Good morning. It was super fun to hang out with paid subscribers in the brand new official GMIB Discord server during the NBA Draft — we’ll try to do group chats again as the season begins. No links at the bottom here as I haven’t had a chance to read much draft or trade coverage yet — plenty of links tomorrow.
Let’s basketball.
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Impression, Sunrise; Claude Monet
Even the smartest NBA analysts don’t actually know who won or lost on Draft Day right now. We write Winners and Losers columns for the benefit and to the detriment of team fans who don’t really follow the draft enough to know more than the top 10 players or so, and want a quick shorthand on whether their team is an embarrassment or not. We writes Winners and Losers columns as a simple way to organize our thoughts amid the chaos, to try to make sense of what it plainly nonsensical. We do it … for the clicks. There’s no shame in that. I did it for years! But I don’t have to any more.
So instead of trying to make sense of what happened on a fairly chaotic Draft Day amid a totally chaotic week, I’m going to lay out a few teams that did some interesting things that I wish to consider more deeply as we transition toward free agency in, uh, 36 hours or so.
Sixers
The Philadelphia 76ers are the story of the 2020 Draft Day. Before the draft, the Sixers sent Al Horford with a 2020 second-round pick and a future first to the Thunder for Danny Green and Terrence Ferguson. During the draft, the Sixers sent Josh Richardson and a second-round pick to the Mavericks for Seth Curry. In the draft itself, barring any delayed or miscommunicated trades, the Sixers added Tyrese Maxey, Isaiah Joe and Paul Reed.
In one day, Daryl Morey flipped Al Horford’s huge contract and bad fit, Josh Richardson’s substantial contract and iffy fit, one future first-round pick and a few second-rounders in this draft for a veteran 3-and-D wing on a short contract with three titles as a full-time starter AND one of the best shooters in the league on a great contract.
That is a killer 12-hour reset of some of Philly’s constraints and weaknesses without really mortgaging the team’s future in any way. The Sixers still have a bloated cap sheet, but the roster isn’t about to burst and Green and Curry are really slick fits. I dare say that Philly is back in the conversation at the top of the Eastern Conference … especially as other top East contenders (with the exception of Milwaukee, who we will get to) remain static for now.
Sixers, that was a rather intriguing Draft Day!
Pistons
Detroit trading Bruce Brown for Dzanan Musa earlier this week should have indicated that Troy Weaver and Co. were tearing it down in Motown. We received further evidence of that on Wednesday.
The Pistons took Killian Hayes at No. 7 — a high upside guard who has been playing in France and is real young. They flipped Luke Kennard for the draft rights to Saddiq Bey from Villanova and picked up Isaiah Stewart from Washington via a pick collected for taking on Trevor Ariza’s contract for the Rockets.
I don’t know what if any value Blake Griffin has among other NBA teams. He should probably start packing up just in case. Derrick Rose and Tony Snell should definitely start packing. These moves do not indicate to me that the Pistons are going to pay to keep Christian Wood. Is Svi Mykhailiuk, acquired in February 2019, going to be the longest tenured Piston on opening night?!
Maybe we’ll be surprised and Weaver only moved Brown because he likes Musa’s potential and only moved Kennard because he wanted a shot at Bey. Maybe he’ll keep some veteran talent around while letting the youngsters, including Svi and Sekou Doumbouya, develop. But that’s not the sense I got for Weaver’s Wednesday moves.
Warriors
Before the draft, the Warriors and all of us received the terrible news that Klay Thompson suffered a lower leg injury in a pick-up game early Wednesday and needed to be helped off the floor. An MRI is scheduled. It sounds bad and is heartbreaking.
The Warriors did the expected in the draft itself, not finding a suitable trade to move down or out of the No. 2 pick and taking James Wiseman. You can’t ask for a better situation to step into for a center who hasn’t played more than three games competitively in 18 months or so. Golden State will give Wiseman all of the resources he needs to succeed, and a chance to play in meaningful games from Day 1.
We haven’t seen a contender land a pick this high in a while, and while the Thompson injury news certainly dampens title hopes for the Warriors depending on the severity, it will be fascinating to watch how Steve Kerr handles Wiseman’s inevitable growing pains, what should be a particularly brutal rookie wall and balancing individual wins over development.
This is just a really interesting situation we find the Warriors in, and it’ll be interesting to see it play out.
Kings
The Kings will probably universally considered a “winner” as they landed Tyrese Haliburton at No. 12, below where many of the analytics-minded analysts had him. What’s interesting to me is how over-the-top the Kings have been in excitement for Haliburton — ESPN’s draft broadcast showed the Kings war room erupting in glee when he fell to them, and it didn’t really look all that fake or staged. Haliburton and De’Aaron Fox will likely fit well together, but I wonder what this portends for Buddy Hield’s future. He’s a great shooter and a better scorer than Fox or Haliburton project to be. Bogdan Bogdanovic is almost assuredly still out (we’ll get to him). Maybe Fox is the scoring punch down the road. But I’m intrigued by what’s going to happen in this backcourt, if not now than a year from now.
The Kings picked up Robert Woodard and Jahmi’us Ramsey in the second round, and they’re building a bit of an identity. Go Kings?
Hornets
LaMelo Ball on a team owned by Michael Jordan. This should be nothing if not entertaining. Godspeed to you all.
Crashing Down
Before the draft reports surfaced that the Bogdan Bogdanovic sign-and-trade deal between the Bucks and Kings was in deep peril … because Bogdanovic hadn’t agreed to the Bucks’ purported contract offer? And now the deal is completely dead?!
This seems completely absurd: the Bucks, the Kings and Bogdanovic’s camp all knew that Bogdanovic is a restricted free agent as of Friday and would need to sign off on a) going to Milwaukee and b) the contract that Milwaukee would offer. That is took more than 24 hours for Bogdanovic’s lack of agreement to his end of the deal to hit the media is not credible. This does not get leaked and accepted as fact without denials from the Bucks or Kings for 24 hours without Bogdanovic’s camp being on board.
So one of two things are happening here.
The most obvious answer is that the Bucks realized (or were told by the league) that they are in deep s—t by agreeing in principle to a sign-and-trade 72 HOURS BEFORE FREE AGENCY and leaking it to the media so freely. Last year felt like the death knell for concerns about reaching deals before free agency. But this whole roll-out was egregious even by those standards. The Bucks are not supposed to be talking to restricted free agents from other teams on Tuesday, let alone reaching a deal with their teams to bring them in. This reversal feels like a cover-up: the Bucks will push out that the deal is off to cover their bases, but then the two teams will magically find their ways back to each other on Friday or Saturday. Or, if the NBA is mad enough, Adam Silver will sanction the Bucks by telling them they cannot sign and trade for Bogdanovic given their blatant disregard for the rules. (David Stern would have done this. I’m not sure Silver would.)
The second possibility here is that Bogdanovic’s agent knew the Bucks were stepping over the line, heard from other teams after the news broke that they are willing to give Bogdanovic more than what it is apparent the Bucks are giving him based on salary matching (no initial reports put a dollar amount on Bogi’s new contract, which is hella suspicious), and Bogdanovic’s camp then decided to hold the desperate Bucks hostage for more money. This is the roguish explanation, and I love it.
My bet is that Bogdanovic still ends up in Milwaukee with Donte DiVincenzo going to Sacramento. In any case, I hope we get a full and honest accounting of what happened here.
Be excellent to each other.
