Minnesota Sports Forum

So, the "What if we deal Wiggins and our #1 pick for Boogie" thread got me thinking. I get that we all want our draft picks to come in and be All Stars from day one. And we've all seen instances where were guys never improve or even regress. But I was curious to go back in Wolves history to see how many years it took for our draft picks to have their "best season" and what age they were at that time.

First - my sample: I wanted a sample of ten 1st round picks. We're in the 27th year of the Franchise. But I felt like anything after the Love Draft (2008) should be excluded because guys are still young and may not have had their best year yet. Example Rubio (2009) is still only 25. I felt comfortable including Love because he's now 27 and his last year with the Wolves was historically good (I can't imagine him having a better season). Oh, and obviously we went through a period of no first round picks thanks the Joe Smith scandal, so you'll see a gap in years to reach my sample of 10.

Second - I'll define how I determined "Best Season". I simply used Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). IMO, this is the best overall stat to use for the purpose of this exercise. No stat is perfect. But I think if you check my "best season" picks, it works and there shouldn't be too many disagreements.

Lastly - I chose to exclude guys who had brief careers i.e. McCants, Paul Grant etc. I felt there was not enough data for those players and including them would just skew results.

Here's my results:

[table]
[tr]
[th]Draft Year[/th]
[th]Player[/th]
[th]Best Season[/th]
[th]Age during Best Year[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1992[/td]
[td]Laettner[/td]
[td]5[/td]
[td]27[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1993[/td]
[td]Rider[/td]
[td]5[/td]
[td]26[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1994[/td]
[td]Marshall[/td]
[td]10[/td]
[td]30[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1995[/td]
[td]Garnett[/td]
[td]9[/td]
[td]27[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1996[/td]
[td]Marbury[/td]
[td]9[/td]
[td]27[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1998[/td]
[td]Nesterovic[/td]
[td]6[/td]
[td]27[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]1999[/td]
[td]Szczerbiak[/td]
[td]3[/td]
[td]24[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

Note: Had to make two tables due to table size limits:

[table]
[tr]
[th]Draft Year[/th]
[th]Player[/th]
[th]Best Season[/th]
[th]Age During Best Year[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]2006[/td]
[td]Foye[/td]
[td]8[/td]
[td]30[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]2007[/td]
[td]Brewer[/td]
[td]7[/td]
[td]27[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]2008[/td]
[td]Love[/td]
[td]6[/td]
[td]25[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

Based on my sample of 10, it takes on average 7 years for players to peak (aka have their best year). And the average age during that season was 27. My sample supports what I think is the generally accepted "prime" of athletic careers (25 - 30). Our "Big 3" of Towns, Wiggins, LaVine are 20.

My conclusion: Fans have to patient. And the Wolves have to keep these three guys together.

Terrific post CD. We have time, patience is the way to think right now. Add something every year and let the core mature together.

Carlos Danger wrote:My conclusion: Fans have to patient.

You are one demanding SOB.

TheSP wrote:

Carlos Danger wrote:My conclusion: Fans have to patient.

You are one demanding SOB.

:d :thumb:

You're accusing Wolves fans of being impatient! We've every right to be lol.

But I see where you are coming from.

Excellent post. We will have three guys peaking at the same time. I think we need to keep the big three together. Build around those three.

Good observation, although my one quibble is that just because Foye's best season was long after his early years with Minnesota, he's still just a bench guard. Same with Brewer. Neither dramatically changed from their younger years to "middle age". They are still fundamentally the same players, with a few incremental improvements along the way.

Look at Ricky Rubio. He is having his best season of his career by most measures. Yet the imprint he left as a rookie looks very similar to the ones he leaves now on games. The good news is that Ricky was a very good rookie. Now he's a slightly better veteran.

So yeah, I think patience with this roster makes sense for the most part, but I feel like we generally know the outline of a player's game and who they are fairly early in their career.

I guess I don't understand why, if a deal is on the table (like the Cousins one for example), we wouldn't want to get better now. Your table says we're 7 years away from our guy's peak play. Why should we build with role players around them and wait 7 years if we could add guys in their peak performing years now and still have our "Big 3" peak in 7 years? Patience is important, but you can't build a team now to all peak together in 7 years. Nobody's saying trade the farm for an Al Jefferson type veteran. We're talking about adding the best Center in the league in Cousins. Or going after guys like Conley, Horford, Batum, etc. in FA who can play major roles to help us win now and then get out of the way in 7 years for our "Big 3". Why are we in role player mode already around 3 20 year olds? You're supposed to take advantage of rookie contracts, not wait them out to pay top dollar and then have nothing left to spend if you find out you actually still need another piece or two. We can always go over the cap to re-sign our guys. We can't go over to sign FA's so get them now when you have the money and go over the cap to re-sign our own guys when it's time.

khans2k5 wrote:I guess I don't understand why, if a deal is on the table (like the Cousins one for example), we wouldn't want to get better now. Your table says we're 7 years away from our guy's peak play. Why should we build with role players around them and wait 7 years if we could add guys in their peak performing years now and still have our "Big 3" peak in 7 years? Patience is important, but you can't build a team now to all peak together in 7 years. Nobody's saying trade the farm for an Al Jefferson type veteran. We're talking about adding the best Center in the league in Cousins. Or going after guys like Conley, Horford, Batum, etc. in FA who can play major roles to help us win now and then get out of the way in 7 years for our "Big 3". Why are we in role player mode already around 3 20 year olds? You're supposed to take advantage of rookie contracts, not wait them out to pay top dollar and then have nothing left to spend if you find out you actually still need another piece or two. We can always go over the cap to re-sign our guys. We can't go over to sign FA's so get them now when you have the money and go over the cap to re-sign our own guys when it's time.

You don't have to wait 7 years. Just because you might peak around age 27, doesn't mean you aren't close to that level from 23 - 26. If we could make a good trade involving our #1 pick this year I'd have no problem doing it. But let's face it, we still have some growing pains to go through. I think we can make the playoffs next year, but we most likely aren't going to be a top 8 team in the league. It's a process, and that process takes time and requires some patience.

I don't think we need to trade. I would like to see us sign a legit player or two. The changing cap is going to line up perfectly for us, plus I anticipate the new CBA will be even better for players. I say we look to add a star player in their prime and continue with the patience.