Why not just draft the guy you traded for in the 1st place?
Yeah, that one seemed bizarre to me, too. I’m guessing New Jersey thought Dallas was going to draft the guy they wanted if they didn’t move up. There have been so many trades I can hardly keep this all straight. There’s the big trade between Charlotte, Milwaukee and Sacramento, and Minnesota is making all manner of trades, although I’m not sure what they’re doing.
I meant in general, it just so happened the NBA Draft tonite had such a trade.
It’s only confusing when you don’t state the entire trade.
The actual trade was New Jersey’s #27 pick AND a future 2nd-round pick for Dallas’s #25 pick.
Which makes perfect sense.
I believe it’s so they don’t have to pay him as much as a rookie. The further down the draft you are the lower the minimum starting pay is.
In general that’s why it happens. The GM of Team A wants a particular player but feels pretty sure Team C will pick that player if they gets the chance. So he makes an agreement with Team B, who is picking before C, to trade for B’s pick if that player is still available when B is on the clock. In this situation it sounds like the Nets gave away a second round pick for almost nothing, but I guess they wanted JaJuan Johnson.
I’m guessing that wasn’t much of a factor here. The difference between the 25th and 27th pick is less than $50,000 a year and I’m not sure that pay scale will exist under the new labor agreement. It’s true that if you’re picking in the top five and you’re pretty sure the guy you want will still be available at 10, you can save some more significant money by moving down.
Rather, the Nets wanted MarShon Brooks. The Celtics got JaJuan Johnson in the trade.
Even stranger, I thought, was that the 2nd round pick the Celtics got isn’t until 2014. What, is there some 16-year-old high school kid they really have their eye on? A 2nd round pick three years away seems almost worthless.
They didn’t get the pick because they’re targeting someone. You can’t project who you will take with a second round pick in three years. It’s just an extra pick you can use to fill a need or trade to someone else later on.
I was being a bit facetious. The value of a pick drops, however, the farther away it is. Three years in the first round maybe seems worthwhile. Three years away in the second seems like New Jersey threw in a pair of old Keds and a deflated basketball into the trade.
There’s a good chance the Celtics will still be a successful team in three more years, so the pick isn’t that vital. The Nets, who knows. It does look like they gave away the pick for almost nothing, but I guess they wanted the guy enough that it didn’t matter.
There’s an even better,even certain, chance that Garnett, Allen, and maybe Pierce will be gone by then, so another second-rounder might be somebody they could actually use in rebuilding.
And remember, they got the pick basically for free.