Comments on: Joe Dumars’ draft track record is strong

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:04:46 +0000

If the Pistons had the sixth pick in that draft and took Monroe with it, would you have given Dumars credit?

By: Dan Feldman

Dan Feldman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:03:14 +0000

Because the draft is such a crapshoot, I’d rather take the best prospect available (current ability * potential). Then, build around those players based on position through trade and free agency.

The odds of getting a quality player in the draft is already low enough. Reaching to fill a positional need makes them too low. Plus, by the time the draft pick develops, a team’s positional needs might change.

By: Tads

Tads — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Did you compare this to any of the other GMs in the league who had a steady tenure of picking at the same time? I can see that Joe Dumars is above average, but how does he compare to other GMs? Did anyone compare the Pistons picks to the Sonics/Thunder, or the Spurs?

By: tarsier

tarsier — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:31:14 +0000

But part of what makes a GM good or bad is what they do in obvious spots. Taking Udoh when everyone else would take Monroe is a major knock against whoever was GMing the Warriors. I still give Dumars minor props for Monroe and some flak for Darko because why have a GM if he will just do what everyone else will? Also, it becomes much harder to numerically assess a GM’s drafting if you try to take situations like that into account. Kinda like how when we look at players’ stats,w e don’t make disclaimers that so and so gets 3 ppg and 2 rpg that “any player” would have gotten there. You just assume some of that happens for everyone and sorta cancels out.

By: Laser

Laser — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:01:17 +0000

Darko unfairly taints Dumars’s record, and Monroe unfairly boosts it. Both players get drafted at their respective positons regardless of who’s making the pick.

By: Laser

Laser — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:57:53 +0000

How are you going to give Joe credit for picking Monroe? He was the one and only choice. The right barometer for a good pick is not how many better players were picked after him; that's more useful in evaluating a bad pick. He made the right choice. Big deal. So did the GM who took Lebron first overall. There was no decision to be made.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:59:12 +0000

I was gonna say something really similar. I feel like there should be a different scale for expected win shares for each year because some drafts are just so much stronger than others. And it wouldn’t be that much more difficult to do.

By: David

David — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:51:39 +0000

Interesting analysis. And fair. I do think the Darko pick unfairly tainted Dumar’s drafting successes. The one criticism I have with Kubatko’s breakdown is that it compares a pick against an abstract average. Sure, Darko pretty significantly underperformed expectations for an average 2nd pick. But what about comparing Darko against other players Dumars could/should have picked. Shouldn’t we compare Darko’s 4.1 win shares not just to the 22.1 expected win shares, but also to Carmelo(27.7), Bosh(32.4), and Wade(38.8)? There’s probably more variation at the top of draft classes from year to year, where “deep” draft classes vs “weak” classes truly do show a lot of difference, and picking wrong with the number 2 pick in a deep class is worse than picking poorly in a weak draft class.

Put another way, isn’t picking Darko over Wade significantly more of a miss than the Grizzlie’s picking Hasheem Thabeet over James Harden or Ricky Rubio or even Tyreke Evans? That doesn’t seem to get included in Kubatko’s analysis.

By: neutes

neutes — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:45:12 +0000

I’d consider Dumars average when it comes to drafting. Every GM has good picks and every GM has bad picks. Should the weight be carried more so on how good his good picks were and vice versa, or how often he made a good pick? And could you not judge him on the players he passed on?

Look at the Monroe draft. Monroe right now is the best player to come out of that entire draft. Nobody picked behind Monroe is better. He nailed it. Then again, what if Golden State picks Monroe and Dumars takes Udoh? There are plenty of players picked later in that draft better than Udoh. I think I’ve heard the same argued for Stuckey as well. Not very many players picked after Stuckey turned out to be better.

But then you have the Daye pick. A ton of talent got passed Dumars in that draft. And the Knight pick. The draft might have been weak, but there are players better than Knight that Dumars passed on.

Not horrible. Not Great. Just average. This team is now in a position where we are depending on the draft to get better, so we’re going to need him to be much better than average over the next few drafts.

By: TakMac

TakMac — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:42:29 +0000

I’m not much of a Dumars defender, but I do disagree with the idea that his failure to target positions is a mark against him as a DRAFTER. I think it speaks to the very poor job he’s done at overall roster construction, but I’d rather a guy draft a player he thinks will succeed. If that guy is at a redundant position then the solution is to turn him into a player at a more valuable positions.

E.g. the problem wasn’t taking Afflalo, it was in misevaluating Afflalo and not getting value for him when he was traded.