FanPost

Brad Stevens is abusing teams' obsession with first round picks to make this team a contender


It is (or should be) a well known fact that draft picks are like cars: they depreciate the moment you take them off the lot. The vast majority of first round picks would not go for their draft slot nowadays, even considering a select few would command more. Especially outside the lottery, a player who isn't considered a total steal would hardly fetch a first round pick at all. So, reasonably, there is one conclusion: if you are a playoff team, trade away as many first round picks as you can because getting that trade value back by drafting is a crapshoot, at best. The Celtics just traded for Malcom Brodgon with a late first, Nesmith, Theis, and bench extras.

If that pick was already drafted, no way this deal would have been done. Brad knows that. One thing he learned from his predecessor's mistakes is to not get too hung up on having picks in the draft when you can just build a core by selling away your draft picks and taking a bunch of shots on the undrafted/G-League/international circuit. Brad's mentality seems to be that there is enough talent out there that there isn't much value in trying to wait and see if a player is going to develop when you could just go out and trade for talent and pick up some interesting pieces on the market for free. Sure, sometimes you regret it a la Chauncey Billups, but other times, you are trading away Wally Szczerbiak and Jeff Green.

Brad is constantly playing the averages here. The value of an open roster spot to slot a deep bench veteran or an interesting young player who hasn't gotten traction yet is actually worth something. He gets a lot of "now" assets in his trades: move quantity for quality and speculation for known value. Get open roster spots to play with so that you can immediately bring in players you think you might like who you are evaluating at a higher level of competition than college. It is an unusual way to do it and is partially only possible on a team that is successful, but I think in this situation, it makes so much sense for Brad to abuse just how enamored teams are with the idea of draft picks. Based on how much even late firsts go for, the dream of picking up a steal is probably worth about as much as the pick itself.

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