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There's nothing to dispell, tbh. If you know you can get Manu Ginobili at 59, you don't draft him at 1, despite knowing he's by far the best player in the entire draft. You trade down and get aditional assets. That's where the value comes from.
To me, it's more saying "I rather do an average trade with #14 than pick this player."
If Bryant and Essengue are gone at #14, I can see Spurs having the following reasoning:
- Best players available are bad fit with the team by either being guards or bigs who will struggle being paired with Wembanyama.
- Players that are good fit like Fleming, McNeeley or Penda aren't that good.
=> Best solution is to trade the pick.
There's nothing to dispell, tbh. If you know you can get Manu Ginobili at 59, you don't draft him at 1, despite knowing he's by far the best player in the entire draft. You trade down and get aditional assets. That's where the value comes from.
No one truly “knows” a Manu will be there at 59. In all likelihood, the Spurs took a risk by hoping no one thought highly of international prospects at the time. There were signals they weren’t— but it’s all going by assumptions at the end. The other option is that even they themselves didn’t know Manu would turn out to be as good as he would become, which is something they have actually said in interviews. This means they might have tried to take him much earlier than 59 if they knew.
Bottomline— no team knows what other teams will do. So it’s a matter of if you are willing to lose the chance to draft a player you really like after your scouting department has done so much work. If my scouting team says “yes, this kid will be a star” and their confidence level is 99.9%… I personally wouldn’t that up and try to get more value, period. It’s like a fortune teller telling you that the lottery ticket you buy in the next ten minutes is a winning ticket, you have change in your pocket to buy it right now but your greedy ass wants to go back home to get your wallet so you can buy two lottery tickets instead.
That solution works so long as you're willing to live with the consequences of missing out on your guys (which, if you don't think they are that good - you probably are) just so you can pick up an SRP that turns into Quinndarry Weatherspoon or some . You don't want to be the guy who really liked Jokic and considered him at #31, but thought he could be there at #45 so you traded down only to see him taken at #41 while you picked up some extra SRPs you'll eventually turn into cash considerations. Don't let "value" cause you to get too cute and just miss out together.
I'd also argue that these hypothetical best players available who are bad fits with the team just shouldn't be on your board at all. A team's board shouldn't be a ranking of every eligible player in the draft... it should be a ranking of the guys you'll actually draft. We often hear about a guy being "off the board" for a team, sometimes for off-the-field or medical concerns, but sometimes it's simply because it's just not someone they'll draft. It doesn't mean that player sucks, he's just not a consideration for the team.
If you build your board correctly, you should just go by your board. If you can move down with relative assurance you'll still land someone you like, then yeah you should do that... but you have to be willing to live with the consequences.
But if you believe a guy good enough and you're going to bummed if he gets picked right before where you traded down to... you should just pick him. If he's just a guy you think is maybe worth a flyer but you don't really care that much either way... then yeah trade down or out until you can't anymore but at that point it sounds like you've simply extinguished your board.
If the Spurs *knew* he'd be the best player in the entire draft, they wouldn't have waited until 59 to take him. They would have taken him 29th instead of Leon Smith.
Do you really think guys are sitting around the front office saying "this guy is definitely a hall of famer... but it's too soon. Let's draft this guy who is never going to suit up for us and trade him for a different guy who is never going to suit up for us".
You give the Spurs' precognition powers too much credit. The Spurs picked Manu 59 because that's where they were picking and they didn't have a strong enough of a feeling about him to trade up. He was just some interesting foreign kid who was worth a taking a flyer on, and if he never came to the NBA he'd be just another pick we didn't give a about back then (much like our 29th pick that same year).
I mean the salary difference between the #14 and 26# pick is like 1.6 million, so there's not much you'll lose by drafting your guy "too early"
The one concept I think can be sketchy is that of floors and ceilings. When the Warriors went with Kuminga over Franz Wagner, the general opinion was that Franz had a higher floor-- judging by his successful advanced stats and success in college-- and that Kuminga had a higher ceiling because of his outlier athleticism, despite a relatively mediocre showing in the G League. I've just seen the 19 year old uber athlete who doesn't seem to have superior basketball skills get drafted so many times on the hope that his skills will catch up with his athleticism, and the success rate of that strategy seems low. The three best vertical leaps of the Wagner/Kuminga draft were Cassius Stanley, Tyler Bey, and Jalen Harris.... remember them?
It’s not the 19 that’s the problem, it’s the trash programs GLI and OTE.
I know the Spurs had no idea how good Manu would be. I was just proposing a hypothetical.
Let's forget about any particular name. If a team has a guy in sight, and they know it is highly unlikely that player will be selected in the first round, it is dumb to select that player with the #2 overall pick when you can trade down, get your guy plus additional assets. It's just the smart thing to do. It is how Belichick built a 20 years dynasty. It is how the Celtics got Tatum + additional assets that later turned into Derrick White.
There's nothing to dispell here, there's real value in not reaching for a guy you don't need to reach for.
This is why FOs talk to each other and try to suss out their compe ors draft boards.
Like I said in another post... so long as your willing to live with the consequence of missing out on your guy, then sure.
I highly doubt it's ever that clear that's YOUR guy unless you're at the top of the draft though. There's differing degrees of risk and potential evaluation across the board for everyone, if it were that clear it'd be easy. OP seems to be conflating draft 'pick' value with player value post pick. They're just not the same thing. That pick selection is the biggest tipping point from potential value to actual value, and smart front offices try to leverage potential pick value given how big a crapshoot the draft is outside of the top top picks.
Well this wouldn't be very smart, because their are other teams who could draft Manu, and most likely if you think he is the best player in the draft, then somebody else thinks he is at least good enough to take him before the 59th pick.
He becomes "your guy" the minute you are on the clock, he's at the top of your board, and he's available. If you trade down here, you run the risk of not being able to pick him later. If you can't stomach the idea of missing out on your guy, you shouldn't trade down. There is no way to be sure he'll still be there to wherever you land. Of course... there is also a chance that "your guy" ends up sucking and you end up dodging a bullet by not drafting him.
Don't you think the Celtics were smart to trade #1 to the Sixers for #3 and #14, knowing they would get Tatum at 3 and that additonal asset ended up helping them get Derrick White?
Well, no . That's where doing your work right as a FO comes to play.
It worked out fantastically but still carried some risk. What if the Celtics had misread the Sixers and the Sixers took Tatum #1?
If you do these kind of trades it is because you are pretty sure about how the draft will play out.
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