confusion. I don't even know what else to say here.
Albert Kellerman
Kinda-big (6'11") man who does big man things and won't get the ball stripped in the post with A potential in handles. Solid JMP (53) and QKN (30) for a big too. Honestly, I'd legit take him over Kukyendall, especially if I'm looking to invest. He doesn't have the massive upside, but is far more cost-effective.
Elwood Berger
I see why the draft projection has you 7th, tbh. Basically Kukyendall if he sacrificed athleticism and offensive ability in order to actually do non-scoring things. Problem is, I'm not sure it was a fair trade, that's a pretty big drop-off in overall athleticism for a trio of low-current Cs in HND, PAS, and PRD. Probably best to take a wait-and-see approach with this one, will probably be a 2nd-contract bloomer.
Freddie Marshall
Okay, I guess? Nothing jumps out at me. I wish he was taller, his skillset seems to lean more towards the 4 rather than the 3, but 6'6" is probably too short to be an impact player at power forward unless you have overwhelming skills. I don't see Marshall developing to that degree, but I can definitely see him becoming a valued role player or fringe starter.
Leslie Washington
Like the height (7'1") and double Cs in STL/BLK, but other than that, I think Kellerman's better than him in just about every way. That's not to say he's not worth taking though, he'll likely reach his potential faster than Kellerman, and is far enough along in his development that he can just be plopped down into any team's backup big rotation and produce acceptable results, regardless of whether he ever hits that green or not. I would be wary of a TC death, however, and would probably pass if I care enough about him to really want a green boost but not enough to insure him.
Dino Tillis
This is another really solid o/g guy that I'd legitimately consider taking at like #5-#6, maybe even #4. Not as defensively stout as Kellerman, but is quicker (37 QKN), stronger (80 STR), and has more verticality to his game (59 JMP). 17 STA, but I honestly don't know how much that actually matters, plus it's one of the few athletic stats that improves pretty consistently, so whatever. If you could somehow get both Kellerman and Tillis with the intent to invest in both, I think it's a far better bet than rolling with just one of most of these other guys, even with investment. Really interested to see if these guys pan out.
Amos Cabral
Big question mark here. Usually when your draft prospect has a lot of Cs and not much else, you want him to be in the 18-20 range. The older the guy is, the more likely it becomes that those Cs never jump. You also have to decide pretty quickly whether you want to do anything with them or just leave them be. Adam Mokoka's a pretty solid example of what I'm talking about. So Cabral's 22 at the moment, and isn't even at yellow current. His Cs are all pretty low-current too, and his athleticism for a 6'9" PF as solid, but not spectacular. Having a C in PRD but not PSD is a no-no as well. Pass.
Matt Bryant
He's pretty quick and can spread the floor, I'll give him that, but other than that I'm not feeling it. Snap him up if you want to, nobody's gonna stop you, but I'd look at other options first. Even if there's nothing but yellows left on the board.
Zack Keller
Hmm, a true 3&D guy, interesting. Reminds me of Dino Washington only with 3PS instead of INS. Will be a solid role player in the hands of a contender or GM with playoff aspirations. I'd skip if I'm not planning on being either anytime soon, though he could be useful trade fodder.
Herberto Iglesias
Bleah, would've liked him a lot more had he at least had 65 JMP, but as it stands now, I'm not too impressed. There might be a little substance here, but I'm getting heavy "filler guard" vibes from this one. He seems like the kind of guy who eventually goes green at like 26 and has about 3 good years of solid production while you're in-between phases.
John McIntyre
Y'know, maybe athleticism isn't everything. I'm sorry, I'm not really seeing it for this guy either, probably less so than Iglesias if I'm being honest. I can see him putting about 6-7 ppg off the bench in 15 mpg, but nothing that really makes you want to prioritize keeping him around.
Harland Cain
Well this is weird. He's literally the last green potential guy on the board, but he's g/g. I also like this guy a lot more than pretty much evey other green potential guy not named Tillis or Kellerman. 6'5" with 84 QKN is pretty darn solid, and he's far better of a ready-now defender than Keller, as Cain has PRD to go along with his high STL. He's meh at best offensively, but 72 JMP makes up for that somewhat. I don't see much room for growth, but overall, this is a solid prospect. Solid role player, but also just good enough to where he's not completely worthless to a rebuilding team. Normally he's exactly who you'd expect to see at the end of the lotto, but in this draft he might be a Top 5 pick.
Okay then, well that kind of sucked. I feel a bit bad for bringing up 2030 now, as I feel it's pretty clear that this draft has very little chance of being anywhere near as good as that one turned out to be. This is clearly going to be more comparable to 2020, though I do think that it'll outperform that draft. Kukyendall, Silva, Mitchum, and Berger aren't locks by any means, but Swan, Free, Diallo, and Bolton isn't a high bar to clear at all, and Farias doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the 2020 blues. That alone pushes this draft ahead of 2020, even if the green potential pool is every bit as dire. So to sum it up, is this draft as bad as advertised? Hell yeah, there is absolutely no shame in trading out of this one. But is it the worst? No, just the weakest we've had in a while, though it might be interesting to go back and take a deep dive to fully confirm.
Thanks for reading, until next time!
Well, when you look at the number of blue potential players in this draft (5) and stack it up against previous drafts, you only have to go back to the 2031 draft (this will be the 2037 draft, so just 6 years) to find a draft class that had 5 or less blue potential players (that class had 5). This isn't as much of a damning indicator of this draft's awfulness as you might think though, as on average, it seems like the usual number for blue potential or higher players in the draft is 7 or 8. So 5, while definitely not good, is actually just a few players off from the norm. However, that class also had 17 green potential players as opposed to this class' 11. After that, the next draft class with 5 or less blue potential players is seventeen seasons ago(from now, not from 2031), the 2020 draft. That draft
only had 4 blue potential players, as well as 11 green potential players to closer match this one. However, there's a catch here: While this draft has the same amount of o/b players that 2020 did (2), 2020 only had 3 o/g players. This draft has twice as many, 6. So if you're counting, of the 16/15 solid prospects in both drafts, that's 8 orange current players in this draft as opposed to 6 in 2019-20. That's...not good. But let's see who was actually drafted in 2020. The four blues were World B. Free, Joshua Swan, Cheick Diallo, and Ramsay Bolton. Other players of note were Victor Newman, Billy Kingston, Scott Ramos, Desus Mero, Frank Garden, Christopher Lemke, and Andrew Baldwin. Only Newman and Mero were among those 11 green potential players. Yikes. But, what about the 2031 class? Well, the 5 blues were Norris Turney, Gary Loredo, Jonathan Lewis, Craig Brooks (a rare r/b), and Ronald Haile. And out of the 17 green potential players, we have Robert Bonnett, Michael Thomas, Burt Gibson, Kevin Stephan, and Scot Bulter. So clearly a bad class still has the possibility to turn out excellent in the end, which leads us perfectly into the preview part...
Otto Farias
While I don't dislike the other blues on the board (well, at least most of them), Farias is so clearly the #1 pick it isn't even worth debating otherwise. If you like Luguentz Dort, well here's Dort 2.0, only a bit faster and stronger than Dort was as a prospect. He tends to get a ball to the face every time he tries to rebound, but other than that little x-factor, he's everything you'd want out of a point guard, and a guaranteed future purple.
Barrett Kukyendall
I don't like this guy. All offense with absolutely nothing else to offer at all. He's probably the most likely to be a consistent 20 ppg scorer of the top 5 guys in this draft, but I honestly don't think he's worth it unless the rest of your team is set up to do everything he can't. Probably another future purple if invested in from Day 1.
Brendon Silva
A nice all-around talent who probably needs a boost in QKN before he really takes off. 64 QKN just ain't gonna cut it when you're projected to be a perimeter defender. Reminds me a lot of Carl Howard, actually, only with more potential offensively. That's very promising.
Jeffrey Mitchum
Well if Silva reminds me of Howard, then here's Cam Reddish. Of the two, I'm a bigger fan of Mitchum, as he looks like he could be left alone completely and still turn out to be a key piece in a playoff roster. Invest in him and you'll have an excellent two-way swingman with star potential.
Cornell Fontana
WTF is this guy? Great INS but can't jump, 6'10" with 74 QKN, a C in PRD of all things. There are swiss army knife kinds of guys, and then there are monkey wrench guys. This is the kind of guy you bring in off the bench to screw with whatever gameplan your opponent's running, the kind of guy you start just so other GMs look at your game logs in confusion. I don't even know what else to say here.
Albert Kellerman
Kinda-big (6'11") man who does big man things and won't get the ball stripped in the post with A potential in handles. Solid JMP (53) and QKN (30) for a big too. Honestly, I'd legit take him over Kukyendall, especially if I'm looking to invest. He doesn't have the massive upside, but is far more cost-effective.
Elwood Berger
I see why the draft projection has you 7th, tbh. Basically Kukyendall if he sacrificed athleticism and offensive ability in order to actually do non-scoring things. Problem is, I'm not sure it was a fair trade, that's a pretty big drop-off in overall athleticism for a trio of low-current Cs in HND, PAS, and PRD. Probably best to take a wait-and-see approach with this one, will probably be a 2nd-contract bloomer.
Freddie Marshall
Okay, I guess? Nothing jumps out at me. I wish he was taller, his skillset seems to lean more towards the 4 rather than the 3, but 6'6" is probably too short to be an impact player at power forward unless you have overwhelming skills. I don't see Marshall developing to that degree, but I can definitely see him becoming a valued role player or fringe starter.
Leslie Washington
Like the height (7'1") and double Cs in STL/BLK, but other than that, I think Kellerman's better than him in just about every way. That's not to say he's not worth taking though, he'll likely reach his potential faster than Kellerman, and is far enough along in his development that he can just be plopped down into any team's backup big rotation and produce acceptable results, regardless of whether he ever hits that green or not. I would be wary of a TC death, however, and would probably pass if I care enough about him to really want a green boost but not enough to insure him.
Dino Tillis
This is another really solid o/g guy that I'd legitimately consider taking at like #5-#6, maybe even #4. Not as defensively stout as Kellerman, but is quicker (37 QKN), stronger (80 STR), and has more verticality to his game (59 JMP). 17 STA, but I honestly don't know how much that actually matters, plus it's one of the few athletic stats that improves pretty consistently, so whatever. If you could somehow get both Kellerman and Tillis with the intent to invest in both, I think it's a far better bet than rolling with just one of most of these other guys, even with investment. Really interested to see if these guys pan out.
Amos Cabral
Big question mark here. Usually when your draft prospect has a lot of Cs and not much else, you want him to be in the 18-20 range. The older the guy is, the more likely it becomes that those Cs never jump. You also have to decide pretty quickly whether you want to do anything with them or just leave them be. Adam Mokoka's a pretty solid example of what I'm talking about. So Cabral's 22 at the moment, and isn't even at yellow current. His Cs are all pretty low-current too, and his athleticism for a 6'9" PF as solid, but not spectacular. Having a C in PRD but not PSD is a no-no as well. Pass.
Matt Bryant
He's pretty quick and can spread the floor, I'll give him that, but other than that I'm not feeling it. Snap him up if you want to, nobody's gonna stop you, but I'd look at other options first. Even if there's nothing but yellows left on the board.
Zack Keller
Hmm, a true 3&D guy, interesting. Reminds me of Dino Washington only with 3PS instead of INS. Will be a solid role player in the hands of a contender or GM with playoff aspirations. I'd skip if I'm not planning on being either anytime soon, though he could be useful trade fodder.
Herberto Iglesias
Bleah, would've liked him a lot more had he at least had 65 JMP, but as it stands now, I'm not too impressed. There might be a little substance here, but I'm getting heavy "filler guard" vibes from this one. He seems like the kind of guy who eventually goes green at like 26 and has about 3 good years of solid production while you're in-between phases.
John McIntyre
Y'know, maybe athleticism isn't everything. I'm sorry, I'm not really seeing it for this guy either, probably less so than Iglesias if I'm being honest. I can see him putting about 6-7 ppg off the bench in 15 mpg, but nothing that really makes you want to prioritize keeping him around.
Harland Cain
Well this is weird. He's literally the last green potential guy on the board, but he's g/g. I also like this guy a lot more than pretty much evey other green potential guy not named Tillis or Kellerman. 6'5" with 84 QKN is pretty darn solid, and he's far better of a ready-now defender than Keller, as Cain has PRD to go along with his high STL. He's meh at best offensively, but 72 JMP makes up for that somewhat. I don't see much room for growth, but overall, this is a solid prospect. Solid role player, but also just good enough to where he's not completely worthless to a rebuilding team. Normally he's exactly who you'd expect to see at the end of the lotto, but in this draft he might be a Top 5 pick.
Okay then, well that kind of sucked. I feel a bit bad for bringing up 2030 now, as I feel it's pretty clear that this draft has very little chance of being anywhere near as good as that one turned out to be. This is clearly going to be more comparable to 2020, though I do think that it'll outperform that draft. Kukyendall, Silva, Mitchum, and Berger aren't locks by any means, but Swan, Free, Diallo, and Bolton isn't a high bar to clear at all, and Farias doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the 2020 blues. That alone pushes this draft ahead of 2020, even if the green potential pool is every bit as dire. So to sum it up, is this draft as bad as advertised? Hell yeah, there is absolutely no shame in trading out of this one. But is it the worst? No, just the weakest we've had in a while, though it might be interesting to go back and take a deep dive to fully confirm.
Thanks for reading, until next time!