Margin of error

A 22 year old 2/3 with no demonstrated handle, passing skills, and without out of this world measurables with the 14th pick is a mistake. Simply it is an organizational mistake.  Definitionally anyone who becomes a superstar after the top 10 has been overlooked, they were missing some piece or had some red flag or grew 3 inches after being drafted.  This leads some commenters to make absurd claims like 'its unpredictable' or 'anyone can become that star'.  Hard to predict, and unpredictable are different things, hard to select, and hard to select against are different things.  

Selecting against: If you can't pick the guy out who will become the next Giannis, Kawhi, Butler or Jokic you can still improve your odds dramatically by dropping players who won't become those guys.  

'We aren't drafting for superstars'- then you have made an organizational mistake.  A functional value proposition failure that you need to correct.  How many late lottery picks would you need to trade right now for Giannis?  How about for a 20 year old Giannis?  More than you could ever collect.  Going into this draft the Thunder owned 19 first and 19 second round selections- plus some swap rights- and there hasn't even been a hypothetical discussion about how many it would take to crack open Milwaukee's door and pry Giannis away.  When it comes to generational talents who are willing to stay with their team there is no number of mid to late 1sts that you can package to land them.

Or to put it another way- one single 15th pick in the draft from a few years back is worth more than every pick in the teens in this draft, and the next draft, and the next draft combined.  That, dear reader, is value proposition that can't be passed on but it gets worse.  Those very same guys with the question marks that might, maybe, become an absolute top shelf player will also have the qualities to become starters and rotation pieces at reasonable rates when most of them miss.  

Or to put it another way:  The high floor/low ceiling player is a myth, a fictitious creature invented by draft-nicks to avoid sticking their neck out so they can tout the 'safe' pick.  Question, how could you view a player who only shone after he was older and more experienced than his competition as a safe pick in a league that will be much, much older, stronger, more athletic and more experienced?  'He's a hard worker' cuts both ways, if he required a Herculean effort to succeed in college what is it going to take against the absolute top players in the world?

I thought gym rats were great, aren't they?  Yes, they are great.  19 year old gym rats whose progression in unknown, or 22 year old rats whose effort lead them to dominate the 20 year olds they played with.  You can draft a Dame or a CJ coming out because they showed that they could outscore, outshoot, out assist, out steal and outrebound their competition.  

So fundamentally this pick was wrong, so as I trash it keep that in mind, the player can work out while the pick was entirely incorrect, and meaningfully this shows a failure of understanding an important principle and this bothers me in particular because it looked like a principle that was understood.  Garland, Okoro and Sexton were all still 19 when their rookie years started, each of them less than a month away from being designated a 19 year old for the whole season and Porter Jr actually was 19 for his rookie season.  Only Windler's selection with the 26th pick broke with the path, and the other older players (Wade, Stevens) as UFAs.

___________________________

Player analysis:  Its a good thing there is a rant to start with because as a player there isn't much to talk about with Ochai Agbaji.  He has no real handle, shot creation or passing skills.  4 years of college and his highest assist rate was 3.5 per 100, for reference noted non ball handler, non passer Isaac Okoro averaged 3.7 as a freshman.  He brings only off ball 3 pt shooting and defense as plausible NBA skills to the next level.  

"He gets better every year"- no he didn't, not statistically.  His highest rebound rate, blk rate and 2pt% all came his freshman year which also contained his 2nd highest FT% and FTr, his best steal rate was as a sophomore.  The only regular improvement was in 3pt%- a notoriously noisy stat.  He did shoot >37% on 600+ attempts, which is a decent rate and a decent sample, but he also shot 71% on 300 FTAs.  This is not a sure fire shooting threat.  

"He was better defensively with a lesser offensive load"- is this supposed to make me feel better?  He couldn't be both a medium value offensive player and a good defender in college at the same time?  Is that really more effort than just defending in the NBA?  

Physically there is no hindrance to him defending in the NBA- decent length, average hand size, good leaping, good lane agility score, average sprint speed.