is anyone worried about... Winning too many games?

[CatNation]

Can you guys imagine if we'd have had the draft picks and or pieces to add James Harden to this core group with Kemba, MKG, Mullins, Biz etc.? IF we aren't gonna draft a guy we HAVE to have at least one star guy on this squad to become a legit championship team and that's if our guys continue to develop. I think some of you are already forgetting where we have been with this franchise and letting the wins get to your heads a bit. If we wanted to just make the playoffs what was the point in trading off the whole team a couple seasons ago

Because that was a collection of almost all veteran guys playing in their prime or past prime. This is collection of important pieces that average out to about 24 years old with 2 of the 3 highest PER players on the roster being 22 and 19. The situations aren't comparable at all.

[SJackson1]

we will have cap space to sign an all star in the next couple of years and if you add Kemba, MKG, Mullens, Biz to them we have a strong roster !

[Icky Thump]

Because that was a collection of almost all veteran guys playing in their prime or past prime. This is collection of important pieces that average out to about 24 years old with 2 of the 3 highest PER players on the roster being 22 and 19. The situations aren't comparable at all.

The situation would still be the same. We make playoffs and don't come close to championships. Look around the league.. how many teams out there have a less overall talented team than us? Not very many. We are winning at the moment on hustle and some developing talent which is definitely reason to be excited, considering what we've seen from the Cats in the near past BUT; that alone will never be enough to get a championship and if you want to get mired in playoff sacrificial lamb mode we might as well have stayed the course with the team we had IMO. We need a young star type like Harden at least to add to our young core or we have no real shot in the playoffs.

I'm not sitting here saying I WANT us to tank or want us to lose. This franchise can't stand much more of those type seasons but at the same time we also have to show promise and not a team that will just be at best second round playoff sacrificial lambs to the NBA lords. I just know we NEED a star guy to add to this group and we have to get them somehow. Free agency has NEVER been kind to us but Cho has done well so maybe he can go get us a stud for the long term whether its maneuvering through the draft or somehow FA.

[BrotherDave]

I think we're a little too fixated on the number of wins. It doesn't matter if we win 15, 20, 25, or 30 games this year as long as we're in the running for a top 5 pick b/c you never know which way the lottery balls are gonna fall. With the way they usually pan out, it's better for us to not be the worst team but just one of the worst teams.

So don't worry about draft position yet, there's plenty of wiggle room to go into tank mode if we don't end up there naturally. Just enjoy the development of the young guys and the new found competitiveness, things will shake out in the end.

[SWedd523]

I think too many people are getting caught up in the current situation and not looking at things objectively. Everybody is ecstatic to be sitting at 5-4 while taking advantage of some struggling teams, but let's face it. Sitting around .500 isn't what Jordan is going for and it most certainly isn't what Cho is going for. The stated goal all along was to be bad enough to amass young talent in the draft and work from there. We've done a fantastic job thus far in our ONE tank season but we're getting too far ahead of ourselves in the desperation to win. You seriously can't hold out for a couple of years if it means the possibility of being a top 5 team versus being a perennial 10-6th seed? Imagine how happy we would all be raking in 50+ wins and being a championship contender instead of simply being "better than we were".

It reminds me of fellow Gamecock students and/or fans. The team has been horrible for many years. Now that we're turning it around and becoming a powerhouse, people are forgetting the fact that we need to keep moving forward. I've seen people talking about how awesome it is to win 9 or 10 games every year, even if it means we aren't in the NT discussion, while I'm going, "Why stop there?" The goal is to win a Championship, so there is no being happy with winning 10 games a year and coming in 2nd in the East. How would Alabama and their fans feel with consistent "really good" seasons instead of consistent "they could beat NFL team" seasons?

All of that to make one simple point. Open your eyes and raise your standards. Stop being fine with good and instead hope we do whatever it takes to be great.


I think people are also so caught up in their raucous to understand the point I (and a few others) are trying to make about draft position. I've watched every game so far and when we win I don't groan or complain, I hoot and holler (and piss my girlfriend off by being too loud). I want the team to win every game they play, and relish the opportunity to talk shit to all of the people on RGM who make fun of us, but I'm not blinded by a good start to the point where I think the best thing for the viability of the franchise is anything but continuing to stockpile high draft picks.

To make a seemingly unrelated metaphor. Let's say you just graduated from high school and were offered an okay job making an average of 40K for the long run, with little chance of advancement. You could take that job and be happy with "solid", or you could delay that gratification, go to college, and have the opportunity to make much more money in the long run. So what do you do? Do you gut it out for 4 (or more) years until you get that college degree and enter the workforce at a higher level with better opportunities for advancement? Or do you stop there and take what you're given? I know what I'd do.


Now for those saying, "look at our history, we've never been able to pick a star! We wouldn't be able to do it now either!" Well, go look at the general history of the draft, or if you're lazy, look at the charts (I'll repost it for the sake of visuals). Constantly picking 8th or later leaves you a very small chance of drafting a difference maker. Drafting 4 or higher, on the other hand, does. Of course our two past top 4 picks haven't exactly become the stars we've hoped they would, but they're much closer to being an outlier than the statistical mean.



Look at how dramatically better a pick in the top 4 is in relation to the rest of the draft. Our folly has been picking too high to have any sort of real statistical chance of drafting a star. Just about every single draft produces a star in the top 4 picks, usually more. The chance of stardom for the other ~56 COMBINED is much lower.

Our history has consistently been, get a little better each year, at least we're winning some games. That has manifested itself in later picks and smaller chances to improve without making cap crippling trades.

2007--8th pick Brandan Wright (traded for Richardson). Top 4 picks were Oden, Durant, Horford, and Conley
2008--9th pick DJ Augustin. Top 4 were Rose, Beasley, Mayo, Westbrook
2009--12th pick Gerald Henderson. Top 4 were Blake, Thabeet, Harden, and Tyreke
2010--16th pick (traded for Lexy). Top 4 were Wall, Turner, Favors, Johnson
2011--9th pick Kemba Walker. Top 4 were Kyrie, Williams, Kanter, Thompson

Now look at our tank season and the results:

2012--2nd pick MKG. 8-12 picks were Terrence Ross, Andre Drummond, Austin Rivers, Meyers Leonard, Jeremy Lamb.


For a small market team like ours, we don't have the ability to pay $75+ million for a contender. We don't have the luxury of throwing big money at role players, or trading away future draft picks for older, more expensive veterans. Unfortunately, we have to do it the hard way. And that hard way is through the draft by either getting obscenely lucky with a later pick or playing the numbers and getting a high one or two. MKG may very well be the superstar we've been waiting for and Kemba may very well be the #2 we were hoping for. If so, then this whole discussion is moot. But can you really blame me if I'd rather trade 35 wins and another Gerald Henderson for the shot at giving them somebody like Cody Zeller (to just pick a name) that can really help them make some noise?


That's really about as far as I care to go in the argument because I doubt many people will read that with any sort of level-headed rationality or recognition of gray area. But for those like spectre or beagle who seem to be misunderstanding my benevolence and hopes for "the greater good", I hope I laid out my platform a little more coherently. Back to your regularly scheduled hissy fits.

[spectre]

I don't think we have a #1 option yet but we certainly appear to have guys in the #2/#3 range which is fantastic. As I said somewhere before I think you "know" pretty much right off the bat whether you have that kind of player. Love to be wrong, but as it's hard to get what we appear to have I'm pretty happy as it is.

I can't speak for Beagle, but:

Rest assured, the losses will come and we'll be lottery bound but this start is just what the players, the franchise and we as fans needed.

is what I think too. We NEEDED this start, not only for the players but for the fans & the FO as well. Fans will get behind this product and for the most part they'll stick with them when the losses start piling up because of the way they're playing. We won't be the worst team but we'll still have plenty of lotto balls...and so what if we don't get the top pick? After the last 2 years I have plenty of faith that Cho will make the most out of whatever we get pick wise.

Swedd you don't have to explain your position to me but I did read every bit of that long ass post. Fell asleep twice...but I finished it all.

[OfficialBobcatsHD]

hopefully we won't be in a position to draft him, or this franchise would have taken 10 steps backwards.

What makes you say that? When i see him offensively (skill wise)...I see carmelo at 17 and 18...dude will be a stud (baring injuries)

[dnbman]

In the 8 or 9 seasons that the team has been here we have had 1 season when we made the playoffs..aside from that season our best record in any other season was 35-47...we had a cpl seasons with win totals in the low 30's.. a cpl in the 20's..1 season with 18 and 1 season with 7 wins..my point being that we havent had many seasons where in reality we were in the playoff hunt..therfor we didnt miss out on draft picks bc of winning to much....we have had plenty of high draft picks...we have missed out on great players bc of terrible GM moves and terrible bust draft picks

Other than Morrison and maybe May, our draft picks haven't been that big of busts. We got what a team typically gets with those picks. However, after the first three seasons, we got picks 8, 9, 12, and 9 as our highest picks. Though we seem to have made out well with Kemba, you typically don't get a franchise type guy with those type of picks. When I say we were sniffing the playoffs, we were typically a few games out of the playoff race in a weak East, which made us have slightly higher picks than the teams that didn't make it in the west. However, we were never really terrible like the teams that got top picks. I'll defer to Swedd's epic post that fleshes this out idea out better.

As I said, I'm happy to win games, but I'd like to see us get one more high pick before we really hit the gas.

[Pepperz]

Swedd, its common sense that you are more likely to get a better talent with the 1st pick compared to the 31st pick. Thats the point of the whole draft. We dont see eye to eye on the talent we have now, thats the issue. You feel these players have limited ceilings and will be only so good so you think we need a Wiggins to win it all and I dont think so. These guys are young and have made great strides to improve. We can even use your same example of OKC, they developed their talent. Harden was viewed as an ok pick but he was developed into the star he is now. Westbrook was considered a reach but look what he developed too. Its a two sided coined and you know that. Its not only about draft position on getting quality talent but how we develop that player we drafted as well.

MKG has been playing great basketball for a rookie. Kemba is starting to come into his own. Mully is an offense threat. Biz is still a project. There is nothing stopping these guys from getting better. Each one of these players have a chip on their shoulder and have something to prove. They all have great work ethics. So lets watch the players develop into a quality team. We will get more quality talent as the years go.

[Zoolander]

Not worried. It's a loong season. Even though there are many young legs on the roster, we must remember that last year our rookies didn't experience a full 82 game nba season. Already this year, there are two more rookies who are playing significant minutes who haven't played a full NBA season either. I think it's gonna catch up with them sooner or later. Those three hour practices and the fast pace the veterans are playing is really going to wear on them.

So I'm not worried. Because when all that catches up to them, it will look like they're tanking again.