The Boxscore Geeks Show: Why the Warriors and Cavaliers won the draft

This Week's Show

Many NBA fans love following the draft each year, but not Dre Alvarez! Tune in for more draft hate and major sports media ridiculousness.

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Show Notes

Patrick is out this week to compete in this year's World Series of Poker. Patrick isn't new to visiting Vegas, here's hoping the trip is fruitful.

Marreese Speights was one of two players that contributed negative wins to the Warriors last seasons. Sadly the Warriors brought him back!

The Warriors selected Kevon Looney with the 30th pick. Not only was he a top Wisconsin highschool prospect(h/t Andrew Sutton), but he also put up good numbers in college.

Reminder, we think that the low first round, in fact, holds the most valuable picks.

With how good rookie contracts are, I don't think any team lost in the draft. Rather, teams lose when they fall for the sunk cost fallacy when prospects don't pan out.

Chauncey Billups said it only took a few practices to realize Darko wasn't ready.

I just find NBA draft grades to be silly. They don't often line up with the logic of the graders. Also, there is grade inflation. If all the players in the lottery get As, then really none of them do!

Phil Jackson was told Porzingis was a once-in-a-lifetime player. Hopefully, he's not the next Andrea Bargnani

The draft is all about controlling players' bargaining power. Most of the common beliefs (e.g. parity and star players) are just fallacies.

People miss how skewed rookie contracts are. For instance, Jimmy Butler's restricted free agency means he can't even negotiate the deal he'd like with the Lakers.

The Celtics tried quite hard to get the 9th pick, offering many draft picks. This trade was ridiculous on both sides. No matter how much either team liked their respective pick (Justise Winslow and Frank Kaminsky),  you can't offer or reject that many picks!

The Cavaliers got a productive player by trading their draft picks. That puts them ahead of most teams in the NBA draft.

The 76ers have been fined $3 million for failing to divulge information about Jrue Holiday's injuries. This opens many questions about how good the medical staff on the standard NBA team is. Additionally, it does bring into question how well Hinkie's future trades will go.

Will fans be upset with Hinkie? Not if he starts winning. Just look at the Warriors.

Chad Ford was retroactively editing his draft grades. A silly plan, all he needed to do was just call all draft picks good.

Jahlil Okafor shows how quick the sports media is to overreact. As mentioned, this is pretty standard for draft time.

Zach Lavine dropped his head to the table when drafted by the Timberwolves last season. Can't blame him. As I said, the draft is a messed up system.

F*** that Guy

We bring back this segment this week. The first is people that call NBA players entitled. It might be true, but there's some very pervasive messages involving race and class in how it's done. Jonathan Weiler wrote a great piece on this.

Kobe Bryant and the media coming to his side in regards to the Larry Nance tweet. Content warning if you listen to the show. I hate talking this subject, but at the same time hate how much the sports media sweeps it under the rug.

Shout Outs

Chauncey Billups gets a shout out for his great interview with Dan Le Batard and Bomani Jones.

Andrew Sutton and the other great comments on the NBA draft.

David Berri (@wagesofwins) and Ari Caroline (@aricaroline) for their excellent analysis of the draft.

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