DET/DAL/NO idea

[lospistones]

It does matter where a guy was projected. It also matters if a guy was the BPA.

Sometimes all you can ask your GM to do is to take the best guy in the tier of players he's looking at. Joe failed to do this with Darko. However, had he taken Wade, who was considered below the first tier of LeBron/Melo/Darko, everybody would have shit their pants. This also applies to Boozer.
At other times, you just hope that if you're drafting at x, you end up picking a top x player. Joe did do this with Stuckey. Say what you want about Lawson, but Joe came into the draft with the 15th pick and got a top 10 player. That pick really can't be blasted.

[Vinny]

Except that Stuckey is awful at basketball.

[lospistones]

Then that draft must have been horrible. Usually coming out with an all-rookie teamer is a good thing.

[Fool]

Stuckey is awful at PG, at passing to an open man, at being a starter and at not having seizures while on the bench.

He's pretty solid at the rest.

[Fool]

Oh, and at finishing and not getting blocked 3 times a game.

But the rest, aces!

[lospistones]

I'm not trendy like y'all so I'll catch up to hating Stuckey in a few months.

[WTFchris]

Can we get back to this trade now?

[Pharaoh]

Dude, this trade ain't happening...

Where a guy is projected has nothing to do with anything...

Scouts travel around watching all these fucking players.. they bring a bunch of cunts to workout... there are a bunch of pre-draft camps... teams spend so much money on finding the best player possible...

and everyone misses someone...

But Joe? He and his crew manage to miss all the fucking time!

If you go back pre-Stuckey and look at all the Drafts Joe made from 2000 you can see a laundry list of guys that we missed out on...

I'm only go do 2000 and 2001 cause it's so depressing but here we go again for the millionth time:

2000 = Mateen - apparently to appease the hometown fans since Joe expected Grant Hill to walk... that was a rumour. Other hometown guy available? Morris Peterson drafted 7 spots later and could have taken Hill's spot at SF from the jump!

I doubt Joe was worried about the hometown fans... he'd rather have the best player available because he knew better than most how crap we were... he played with our shitty team...

Better players than Mateen = everyone lol... Turkoglu, Des Mason, Quentin Richardson, Magloire, Peterson, DeShawn Stevenson... that's 6 guys... 5 of whome could have filled the SF role Hill was expected to vacate!

There are a couple of others like Jaric and Redd plus long term role players drafted that year....

Yet we got Mateen! Thank God we got Jon Barry and eventually Delfino for his ass... but it's still a pathetic draft pick especially when you look at who was available.

20001 = Rodney White was an abortion of a pick when you consider that Joe Johnson went next and Richard Jefferson, Troy Murphy, Zach Randolph and Brendan Haywood all went in the top 20. Then you have Gerald Wallace, Samuel Dalembert, Jamaal Tinsley and Tony Parker to consider too.

Arenas went in the second round before we picked Okur... but yeah - Okur was a great pick...

You can say Joe should not have taken some of those guys at 9... and I'll say he should have traded down and got another asset AND drafted a better player. That's 10 players that went on to pretty good careers.

Yet we got White

2 drafts... missed a lot of quality for 2 guys that sucked monkey spunk...

Is the point: every GM misses quality so it's not Joe's fault?

Or is the point: How come we miss so many fucking quality players?

It ain't like we miss 1 stud every draft - we miss 5 or 6 really good players and take shit!

It boggles my mind and pisses me off and makes me wonder WTF are our scouts thinking!

[mercury]

It boggles my mind and pisses me off and makes me wonder WTF are our scouts thinking!

“He’s going to own the game. Own the game. We’re going to have to build a new arena. The only thing that could destroy a kid like that is a woman.”
“Darko reminds me of a young Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt used to do a little of everything, and I haven’t seen a big man with so much skill since Wilt.”

[lospistones]

Dude, this trade ain't happening...

Where a guy is projected has nothing to do with anything...

Scouts travel around watching all these fucking players.. they bring a bunch of cunts to workout... there are a bunch of pre-draft camps... teams spend so much money on finding the best player possible...

and everyone misses someone...

But Joe? He and his crew manage to miss all the fucking time!

If you go back pre-Stuckey and look at all the Drafts Joe made from 2000 you can see a laundry list of guys that we missed out on...

I'm only go do 2000 and 2001 cause it's so depressing but here we go again for the millionth time:

2000 = Mateen - apparently to appease the hometown fans since Joe expected Grant Hill to walk... that was a rumour. Other hometown guy available? Morris Peterson drafted 7 spots later and could have taken Hill's spot at SF from the jump!

I doubt Joe was worried about the hometown fans... he'd rather have the best player available because he knew better than most how crap we were... he played with our shitty team...

Better players than Mateen = everyone lol... Turkoglu, Des Mason, Quentin Richardson, Magloire, Peterson, DeShawn Stevenson... that's 6 guys... 5 of whome could have filled the SF role Hill was expected to vacate!

There are a couple of others like Jaric and Redd plus long term role players drafted that year....

Yet we got Mateen! Thank God we got Jon Barry and eventually Delfino for his ass... but it's still a pathetic draft pick especially when you look at who was available.

20001 = Rodney White was an abortion of a pick when you consider that Joe Johnson went next and Richard Jefferson, Troy Murphy, Zach Randolph and Brendan Haywood all went in the top 20. Then you have Gerald Wallace, Samuel Dalembert, Jamaal Tinsley and Tony Parker to consider too.

Arenas went in the second round before we picked Okur... but yeah - Okur was a great pick...

You can say Joe should not have taken some of those guys at 9... and I'll say he should have traded down and got another asset AND drafted a better player. That's 10 players that went on to pretty good careers.

Yet we got White

2 drafts... missed a lot of quality for 2 guys that sucked monkey spunk...

Is the point: every GM misses quality so it's not Joe's fault?

Or is the point: How come we miss so many fucking quality players?

It ain't like we miss 1 stud every draft - we miss 5 or 6 really good players and take shit!

It boggles my mind and pisses me off and makes me wonder WTF are our scouts thinking!

Those were his first two drafts.
As you said, he fixed the Mateen pick. He also made up for Rodney White by getting back two centers and a first-rounder.

Honestly, would any of those guys save for Turkoglu even be in our active rotation right now? Mason's out of the league, MoPete's about to follow him, Magloire's a minimum contract player, etc. I'd take DeShawn Stevenson but he'd be the fourth SG on our depth chart.

But you're right. The only time Joe's moved in the draft was to move down and take Walter Sharpe. I wish he'd move up, down, in, and out of the draft as the situation called for it. I've griped in the past about how we've failed to buy draft picks that would have drafted stud players that *I* coveted at the time of the draft. We've all been upset by a player we're targeting going right before our pick, too.

Fact is, given where he's picked and the lack of movement, he's been successful on the whole. We're not in our current situation because of a lack of young talent...