60WinTim wrote:Payne has played poorly, even though he is athletic and hustles. Flip said they made the trade because they trust their scouting. It certainly seems fair to give Payne an off-season and training camp before declaring him a bust and Flip a fool for making the trade (which it could turn out to be).
I'll defend Flip some on this trade even though I don't have much hope for Payne. The reality is that whatever player we would have ended up picking with this draft pick may end up being no better than Payne. The draft is a crapshoot and payne is basically a draft pick we traded a future pick for. This team needed and still needs talent at PF and Flip made a move to add it this season instead of waiting. That part of the trades a ton of sense it's just that Payne hasn't looked good and some people here didn't value him before the trade was made so yeah. Nobody is hoping for Payne to fail and he is cheap and we have him so hopefully he can turn into a solid role player at least.
When we first heard about the trade for Payne I expressed my disappointment. I recall pointing to Payne's mediocre rebounding stats as a college senior. Given Payne's length, athleticism and senior class status, those rebounding stats told us we shouldn't expect much from Payne as a rebounder in the NBA. So we shouldn't be surprised by Payne's pedestrian rebounding thus far with the Wolves. I just wish We still had that future first round pick that Flip gave up for this guy.
60WinTim wrote:Payne has played poorly, even though he is athletic and hustles. Flip said they made the trade because they trust their scouting. It certainly seems fair to give Payne an off-season and training camp before declaring him a bust and Flip a fool for making the trade (which it could turn out to be).
I'll defend Flip some on this trade even though I don't have much hope for Payne. The reality is that whatever player we would have ended up picking with this draft pick may end up being no better than Payne. The draft is a crapshoot and payne is basically a draft pick we traded a future pick for. This team needed and still needs talent at PF and Flip made a move to add it this season instead of waiting. That part of the trades a ton of sense it's just that Payne hasn't looked good and some people here didn't value him before the trade was made so yeah. Nobody is hoping for Payne to fail and he is cheap and we have him so hopefully he can turn into a solid role player at least.
Monster - The value of a future first round pick as a trade asset typically exceeds the value you ultimately get from the players you draft. If Flip based this deal on his confidence in our scouts, consider that Kahn said our scouting staff was unanimous in recommending Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry. And we still have largely the same scouting staff today we had then.
60WinTim wrote:Payne has played poorly, even though he is athletic and hustles. Flip said they made the trade because they trust their scouting. It certainly seems fair to give Payne an off-season and training camp before declaring him a bust and Flip a fool for making the trade (which it could turn out to be).
I'll defend Flip some on this trade even though I don't have much hope for Payne. The reality is that whatever player we would have ended up picking with this draft pick may end up being no better than Payne. The draft is a crapshoot and payne is basically a draft pick we traded a future pick for. This team needed and still needs talent at PF and Flip made a move to add it this season instead of waiting. That part of the trades a ton of sense it's just that Payne hasn't looked good and some people here didn't value him before the trade was made so yeah. Nobody is hoping for Payne to fail and he is cheap and we have him so hopefully he can turn into a solid role player at least.
Monster - The value of a future first round pick as a trade asset typically exceeds the value you ultimately get from the players you draft. If Flip based this deal on his confidence in our scouts, consider that Kahn said our scouting staff was unanimous in recommending Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry. And we still have largely the same scouting staff today we had then.
Future trade assets are nice but look at the roster right now they needed talent now when they could give them an opportunity to play and they liked a guy and had a chance to get him for a pick in the future. I wasn't sold on Payne either he made sense based on his size and skills but I wasn't excited about him around the draft or the trade.
As for the draft scouts (I don't have supreme confidence either but...) they are not all the same as the Kahn era and wasn't there one scout that came out waving his scouting sheets wildly and said he did not have Flynn ranked highly once Kahn had left and then threw his scouts under the bus? I am not claiming the Wolves are genius scouts far from it but I have some decent confidence in them based on the draft picks they have made. My point is that the trade makes sense Payne has just sucked. I value draft picks very highly however I feel like people are to a certain extent blowing the value of that pick higher and that's because Payne has looked so bad. If we had traded for someone that was maybe more productive like Mitch McGary has been people would probably be fine with the trade. Like I said Payne was basically a draft pick and so far we have been burned. If the Wolves can't recover from that and find an average starting PF some other way than we are absolutely screwed. It's pretty easy to feel like this trade sucked and say here we go again with the bad moves etc but Dieng Bazz and Lavine give me some hope people in this franchise have some sort of clue as to what they are doing with talent. That level of success is only so confidence inspiring but it's also refreshing based on the futility we have experienced. The point I am making is that people are ripping the trade period when it's really that people didn't like Payne before the trade and even less afterwards. The idea of the trade acquiring a young big was a good idea just at this point poorly executed because the player we got has been pretty awful. I suppose I am splitting hairs and I don't even know why I am sticking with this position so soundly (I suppose it's just trying to clarify what I really meant) but let's hope this is one swing and a miss and we can get back on track next year bringing in talent.
However, I was anti-trade from the very start. The trade itself seemed sloppy to me, not to mention I was not a fan of Payne's and that goes back to before the draft.
60WinTim wrote:Payne has played poorly, even though he is athletic and hustles. Flip said they made the trade because they trust their scouting. It certainly seems fair to give Payne an off-season and training camp before declaring him a bust and Flip a fool for making the trade (which it could turn out to be).
I'll defend Flip some on this trade even though I don't have much hope for Payne. The reality is that whatever player we would have ended up picking with this draft pick may end up being no better than Payne. The draft is a crapshoot and payne is basically a draft pick we traded a future pick for. This team needed and still needs talent at PF and Flip made a move to add it this season instead of waiting. That part of the trades a ton of sense it's just that Payne hasn't looked good and some people here didn't value him before the trade was made so yeah. Nobody is hoping for Payne to fail and he is cheap and we have him so hopefully he can turn into a solid role player at least.
I honestly wouldn't have a problem with how Payne is playing right now if it wasn't for a 1st round pick. There's no way you couldn't of gotten him for a 2nd, he wasn't going to play for the Hawks anytime soon, and the Hawks needed to deal him way more then the Wolves needed him. If the Hawks were insistent on a 1st then just walk away. Wolves need as many picks as they can get, wither the draft is a crapshoot or not
I honestly wouldn't have a problem with how Payne is playing right now if it wasn't for a 1st round pick. There's no way you couldn't of gotten him for a 2nd, he wasn't going to play for the Hawks anytime soon, and the Hawks needed to deal him way more then the Wolves needed him. If the Hawks were insistent on a 1st then just walk away. Wolves need as many picks as they can get, wither the draft is a crapshoot or not
The lack of draft picks helped derail the only halfway decent stretch in Wolves history...
Even if you're picking late, you want as many chances as possible to recover from those unfortunate Ndudi Ebi vs. Josh Howard debacles.
Based on what I've heard from inside the organization, here's my take on responsibility for the Dieng, Shabazz, and LaVine picks as well as the Payne trade:
1. LaVine was clearly Flip's guy. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the Wolves took LaVine based primarily on Flip's assessment. He was Flip's guy. The Wolves scouts and others in the organization favored drafting Payne.
2. Shabazz was also primarily a Flip pick. He was Flip's favorite after Oladipo and KCP.
3. Dieng was mainly a consensus pick among the scouts and front office staff. Flip liked him, but he wasn't a guy Flip was in love with like LaVine and Oladipo.
4. The Wolves interest in Payne stemmed primarily from the Wolves scouts and other front office staff, although Flip liked him. So Flip wasn't blowing smoke when he referred to the scouting staff as a basis for the Payne trade. Of course, the decision to trade a future first for Payne is all on Flip in my mind.
My take from all of this is that Flip's judgment for college talent is pretty good. But I can't say the same for the scouts and staff like Rob Babcock who have been around for years. And I'm not sure I have faith in Flip's asset management acumen.
At the end of the day we are a team loaded with young talent. There's just not room to keep adding more and more of it right now outside or our top pick this year. Once we get to finish evaluating Wiggins, Lavine, Dieng, Bazz, Payne and AB we can start thinking about first round picks again. Every year teams buy back into the first round so if we need someone we can get someone. We need to first give our existing roster a fair shake. If we keep using draft picks we are just drafting guys and parking them behind our existing young guys and the new guys won't be able to develop themselves. All our picks are pretty well protected so I don't imagine us paying dearly for missing out on middle of the draft guys.
khans2k5 wrote:At the end of the day we are a team loaded with young talent. There's just not room to keep adding more and more of it right now outside or our top pick this year. Once we get to finish evaluating Wiggins, Lavine, Dieng, Bazz, Payne and AB we can start thinking about first round picks again. Every year teams buy back into the first round so if we need someone we can get someone. We need to first give our existing roster a fair shake. If we keep using draft picks we are just drafting guys and parking them behind our existing young guys and the new guys won't be able to develop themselves. All our picks are pretty well protected so I don't imagine us paying dearly for missing out on middle of the draft guys.
What? There's not enough room to add more young talent? Why because they're expensive and have a short shelf life? That there are 24 hours in the day that Wolves coaches couldn't possibbly develop them all? Because we all know that veteran players also need zero coaching as well. Most ridiculous statement I've herd in a while
