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The so called high floor guys also have bust potential.
There are no high floor players, just players with limited upside potential because of a lack of athleticism or quickness or shooting form.
Problem is, the Spurs may not be batting cleanup in those drafts. (Hopefully they won't, anyway.)
The so called high floor guys also have bust potential.
There are no high floor players, just players with limited upside potential because of a lack of athleticism or quickness or shooting form.
I think you may be blinded by Knecht's whiteness. He has a good shooting form with high release like Devin. He can jump high. He can do putback dunks in traffic. He has a good handle from being a former point guard.
And what are you telling Wemby's camp after you've struck out for a few years in a row?
Swinging for the fence with each at bat also comes at a cost... and let's be honest, this FO hasn't proven itself to exactly be a power hitter outside of picking #1 overall. Maybe this FO is Ozzie Smith and bunt singles are our strength. Sure, Ozzie would hit the occassional HR (28 career HRs), but not the guy you are sending up to swing for the fences each time.
Every guy they draft will be something of an upside pick. Even if you pick a Knecht, you're hoping he turns out. I compared him to Majerle. Although the comp isn't exact - they're different players, of course - Majerle played for a very minor college with a low SOS for four years and grew into a very, very good complementary player on a team that went to the Finals.
We're in an era where only kids who are freshman or equivalent are thought to have upside. Of course there are differences. I get the point that a guy who has played all four years in college doesn't have much more room to grow. You'd also question why he wasn't good enough to go earlier. But to me there needs to be a market correction in recognizing that a slightly older player with more experience may be a better grab than a Jett Howard or Jalen Hood-Schifino who were attractive because they were young.
It's situational, though. This draft is all role-players, to me, with some hope for more.
To continue with the baseball analogy... you may want to hit a home run, but some drafts throw you nothing but balls in the dirt. You can swing at those and hope for the astronomical longshot that you hit a HR off that (draft Josh Primo)... or you can just take the walk (draft 21 year old Tre Murphy or 22 year old Herb Jones with that pick).
Note: the example above is using 20/20 hindsight so don't take it too literally... but just an example that sometimes the HR swing for the sake of HR swings is an obvious error
Aside of being French, very young and able to shoot 3's, they are quite different players.
Risacher is an oversized wing. He doesn't have that one skill/move that blows you away but he does a lot of different things very well. His BBIQ and feel for the game is also remarkable for an 18 years old. He is just a good basketball player doing the right play at the right time. Physically, I would say he is fine. He isn't as skinny as it seems with already some strength in his lower body. His defense is also good. At 6'9" he obviously isn't as mobile as a 6'5" player but his length help him compensate that. He is playing a well define role with his team and it's up in the air if he can do more but I certainly wouldn't say he has a low ceiling.
Salaün is a stretch PF. His combination of size, strength, mobility, motor and outside shooting is quite unique. Aside of that there are a lot of work to do. He is still raw and his game must be clearly refined. Rebounding is an issue. I'm not sure how low/high is BBIQ is, there just isn't a lot of nuances in his game right now. Defense might end up being his best attribute, he is putting a lot of effort into it and has the physical attributes to be a force on that end. He is the typical gamble that we see each year in the draft.
I wouldn't take Knecht with the Toronto pick. If we made some other move that netted us a lower 1st then I'd seriously consider him. Thats a better spot to go higher floor. As ex said, 'swing for the fences' with those top picks.
It's a solid point. What do you think about Kyshawn George rising up the boards and his fit?
I haven't looked as close at him as most because he's just recently started getting noticed. I can certainly see why he's rising. Kid can shoot, handle the ball, and he's got good mobility on the defensive end even though his technique is still a work in progress. Like Salaun, he's had a relatively recent growth spurt. He looks a little timid to me, but that could simply be a product of him adjusting to his 'new lengthy body'. I need to watch more film, but he's intriguing for sure. If his timidity is more a product of understanding his body rather than not having that dawg in him he could be a real high ceiling guy.
As for fit, anybody with tight handles, length, and that shot will fit just about anywhere.
Last edited by mo7888; 02-15-2024 at 03:53 PM.
Kyshawn George backstory is quite interesting.
He is Swiss and his dad is a Canadian former pro player. In 2019, he joined french team Chalon (like Sefolosha and Capela before him) and was 5'9". Between 2019 and 2022, he barely played mostly because of a growth spurt that created knee issues. In 2022/23, he showed some promises as a 6'7" PG in french second division before joining college last summer. As a result of all that, he is quite old for a freshman (born in December 2003).
What do we mean when we say 'upside' or 'swinging for the fences'? Seems like terms that mean slightly different things to different people.
For example, no one thought Jalen Williams was a swing for the fences pick. He had a great, multi-faceted junior year at Santa Clara, but no one thought he'd be a home run. Ousmane Dieng was the home run swing. Pokusevski was a home run swing.
theres no precise definition but the gist is usually somebody who is young and in some way uniquely athletic. the idea being we have no clue just how good the end product could be. even though the player isnt particularly good now. its a high risk high reward selection. think salaun. last year, timvp described wesley as a home run swing, as a player who simply wasnt very good at the time, but had some athletic traits that really could be molded into something remarkable if he gets it right
as opposed to a more sure thing who seems like they're pretty close to what the finished product will look like. such as dalton knecht. at 23 yo, the amount if improvement you expect is usually not as great.
sometimes the guy people felt is a "safe" pick ends up becoming a star. and sometimes the guy we thought was a home run swing just becomes a solid role player. its not a perfect science.
At draft time Number Two was supposed to just be a high floor role player iirc.
I think the best recent examples of homerun swing versus "safe pick" are Bilal Coulibaly versus Jaime Jaquez.
Jaquez is having the better rookie season, but Coulibaly hasn't been a complete disappointment. Who knows how that will look in 3 years time. Chris Duarte was a "high floor" pick who had a great rookie season but has fallen off a cliff (I have no clue what happened here... injuries?).
I think when we're talking about swinging for the fences we're talking about someone that you believe can be a top 3 guy on a championship contender. Do you see the potential for a guy to reach that if he puts it all together... contrast that with a high floor (single or double up the middle) guy who has a marketable skill but is limited in other areas or maybe he even has a few marketable skills that aren't elite but he probably doesn't have a lot of room for improvement. As spurraider said, there's not a precise definition, so you can't absolutely quantify it.
The three examples you gave, were in order: home run, strike out, strike out. JW is the very definition of swinging for the fence. You yourself said no one thought he’d be a home run. It’s not swinging for the fences when you draft a Wemby. Everyone knows he’s a HR
Towards the top of the draft, there are usually 1-3 high floor, high ceiling players. There aren’t any players that clearly meet that criteria, at least not yet. The next best category, to my mind, is high ceiling low floor, followed by low ceiling high floor. My definition of swinging for the fence is to draft a player who is high celing, low floor.
No.
We can discuss what some of these terms are, but Jalen Williams was absolutely, 100% NOT a swing for the fences. It was going for a contributing player who was more likely to have tapped out his potential.
Swinging for the fences means chopping at the ball hoping to launch it. Mostly you just strike out.
To me, it means hacking at an unlikely outcome, but a very fruitful outcome. A player with a high ceiling who is far from it, or it doesn't seem likely to happen, but for some reason you've got to do it (multiple chances, desperation).
What makes things complicated is that there are aspects to every pick that are very fluid. Whether you have more than one pick, the salary slot, opportunity costs. Swinging for the fences at #2 (James Wiseman) is different than swinging for the fences at #11 (Ousmane Dieng). With the #11 pick you're missing out on fewer potentially good players and paying $4.1 million a year vs. $9 million a year, not to mention assorted ac ulating headaches in the seasons ahead.
A Jalen Williams was a fairly safe pick, going for a double that wound up going yard. Maybe it was earlier than some would have picked him, but he wasn't identified as having high upside.
And then there are questions of best player available vs. fit. At some points, going for fit is the better move. At some points, going less for upside is a better move.
One of the massive problems the Spurs face is that they're playing so many unseasoned players. Introducing a rookie into a veteran team, the vets can make up for rookie mistakes. With a team of inexperienced players, they're making mistakes all the time (not setting picks right, not reading the flow of the game), and often it's more than one guy making mistakes at the same time. That's extremely hard to fix. You're having to screw down countless issues over and over, much less identifying what's going on.
tl;dr:
To me there are picks that seem to have decent but not outrageously good ceilings who will be expensive but are great fits (Zaccharie Risacher).
There are moderate ceiling players who will be expensive but are not great fits (Alexandre Sarr).
There are moderate ability/home run swing players who will be expensive but are great needs (Nicola Topic is a home run if he plays defense/learns to shoot).
There are guys who are probably swinging for doubles (Dalton Knecht), who might help the floor of the total team, i.e. reduce the heaps of ulative, compounding mistakes.
Then there are the rest. Some seem lower ceiling but with potential promise, if less than most years (Reed Sheppard), high potential but greater bust potential (Rob Dillingham).
As for who are the possible home run swings, I guess I'd say Ron Holland, Matas Buzelis, Cody Williams, Kyshawn George, Johnny Furphy. A number of things have to go right with them to become the stars you hope they can become while their floors may be worse than some of the others.
It's a matter of strategy and knowing where your team stands. If you've got Timmy, Manu, and Tony then going high floor makes tons of sense. When you sit where we are and need star talent then taking that big cut makes tons of sense.
And yes, there will always be a few guys that you think are high floor that end up having higher than anticipated ceilings (Kawhi, Klay etc) and there are plenty of high ceiling guys that bust.
Edited to add: I pretty much agree with your list categorizing players, but I would add JaKobe and Salaun to the possible homerun list.
Sure. My point is that continually hacking at the ball isn't going to help the team overall. In fact, it starts hurting bad franchises because you start having to pay more and more high rookie scale salaries to multiple guys. The Spurs are in astoundingly good shape because we got our franchise player on our first technical tank year without having any bad rookie salaries. Sochan at the #9 pick is very manageable.
Anyway. The point is this draft year, when we don't really have any star upside swings. The home run swings I see, really, are Holland, and whether you'd include George, Williams, and/or The Furph.
i dont think teams are really hamstrung by rookie scale salaries at all
That's wrong. Houston is looking at a crunch and already having to think about Jalen Green. It's not the first contract that bites them, it's the next ones.
I am reluctantly on the Sheppard train
I think this draft stinks and am not thrilled about anyone
But this team desperately needs shooting and some decent iq
He's only 6-2 at best and will probably be a bench player most of his career. Really hard to pair him with someone like Trae Young in case that happens.
I'd rather him with the Toronto pick. The more I watch prospects the worse I feel
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