longstrangetrip wrote:monsterpile wrote:Camden0916 wrote:jake_elwood wrote:I'm not saying we shouldn't re-sign Rose. If he keeps up near this level of production, we should definitely try to. I'm not saying we shouldn't wait and see how we develop. But, moving forward with this core, SOMETHING needs to happen to make us more than a first round out for the only time besides 2004. Maybe we can strike gold in the draft. I hope so. But, when was the last "good" pick we made? KAT doesn't count. Kevin Love?
I get that people don't want to include No. 1 overall picks as "good picks" because you're typically looking for picks that were considered hidden gems or steals, but make no mistake about it, Towns was a great pick. We've seen the other side of the coin -- where No. 1 picks are busts or just never become good players. Look at Anthony Bennett, Markelle Fultz, and even Andrew Wiggins. You still don't think Towns was a good pick?
Not to mention, there were a number of posters here and draft "experts" that weren't sold on Towns being the best choice. If you remember, plenty of people had their eyes on Jahlil Okafor or D'Angelo Russell, as well as the smaller group that saw Porzingis being in the conversation.
I'll add that Lavine was clearly a good pick. I think most here are pretty happy with the Okogie selection also.
Meanwhile the idea that this is just a playoffs and our team for sure is something I don't agree with and I say that knowing there isn't a certainty we even get in. What if we get the 8th seed but we face one of the other teams not named the Warriors? What if we end up the 6th seed? What about an even higher seed? Those things are all possible. Likely? No but there is over half the season left and we are easily in the hunt we should be pushing towards making something happen here.
Derrick Rose is an example although an unusual circumstance of how you can improve your team in addition to the draft and typical free agency. You need to find some undervalued players and get something out of them and some become VERY important. Against a number of teams when healthy the bench really does some damage. This team has legit talent to win games. Meanwhile there is enough options to improve via the draft and otherwise to get this team to a higher level.
I think "in my opinion" would be more accurate than "clearly", because there are many who would disagree. In my opinion, Zach Lavine was not a good pick. He was a lottery pick, and yet he has consistently been a minus player his entire career. It's interesting to me that the Wolves got better when he got hurt two years ago, and the horrible Chicago Bulls went 3-2 in his recent injury absence including two road wins. I don't know how much more evidence we need to conclude Zach Lavine has been a far below average basketball player who doesn't help his teams win.
I get where you are coming from LST. I'll add that part of the thinking of saying he was clearly a good pick was I think it's fair to say that he was a significant asset in that Bulls trade for Butler. There were 2 NBA franchises (even if they were poor ones) that were willing to spend nearly 20 million a year last offseason to get him. The guy had a bunch of value even coming of an injury marred season. I think he was a good pick just in terms of value/potential. I think picking a guy at #13 with the type of value Lavine had was a pretty good pick.