Evaluating Evaluating

First thing I want to say is all this draft prediction and should this should that is an exercise in futility. Second thing is I read it nonetheless. Third thing is only in about five years can vindication be had or blame be shouldered.

Rose or Beasley. So many say the former and that you MUST have a PG as superstar in this day and age. But really, if, say, a violent revolution took place here in the US and all the ownership were put away and the proletariat decided to redo the NBA and re-draft the teams in the name of Unity and Brotherhood and YOU were given first swipe at the player of your choice: Who would it be?

Maybe CP3, maybe Dwight Howard, but in all likelihood it would be LeBron or Kobe. And if you are disagreeing right now you are lying to yourself to preserve your own ego. What’s more is that none, NONE, of the recent NBA champs had an elite prototype PG, Rondo is good sure, and necessary to the Celts’ success, but can be had yearly in the lower half of the first round, Tony Parker is great as well, but an elite PG?, no way, more like a small 2. Chauncey? He’s certainly your best counter argument but once again, he’s as much a combo guard who plays a step above Rip than he is a pure PG. The Lakers had, uh, who? And before that the Spurs again, then the Bulls, the Rockets, the Bulls again? Well I guess if you go back two decades you had Ike and Magic (who today would NOT be considered a PG but more akin to Lebron, in today’s under enlightened NBA bureaucracies).

So what if you could have a pure scorer who just might be able to play point forward and has all the athletic ability needed to play NBA D, would you call him Lebron, or Kobe, or Paul Pierce, or Michael Beasley. I love how mother****ers psych themselves out trying to play trends and what not and hold onto the silt for want of gold.

Get a guy like Chalmers at pick 27 and I’ll play Rose and his boys any day (wait, did this already happen).

In other news I think Hollinger does some fantastic stuff with his numbers games in predicting greatness, at least a more materialist approach than could be had by other outlets, and has Mario, DA, and DJ all highly rated for success with Rush doing reasonably well (and these numbers don’t really account for D, as Hollinger mentioned himself in regards to Rush).

So at the end of the day what yield is there for my nihilism? Take it to the bank: teams that pick at the top of the draft do so because they are poor evaluators of talent, and as such mistakes are more likely than success and when success does come it’s usually by chance.