I have NO complaints about his ACC career. I said “pro”.

If I had to speculate, I’d say that production = physical tools + talent + effort + training/coaching. Draft scouts are pretty good at assessing physical tools and talent, but not necessarily good at assessing the effort that player will put in to become great. And once that player is drafted, it is up to the team to properly train/coach him.

With that considered, average draft position may be a good indicator of a team’s talent + physical tools. A team like the Thunder may have many players with a lot of talent and physical tools, but they still stink because of poor effort and/or poor training/coaching. On the other hand, teams like the Wizards may have guys without as much talent and physical tools, but still used to be successful due to good training/coaching and a lot of effort devoted to learning the game and performing. In other words, they were “overachievers”. The problem with that is, when things start to go wrong with those two areas, this team may not have a lot of talent and physical tools to fall back on. Lack of confidence in your abilities could affect the effort area, which may explain why the Wizards have dropped off the map performance-wise. But this is probably just an insane theory.

As decent as he’s been for us all year.

None of these draft stats are relevant.

This is a longwinded reply, I think I did the personal reply so I didnt clog up the forum. Its long because regrettably I spend this much time thinking about the team. I appreciate the feedback, happy holidays man.

These are the players that championship teams had drafted themselves:

Th 2005 Heat drafted Wade, Wayne Simien, and Dorell Wright

The Lakers dynasty drafted Kobe, Devean George, AC Green, Derek Fisher, John Celestand, Travis Knight, Stanislav Medvedenko, Mark Madsen

The 2008 Celtics they drafted Tony Allen, Glen Davis, Kendrick Perkins, Paul Pierce, Gabe Pruitt

The 2004 Pistons drafted Lindsey Hunter, Tayshaun Prince, Mehmet Okur, and Darko Milicic

The Spurs dynastys the exception having drafted Beno Udrih, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Fabricio Oberto, the latter four being the core of their championship teams. They have brilliant overseas scouting. Ernie Grunfeld’s picks seem to indicate he doesn’t have that knack for draft picks.

The draft yields franchise players ie Duncan, Wade, Pierce, and Kobe. However, with the exception of San Antonio, these teams have traded for and signed in free agency there core players. The Lakers acquired Shaq, Ron Harper, Rick Fox, Horry, Horace Grant, and Tyronn Lue. The Pistons acquired Sheed, Big Ben, Rip, and Chauncey. The Celtics acquired Garnett, Ray Allen, Posey, Eddie House, PJ Brown, and Cassell. The Heat acquired Shaq, Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning, and James Posey.

The Wizards are rushing to turn Blatche, McGee, and Young into their new core instead of making ballsy trades or paying up in free agency. Youngs not ready to start and in the meantime we shouldnt have relied on Deshawn Stevenson as our starting PG. Jamisons aging and needs somebody to take some of his minutes, but we shouldnt have relied on lazyboy Blatche or scrawny Pech to fill the slack. We need a second center (Thomas is brokendown and Haywoods a 25 mpg guy) but we shouldnt have spent the past three years waiting to strike gold in the draft with Ramos, Pech, and now McGee. Have you not spent the last several years shaking your head as tremendous talents are traded and signed in the league and the lone changes in the Wizards organization since we got AD and Caron in summer 2005 have been signing Deshawn Stevenson and Darius Songaila and signing five of our draft picks. The Stevenson and Songaila signings were not serious moves, these guys were not in demand in the league. Now that we are tanking we will probably get a good draft pick ie Steph Curry or Ricky Rubio, but we shouldnt have had to tank in order to acquire the talent we desperately need. We should have gotten it through trade and free agency.

I’d like to know that too….

Seems like the way to a Championship is to Draft young talent… then Trade some of it for a Kevin Garnett and a Ray Allen….. or trade some young talent for a dominant Center like Shaq….. or trade a terrible player with a big expiring contract for a 7ft All-Star Center/PF named Gasol……. or draft a guy named Tim Duncan…………

Which is just as important is how exactly Boston and LA made those trades. Be a cynic if you want and say it happened because of McHale/West, but let’s think about this again. Both teams spent years doing very little, drafting guys late in drafts over and over again, stockpiling assets before waiting for the right guy to have an expiring contract to make their move.

Think about it. Boston went from being a 44-win playoff team in 2003 to dropping completely out of it after one last gasp division title in 2005. They did nothing to really improve that 2004 team, but were never good enough to draft at the top of the lottery. They drafted guys like Delonte West, Tony Allen, Al Jefferson, Kendrick Perkins, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair (okay, that was a trade), Rajon Rondo, etc. Everyone’s like “wtf, they have Paul Pierce and they’re wasting his career by surrounding him with draft picks and doing nothing else.” Well, if you all can remember, those guys were the ones that eventually netted Boston Garnett and Ray Allen. Sure, they needed expiring contracts (Theo Ratliff, even Wally) to get them done, but when those contracts were there, they used them. Boston’s supposed complacency with just drafting mid-level talent eventually got them a superstar.

Ditto for LA. Remember Kobe bitching and whining about how they were doing nothing? Since 2003, the Lakers have drafted Luke Walton, Ronny Turiaf, Sasha Vujacic, Jordan Farmar, Andrew Bynum, Javaris Crittenton and Marc Gasol. Well, whaddaya know, once Kwame Brown’s expiring deal comes around, they turned Crittenton and Gasol into Pau Gasol and went far. They kept drafting mid-level talent year after year and then used it to turn it into a stud.

This strategy doesn’t come without risks, of course. You could end up like Chicago, assembling all this young talent and doing nothing with it. But we’re different because we at least have our core of Arenas, Butler and (maybe) Jamison.

Let’s think about what we’ve done. In the past four years, we’ve drafted Andray Blatche, Nick Young, Oleksiy Pecherov, Dominic McGuire and JaVale McGee. We dumped a guy in Daniels that had no need long-term and turned him into Crittenton, another asset. We now have six young guys that can be used as sweetners in a trade. Now, we just have to wait for the right moment. And, whaddaya know, we have 20 million dollars in expiring money (James, Etan, Haywood) in 2010, only the most coveted free agent sweepstakes in league history. Don’t you think we can get someone good from a team looking to move toward 2010 by waiting a little? Any combination of those three expirings (really two because Brendan needs to stick around) and our six young guys (perhaps seven if we hold our pick next year) can net us anyone from Shane Battier to Emeka Okafor to Amare Stoudamire to Dirk Nowitzki, potentially. And then, we’re in business.

If Ernie doesn’t use 2010 to get us someone good, I’ll be right there annoyed with you. But you can’t just rush into rash moves. We’re setting ourselves up, and Ernie, traditionally a man of action, could easily get something done.