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I'm by no means Walter Clayton Jrs biggest fan, I like him, i'd be happy with drafting him, but I'm not sold he's some star or anything. That being said, inspired by your comment I went to barttorvik to look for similar statistical profiles to him, and now granted I used arbitrary cut off points.. (if you're interested it was: Games Played ≥ 15; Assist % ≥ 20; Ast/TO Ratio ≥ 1.5; 2P FG % ≥ 0.5; 3P FG % ≥ 0.37; 3PA/100 Poss ≥ 12; Free Throw % ≥ 0.8) ..but the only drafted player that met those thresholds (that, again, I derived from Walter Clayton Jrs profile) was 2012 Damian Lillard. But, there were also a bunch of undrafted, non prospect, scoring PGs guys like Max Abmas in 2021, Steven Ashworth in 2023 etc. If you lower some of the thresholds slightly to account for an element of randomness, and filter only for draft picks (because otherwise you get a long long list of random names and filtering for draft picks is kind of short hand for filtering out guys who played in weird low conferences or never had NBA athleticism to be considered a prospect) you get names like: Coby White Jimmer Fredette Trae Young Klay Thompson Cameron Payne Isaiah Cannan Shelvin Mack Jared Butler (Just FYI I feel like we should asterix Trae Young, and to a certain extent Lillard and Thompson because they all scored on more volume than Clayton did and I think were all more clearly NBA caliber offensive creators hence why all were high draft picks) It's a weird list that I think helps to identify the difficulty in evaluating a guy like Clayton, because there have been a lot of star NCAA guards that weren't great NBA players... But he was also statistically very impressive and he lead a team to a national championship which adds sort of 'intangible' points.

Personally don't care where he went to college or what excites the fans on draft day and I don't think that should be factored into decisions. I just want to pick the best basketball player. Winning excites the fans. Fans booed the draft pick of Franz Wagner.

10 Teams passed on SGA. He wasn’t a clear Top 5 pick at all. Not even talked about, mainly due to physical limitations. you had multiple players drafted after SGA, who were ranked higher in mocks leading up to the draft. Namely Miles Bridges, Michael Porter,even Zaire Smith. I guarantee you that we’d have drafted Vassell or Haliburton if they would have fell to us. At least it was reported! Anfernee Simons drafted in the 20s that year. We wanted Trae or Luka in that draft, focused to draft up. We had no chance. If anything you could say winning meaningless games with EP and the core was really killing us. I remember how Dallas tanked so crazy hard. We played them twice and they sat about anybody who could score a basket. That’s what i criticize. And as far as me. The way the draft went i was torn on Maxey or Cole. Ultimately i got hyped for Cole and thought he’d develop into a Kemba Walker 2.0. Which honestly i still think he can have that type of impact.

Apparently Celtics are willing to listen to offers for Derrick White. Can I interest you in Jonathan Isaac, Cole Anthony (to a third team) and a bunch of picks? Lol

Incidentally here are some names that JI + Cole gets you to in the region of salary matching (NOTES: this is not a comment on whether any of these would or should be targets, some names are marginally under or over matching so would potentially require incidental other pieces to make work). JI + Cole only: Dejounte Murray Kristaps Porzingis CJ McCollum Andrew Wiggins Derrick White RJ Barrett Anfernee Simons Devin Vassell Terry Rozier Tobias Harris John Collins Nic Claxton Trey Murphy Then if you presume we'd also be willing to give up Jett in a trade like this then... JI + Cole + Jett: Jrue Holiday Immanuel Quickly Jerami Grant Jordan Poole Tyler Herro

I really hope that KCP has some value still around the league (contenders) as I really see trading him as the only solution to stop the Suggs is a PG illusion (no way there're enough SG minutes for both if we keep them). KCP + fillers+picks for a PG should be our priority IMO, but I fear FO doesn't see it the same way. Suggs is the other player we would need to give up for getting something valuable back, but I fully understand it's an hard decision. The package made with our "unwanted" players (basically all the ones that doesn't perform in playoffs) with short contracts + picks would be interesting only for teams that are rebuilding or with the top priority of avoiding luxury tax and apron in the future.

Anybody who thinks this mngt. will get this draft correct then needs to look at the mvp this year. Glad this mngt decided that Bamba was better. Great talent evaluating. It’s incredible to me that any of you guys and gals have any faith in Weltman.