2018 Boston Celtics offseason

Doncic is weirdly getting underrated right now prior to the draft, I'd take him before Ayton and Bamba without any second thought. I'm also the guy that liked Dragan Bender over Jaylen so what do I know lol.

But seriously, Doncic is going to be a STUD.

I'm obviously not a scout, but I sincerely don't think he's a level below Tatum as an athlete and I don't think the questions about his first step are in any way larger than they were with Tatum last year. Doncic scored a lot at the rim and he rebounded reasonably well which don't corroborate the questions about his athleticism, he will never be peak Wade, but an improved version of Gordon Hayward is definitely in play. I don't buy the questions on his defense as well, he's 19, you put Ayton in the Euroleague and he'd get exposed harder (there are questions about his defense too, bigger ones than Doncic in fact). This is a wing league now and Doncic is very complete with plenty of room to improve, he'll on be on the floor the full 48 doing everything guarding multiple positions. Unless they're crazy switchy, guys like Bamba or Ayton will have to be benched a lot or get picked on for mismatches on every possession. You draft these guys with expectations of them being Embiid, but how realistic is it to expect this kind of generational talent to be there? And if they fall short of that, they will have to be on the bench during key stretches of the game. I mean, this happened to Gobert and, again, how realistic is it that either of them is as good as Gobert?

The skill floor for big men to be on the court for over 30 minutes a game is way higher than it is for ball handlers and wings. When you draft in the top 5, you shouldn't be looking for the next Clint Capela.

That is what Donic is rated, a step below Tatum. That is what you see on tape watching him. He's rated as a Marcus Smart type athlete. All the scouting reports bring it up way more than Tatum. To put a number on it, Tatum was rated 8/10, Donic is 7/10, same as Smart.

I don't think you know enough about Ayton. Not sure why you are lumping him with Bamba either, they are completely differently players. Ayton is much more like Embiid, than Gobert or Capela. The guy can score at will, really reminds me of David Robinson. He's a crazy good athlete, you won't be taking him out.  You're taking one of the best offensive centers to come along in recent memory and trying to make him sound like DeAndre Jordan. That guy is Robert Williams in this draft. Even Bamba is much more advanced offensively than Gobert, Capela or Jordan were at the same age. I worry about him, maybe he becomes a Gobert, but not Ayton. For me with Donic the Debate is the next tier after Ayton.

Bagley may be more of what they need but he’s not going to make a huge impact year one. There are reports they might take Porter and I’d love that. Sacramento has no motivation to lose next year but you’d think they’d want to finally develop some young kids and let them play not play all these veterans like they did last year. We will see. They are going to be bad regardless but they won’t be worst team in the league bad. They’ll be one of the worst 10 teams tho easy.

Donic won’t be able to guard certain PGs but they won’t be able to guard him either. He can run an offense if you want him to be the PG tho or he can be a wing who handles the ball a lot. It won’t be hard to fit him into almost any situation.

I think they're off and running. No surprise, C's squarely in the mix.

Wins and losses and I do question his numbers. He’s not going to be good defensively and/or will be in a lot of foul trouble. So does he play big minutes and be a sieve on defense contributing to losses or do his minutes suffer and his numbers are depressed. He should play big minutes.


They’ll still be in position to trade up from 10 next year if they want. Hell they might have to just to consolidate picks if they have 4 firsts.

I think you and other people are really underrating Doncic's athleticism, it actually reminds me a bit of the situation with Harden in his draft that people knocked him for the same reason. While Harden has beefed up quite a lot recently, it was one criticism with him. I think both are kind of goofy looking and they're not insanely fast, but they're sneaky quick and they will beat you with crossovers and finesse moves. Doncic is big for his position, smooth and he's a terrific playmaker. Watch him running the fast break, he's insanely precise. In the half court sets he has NBA range and he picks his spots perfectly for someone so young. He's very versatile and well rounded, his floor is very high and he could be a legit superstar in the right organization.

I do need to watch more out of Ayton, but he's a center. In he modern NBA, he needs to hit his Embiid ceiling or he's a limited role player. He could even be someone like KAT, who is great and puts up big numbers, but the flaws in his game flat out kill his team. I'm not a great amateur evaluator and again, I badly wanted Bender over Jaylen, so I'm probably wrong here and Ayton is the next huge All-NBA uber talented dude. But my reasoning here is that given his size and position, he has a considerably smaller margin for error than someone like Doncic or Porter or heck even Bagley.

Do you really think Bagley is ready to come in and just score a lot? His offensive game is really raw. His jump shot is funky but he was effective last year but until I see it in the NBA I’ll question how good it will be. He basically, just over powered people in college. He’s got nice touch though. It won’t surprise me if he comes right in but I’m not sold on it being a given.

That's not really true though - Capela, Gobert, and Deandre Jordan are all very good NBA starters who aren't anything like Embiid aside from defense and rebounding. The Tyson Chandler archetype is still very useful. I guess that isn't entirely relevant to Ayton because the general point with him is that he does have that Embiid-type upside - touch, range on a jumper, big time athleticism, NBA body. He doesn't have the defensive credentials, but he also doesn't have any of the injury questions.

It definitely seems to me that guys like Doncic do tend to have their question marks exaggerated at this time of year because they don't have the elite athleticism or measurables that are really projectable, and if I were running an NBA team then I'd probably think of them as being neck and neck at the top of the board. If I were going to swing for the fences though, I'd take Ayton every time and I wouldn't feel like I had to worry much about whiffing entirely

We'll see, there are just a bunch of red flags with Donic. Not trying to bash him either, I like him. I just like other players more at the top of this draft. He can do things that Harden can do, but he's not Harden. For me that's like comparing Carter to Horford. He looks similar on the box, his moves and how he takes his time to score. That looks like Horford, but the rest of his game doesn't. He's not the athlete Horford is, he can't move around like Horford. Same thing with comparing Donic to Harden. Also don't overlook the difference in defense from the Euro league to the NBA. Much better athletes playing a very physical style of D. More than one report has said he gets LeBron like treatment from the Refs in the Euro league, that won't happen in the NBA for years if ever.

Go check out the winners of the Euro league MVPs to see my concerns about his game fully transitioning to the NBA. Then remember that Saric was billed as one of the best young players in the Euro league for years. He's a very good player, but not even close to a star. While Donic is very skilled, his 3 point percentage has gone down the last 3 years and was 30.9% this year. Fit is going to be so important for him. He could look very good as a third piece on the Grizz, which looks by far the best place for him. Asking him to be the man on the Kings or Hawks is about the worst thing for him.

I get what your saying about bigs, I just don't agree. For example KAT just put up a 4.5 defensive boxscore rating during the playoff series against the Rockets. Which was best on the team besides Dieng who didn't play much. So the guy can play D. He's just your classic young player that doesn't yet always play that way in the regular season. He's 22 years old and a monster. He's not an Okafor, those are the guys your talking about or guys like Monroe. Just to show you KAT was rated an 8/10 and Ayton is an 9/10 athlete. Ayton's upside is best big in the league, with a realistic ceiling of a better offensive Drummond type player.

Embiid was also ranked an 9/10 athlete and shows you that if your a good enough athlete teams can't use small ball on you. You will kill them scoring in the post, samething with KAT. You force teams to play different lineups. For example as good as Draymond Green is defensively he can't guard Embiid. It would litterally force the Warriors to go big. Ayton is that type of player. If you look at the Suns with Booker, Jackson, Warren, Chriss,and Bender he's a perfect fit. I don't see how Donic and Booker fit. Both need the ball and both won't be good defenders.

Basketball goes in cycles based on its best players. You seem to think that the era of big men is gone for good. I don't agree. We just haven't seen a ton of highly skilled athletic bigs recently. That seems to be changing and if it does the NBA will adjust. Instead of building teams to beat Durant and LeBron, teams will build teams to beat Embiid, KAT, Davis/Cousins, Ayton and maybe even players like Bamba. Its already started really, if you build a team that can't contain Embiid in the East your in trouble.

Is there a team in a worse spot than the Orlando Magic in this draft? First of all their team blows and the guys they’ve drafted lately haven’t gone the way they’ve hoped. Their two best young guys are Gordon and Isaac and they have bigs like Biyombo (way over paid) and Vucevic on their roster who clog things up.

There are 5 top guys in this draft and they sit at 6. The guy who’s the wild card home run swing outside the top 5 is Porter who at 6’11 is the power forward small ball center type who’s not really suited to play the 3 like Isaac and Gordon already are. In other words, he’s a horrible fit. Now you should always draft best available in the NBA, but Porter is such a wild card he’s not clearly that guy and you have to consider, how can you develop him with Gordon and Isaac. Move on from Gordon? Plausible.

Theoretically, they really need a point guard so they’ll take Young. Which is too bad for them, because he’s the guy that will get picked high and everyone will look back on in a couple years and realize he had too college player but not an NBA player written all over him. My prediction on him is he’s a backup point guard at best. He’s under 6’1 and small framed.

If I were them, I’d be calling the Clippers and trying to get picks 12 and 13 for 6, but the more I think about it, it really makes sense for them to talk to the Celtics about Rozier, the Sacramento pick and our first this year for 6. The point guards in this draft suck, they can have their pick and he Sacramento pick both in the top 10 next year plus get a late first this year. Or they can draft Sexton or Young and regret it forever.

I’m not so sure I’d do that deal if I were the Celtics to be honest. But at 6... I’d love Carter on this team. He could give nice minutes right away and fit in nicely with the Horford time line. Even if they extended Horford.

I get Porters upside and his excitement but he doesn’t really do it for me. I don’t trust he’s going to be that special.