MLB and NBA Draft Strategies

Thad and Ryan pull back the curtain on the high-stakes world of draft day decisions in both the MLB and NBA. Ryan shares the inside story of a pivotal Celtics draft, including how the team handled dropping from the No. 2 to the No. 5 pick. Meanwhile, Thad breaks down the unique strategic approach baseball teams take during their draft process. It’s an insider’s look at how front offices think, plan, and pivot when the pressure is on.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to Rosters Ter Rings alongside Ryan McDonough. I'm
fad Levine. We got such a tremendous outpouring of questions
from our fans and listeners, Ryan, that I thought we'd
dedicate this whole episode to getting to them as many
of those as we possibly can. But in our last episode, Ryan,
you talked about the Knicks and they're firing of Tom Thibodeau,

(00:24):
that it really only made sense if they had a
plan a candidate lined up. Well, how do you assess
the situation a week later?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Both that great to be with you as always, and
it's pretty clear to me at this point that the
New York Knicks did not have a candidate in waiting.
In fact, they've reached out to five current head coaches
around the league for permission, and their teams have all
had the same answer belief, no, no, we're not going
on to allow you to talk to our coach. As
you know of that, there's a lot of downside even

(00:52):
for the team just receiving the call, because if you
received the call and then say no, the agent turns
around to his current franchise, the coaches says, well, you
got to take care of my guy, Now you got
to give them an extension. That seems like that was
the case, is the case with Billy Donovan in Chicago,
and that we know the NIXT history, it is what
it is. New York Knicks have had thirteen head coaches

(01:13):
since Jeff Van Gundy resigned in New York in two
thousand and one. Tom Thibodeaux lasted longer, and I say longer,
I mean just five seasons. But Timms was lasted longer
and was more successful than any Knicks head coach since
Van Gundy, who led the franchise to its last NBA
Finals appearance in nineteen ninety nine. So the k next
seat after firing their most accomplished coach of the two thousands.

(01:37):
A lot of people around leake exactly what you said. Well,
they must have a replacement in mind, and I'll keep
in mind what the Knicks did this year, that just
a month or so ago they beat the defending champion
Boston Celtics. They were just two games away from getting
to the NBA Finals. Frankly, this has been one of
the least successful franchises in the NBA this century. Despite

(01:58):
the fact that they're in New York. Its biggest media market,
So they called about Chicago's Billy Donovan, Houston's Ema Odoka,
Minnesota is Chris Finch, Atlanta's Quinn Snyder, and Dallas as
Jason Kidd. They were rejected on all accounts, so we'll
see who they end up getting.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Fad.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
The Knicks are reportedly interviewing former NBA head coaches Mike
Brown and Taylor Jenkins this week. But you and I,
as former executives, we look at the process. The process
here has been sloppy at best. To me, it seems
like scattershot and like they just decided they did not
want Tom Thibodeaux and really didn't have a plan beyond that.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Wow, it's remarkable when you see that happen in professional sports,
and I think it's best laid plans aren't always executed.
And we've talked about this in previous episodes, where as executives,
you always have to have a plan A, Plan B,
Plan C. I've never had success when you just had
a plan A. It's so rare that you're afforded the
latitude and luxury of just going from A to Z

(02:56):
with unencumbered you know, in Major League Baseball, we just
we don't see this as frequently as we seem to
see this in the NBA. You know, a few times
famously in my career, but honestly, it's been very few.
In two thousand and two, lou Pinelo was traded from
the Seattle Mariners to the Tampa Bay Rays. I think
Randy Winn was involved in that deal. In twenty eleven,

(03:18):
Ozzie Dean was traded from the Chicago White Sox to
the Miami Marlins, and then I guess. Most recently, there
was a lot to do about Craig Council's candidacy as
a free agent. His contract was expiring at the end
of the twenty twenty three season with the Milwaukee Brewers.
He was widely regarded as one of the most successful
and one of the most progressive managers in Major League Baseball.

(03:40):
He didn't re sign with Milwaukee. He became a free agent,
ultimately going to the Chicago Cubs. You know, slight irony
was that. Then the Milwaukee Brewers in twenty twenty four
won the division beat the Cubs. Pat Murphy, who replaced
Craig Council as the manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, emerges
as the manager of the year in the National League,

(04:01):
which we've talked about in episodes past, hopefully won't be
the same kiss of death that it's been for other
managers in baseball NBA head coaches. One thing. Also as
a wrinkle of note, you know, Craig Council left in
part because he felt like he was honor bound to
try to raise the salaries of major league managers. They've

(04:22):
tracked well behind their NFL head coaching counterparts, their NBA
head coaching counterparts. Well. He ultimately signs a pre robust
deal with the Cubs. Interestingly, though, that would make him
the fourteenth highest paid NBA head coach, despite the fact
that he broke the bank, and I think he may
have matched Dave Roberts as one of the highest paid

(04:43):
managers in Major League Baseball. But the highest paid major
league manager would be the thirteenth highest paid NBA head coach.
Craig Council would be the fourteenth highest paid. So it
doesn't happen quite as often in baseball. It happens very infrequently,
but there have been a few trades involving major league
managers over the last twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, the salary structure in Major League Baseball on the
front office side and the managerial side seems a little
more balanced, where I think the number two and three
guys are making closer to what the number one guy
makes in both the front office and in the dugout.
In the NBA it is more top heavy, where usually
the number one guy makes a lot, whether it's the
head coach or the president of basketball operations, the general manager, whoever.

(05:24):
The top guys are on the basketball side, and then
there's pretty significant gap down to it, which is why
you and I have talked about this in the past,
but not many guys turn down these kind of jobs,
because if you have a chance to whatever the multiple
is right triple, quadruple, quintupple, make x amount times your
money in a new contract, even going from the number
two guy within the organization to the number one with

(05:46):
your own organization, or to the number one spot with another,
just about everybody takes that opportunity. That even though some
organizations like the New York Knicks have a track record
and in a history of churning people in and out,
you went over the numbers in a recent episode in
the NBA, it is just two plus years on average
the head coaches stay employed a Major League Baseball it's

(06:06):
around three years, three plus years. So you know, I
think the coaches in the NBA, fat you do a
particularly good job of this. As you say, in the NBA,
you're hired to be fired, and they take the money
and realize that if they get churned out at least
they'll get well compensated for it. But that I do
want to stay on the baseball front because one of
the things we like to do on rosters to rings

(06:26):
is go back. We like to predict what's going to happen,
and then when something does happen, we like to circle
back to it. And I feel a little bit pression
here doing the show with you because of you know
what we were talking about, Tom Thibodeau, and now what
we talked about on a recent episode involving the Boston
Red Sox, the public disagreement between their designated hitter Rafael
Devers and Craig Breslo. When that came up to that,
you expressed some concern about the level of negativity that

(06:51):
was swirling around the franchise. Now that Rafael Devers has
been traded from Boston to the San Francisco Giants, how
would you assess the situation? Because as somebody who's been
a long time Red Sox fan and lost a little
bit of his fandom when the Socks traded moviie Bets
to the Dodgers about five years ago, this is another
tough blow as a Red Sox fan.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
I mean, we talked about it two weeks ago. I
think this is eye opening. I mean, this is something
that gets attention of everybody, I think, not only in
Major League Baseball, but across all the professional sports. They
traded Rafael Devers, a guy who, keep in mind, just
two years ago they signed to a ten year, over
three hundred million dollar contract. He's got eight years, two

(07:32):
hundred and fifty four million dollars left on the deal,
which may be part of the reason he was traded.
But let's just rewind a little bit. This past offseason,
Boston was prognosticated to be a team that was kind
of on the up and come, a team that really
needed to get into the playoffs, and made some really
assertive moves this offseason to push a lot of chips in.
So that's the framework. We discussed ad nauseum last week

(07:55):
about how they signed Bragman Well Ever since Bregman's gone
on the IL, Rafael dev has been their best offensive player,
and not by a small margin. Over the last four seasons,
I believe he's been the second most productive third baseman
in all of Major League Baseball. He's been a top
twenty five producer across all position players in all of
Major League Baseball. And oh, by the way, he's in
his prime. He's twenty eight years old. So I look

(08:17):
at it and say, okay, so why would a team
trade a player like that? And I think there are
a few things to point to here. There's two sides
to this conversation. One is the contract we just mentioned.
He does have eight years and two hundred and fifty
four million. When executives signed these types of deals and
random shirt it's the same in the NBA. You understand
that the first four ish years are the best years

(08:37):
you're going to get out of that deal. In the
last couple are probably going to be years that you
wish you didn't have signed. So they've burnt down a
season and a half of the good years. They still
have eight years and two hundred and fifty four million.
He's still in his prime and probably will be for
the next handful of seasons. But they do recognize on
the outset of that, on the backside, it's going to
get a little bit cumbersome for the team. Secondly, he's

(08:59):
a DH, you know, and I think they knew at
some point in that contract that he was going to
become a DH. I'm not sure they thought it was
going to be a year in. Now. The flip side
of both of those arguments are they were the ones
who signed him to that deal, so they shouldn't think
of it a year and a half in as being
so cumbersome. And they were the ones who actually demoted
him to being DH. So that's a little bit of
a peculiar thing. So I'm digging a little bit deeper

(09:21):
than that, you know, you hear a lot. I listened
to the press conference they had yesterday in which they
really went into detail as to why they made this decision.
Some of the common themes that I heard from them
was they're really investing in their core of their future.
Christian Campbell, Marcelo Meyer in Roman Anthea are three guys
that they already have in the big leagues more to come.
They have a great farm system and they want to

(09:42):
put those guys in the best environment to succeed. Somewhat
of an insinuation was that with Devers there, maybe that
wasn't the best situation to succeed. But how much discord
would there have to be to take part ways with
a guy of this caliber of how much of a
disruption would he have to create? I think the answer
it has to be some like the this has to

(10:04):
be more than just a contract, has to be more
than just the fact that he's a DH. They talked
a lot in the press conference about that just wasn't
an alignment of putting the team first, And I think
the insinuation clearly was that they didn't feel as if
Devers was doing everything that he could do to put
the Boston Red Sox first. I just want to appease
to Ryan McDonough, the Boston Red Sox fan, and agree

(10:25):
with you. You know, from a bigger perspective, you look
at the twenty eighteen team that won the World Series
twenty nineteen, they were turned by and large that same
group they finished the season where Devers was twenty two,
Bogarts and Bets were both twenty six. They represented three
of the top fifteen position players. Performance Wise in twenty nineteen,

(10:46):
no other team had more than one. They had three.
It looked to the rest of the industry like they
were poised for a dynasty and dominance. They obviously won
a lot of world series, hyper successful franchise. Well, now
fast forward, that was traded, Devers was traded, Bogarts wasn't
re signed. It does leave you questioning a little bit.
You know, why has this major market team with such

(11:09):
a legacy of winning seemed to continually opt to not
retain their star players. It's quite quite a transition, such
a transition that I want to ask you a question, Ran,
and this question comes from Sean in Phoenix, Arizona, and
he wants to know about another type of star player,
and that's Kevin Durant. And the question is, should Kevin

(11:31):
Durant be drawing as much attention in your opinion, as
the featured free agent or player that could be acquired
this offseason and trade in the NBA.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, I understand why he does that, because he still
does move the needle. He's going to be thirty seven
years old when next season starts. But we're talking about
one of the all time leading scorers in the history
of the NBA, his numbers are still off the charts.
And as far as the team impact, I know Phoenix
had an underwhelming year. That's an understatement that they're now

(12:02):
looking for their fourth coach in about two calendar years,
which is remarkable how much Charon there has been with
the Sons. But frankly, when Kevin Durant played, the Sons
were a pretty competitive team, and when he didn't play,
they were awful. So that's the concern I would have
as somebody who worked for the Suns for five and
a half years, brought in Devin Booker and others Booker
is the only one still on the roster, is that

(12:25):
if they trade Kevin Durant, probably when they trade Kevin Durant,
that I think they should try to get a number
of players to help them be more competitive now because
even when they had Devin Booker and Bradley Bual last season,
without Kevin Durant, they were horrible. I mean, their numbers
are among some of the worst teams in the league.
So that's why Kevin Durant is in demand. And the
other part of it that and you know this same

(12:47):
and MLB I would imagine is supply and demand. It's
not a great free agent year. In fact, there's only
one team, the Brooklyn Nets, ironically, Kevin Durant's former team
that had a quote unquote super team with Kyrie Irving
and James Harden. Brooklyn Nets are the only team that
have max salary cap space. I don't know if they're
necessarily going to use it to try to upgrade the

(13:07):
roster because they're that far away from championship contention, that
they may use it more to absorb bad contracts, you know,
in salary dumps and things like that, and gain more assets,
more prospects, more draft picks, etc. As they build it
back up slowly having been burned by the Kevin Durant,
Kyrie Irving James Harden experiment. So Katie's in demands now

(13:27):
one of the things that teams around the league are
trying to gauge. That is, is Giannis Antonokombo, who's clearly
a better player at this stage in his career, right
around thirty years old and has a much longer runway
going forward than Katie does, is he going to push
his way out of Milwaukee at some point? So that's
why that, combined with Kadi's age as I mentioned he's
going to be thirty seven years old combined with the contract,

(13:50):
and that's one thing I think that you and I
have and will continue to emphasize to our listeners. In
a front office, you cannot separate the player from the contract.
That's how guys like you and I look at it.
It's the same thing. So whether that's Raphael Devers in
Major League Baseball or Kevin Durant, Durant only has one
year left on his deal. He's on an expiring contract.
He's going to be an unrestricted free agent really about

(14:12):
a year from now, late June of twenty twenty six,
if he's not extended, and he wants a contract extension.
So that is you know, that depresses the price the
teams are willing to pay. And kd and is probably
through his agent, they're putting out messages about where he
wants to go, and the latest is specifically San Antonio.
Kevin is from the DC area, but keep in mind
he played college ball at the University of Texas in Austin,

(14:35):
not far away from where the Spurs play. So he's
saying that Houston, San Antonio, Miami with the Spurs in
particular standing out is where he wants to go.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
So will that help the Spurs.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
It remains to be seen, but that I think a
lot of people are going to be shocked around the
league really shouldn't say aund the league should say fans,
who are you maybe more casual follow the NBA peripherally,
because I don't think the Suns are going to get
anywhere near trade hall for Kevin Durant that the Brooklyn
Nets got from mckill Bridges, who is ironically traded for
Katie from Phoenix to Brooklyn a couple of years ago,

(15:08):
or that just a couple of days ago that the
Memphis Grizzlies got for Desmond Vaine. And I think, you
know a number of listeners probably say, why in the
world would Desmond Vaine bring back so much more value?
You know, two rotational players, four first round picks, another
first round pick, slop in the price for Katie be
so light? Well, it's the age Bain is ten years

(15:28):
younger than Durant, and the contract. Maine's on a long
term deal. Katie wants to get extended. And as you know,
for all his individual talent in Brooklyn and Phoenix, Kevin
Durant unfortunately has an impacted winning at the highest levels.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Hey, Ryan, I can't let you off the hook without
asking this question, and I'll attribute this to my son.
You mentioned the teams that Kadi has earmarked that he'd
like to go to. Well, it sounds like he's come
out and said he particularly not want to come to Minnesota.
First of all, I guess I just would ask what
is your person perspective on that? And also from an
executive standpoint, if you were working in Minnesota's front office,

(16:05):
do you take that as the gospel or do you
keep pursuing the player regardless of hearing.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
That In the Timberwolves front office, you can't just accept
that on his face. I know Tim Connelly and Matt Lloyd,
who have done a great job running the Wolves, or
two good friends of mine. Obviously, the last two years
have been the most successful stretch in the history of
the franchise. As we know, prior to a year ago,
the team had been to the conference finals once. Now
they've been there two years in a row. So that's
what those guys have done in a short period of time.

(16:31):
So my guess is that you know they've asked the
suns and probably been granted permission from the Sons to
talk to Rich Cleman, who's Kevin Durant's agent. KD is
his only NBA climate, and just try to convince Kevin
why it's a good fit. And I think we all
see that it's a good basketball fit. But that's one
of the hard things about running an NBA team fat
or a team in any sport. But I'd say the NBA,

(16:52):
in particular in a smaller market or Minnesota, is actually,
you know, bigger than most people realize. It's more of
a mid market, but it's not New York, La, Miami,
et cetera. It's not one of these magnet plate the
places that players generally want to go, even when those
teams are bad. So that is one of the challenges.
So yeah, I think if you're Minnesota, you're trying to
convince KD ideally directly, But if you're Phoenix, you want

(17:14):
to put some guardrails on that and say, well, wait
a minute. If we have a deal kind of pending,
you're close, and you need to talk to Kevin Durant
as the final piece of that, maybe we'll consider it.
But before we have an offer in our pocket that
we like, we're not going to let you just talk
to our player, you know. So that's that's something that
you know is a little bit sensitive. Now, I'll be
honest with you. Teams do end a rounds all the time,

(17:35):
especially to the agent that there's not much anybody, especially
the league office, can do to police that. So that's
that's the challenge if you're in Minnesota's front office, Tim Connolly,
Matt Lloyd and company, and at some point that is
you know, it comes down to the price. I think
there is a price that the Timberwolves would absolutely pay
and roll the dice to get Kevin Durant, even if
it's on a one year rental. The Toronto Raptors famously

(17:57):
did that in twenty eighteen when they traded for Kawhi
Leonard on the Spurs. They won their first and only
NBA championship the next year. But then the downside is
Kawhi left to go to the La Clippers in Toronto
hasn't had nearly the same success since then. So it's
it's difficult that as you know, these things are tricky.
You know, we should all be so blessed to work
in one of the biggest markets where players are begging

(18:18):
to come there. That's not always the case in some
of the some of the clubs you and I have
worked with. And you know right after this that we're
going to get into that a little bit more the draft,
you know, value compensation, all that. It ties into what
we're talking about, you know with kd endeavors. But with
the NBA Draft coming up next week, we're going to
get into all that, what a team's pay and I
want to see how the NBA compares to Major League

(18:39):
Baseball in terms of quantity versus quality, stacking picks to
move up or move back, and all that kind of stuff.
He is Stad Levine. I am Ryan mcdillan.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
To stick with us.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
We're right back to break down the drafts and Major
League Baseball and the NBA right after this, Welcome back
to Rosters, to rings everyone. Ryan McDonough with you as always,
joined by former Minnesota Twins general manager, longtime Major League
Baseball executive Fad Levine. And that as we record this show,

(19:10):
we're about a week away from the NBA Draft. Relatively
new format in the NBA, where the draft is spread
out over two days. It used to be one chaotic
night where you do rounds one and two, and the
picks would come fast and furious, especially in the second round.
That in the first round NBA teams have five minutes
to make a pick in the league makes you take
the full five minutes, mainly for television and you know,

(19:32):
so they can have their TV partners or radio partners
know when the picks are going to come approximately and
go to commercials, et cetera. The second round is the
Wild West and Nikola Jokic with the Denver Nuggets, which
famously drafted in the second round during a Taco Bell commercial.
I'm sure that'll be brought up time and time again
when he's way to the Hall of Fame. Is one
of the all time great players in NBA history. But yeah,

(19:53):
it does come fast and furious. And what you and
I wanted to do with the NBA draft approaching is
take our listeners inside a draft room in the NBA
and Major League Baseball. So the first question I have
for you thatad is in the NBA, they're only sixty
players drafted each year, so you'll spend time as a
top executive scouting several hundred players, and your top evaluators

(20:16):
will see virtually all of them in person. That to
me seems very different than Major League Baseball, where you
guys have thousands of players spread out, you know, really
all over the place. So how many top prospects doesn't
and major League Baseball general manager see in person? And
assuming you're not seeing a whole lot of them, how
do you then weigh the opinions of others in the

(20:37):
room when they're giving you their feedback on prospects that
you've never seen play in person.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well, I just want to tell one brief story that
Nikole Jokich Taco Bell complement in baseball and just how
different than Major League Baseball draft is is that. You know,
there's so much made of the NFL draft, the NBA draft,
there's so many draft shows out there. Major League Baseball
really has one show, one show only. And Rock obaal Deli,
manager of the Minnesota Twins, famously in the draft, was

(21:07):
grew up in Rhode Island, had a full right to
go to Wake Forest as on a volleyball scholarship, who
was going to play baseball there as well. Was out
fishing on the day of the draft and a buddy
of his called him and said, hey, listen, you just
got drafted. He's like, what are you talking about. It's
the first round. He's like, yeah, you were picked sixth
in the country and he had no idea. So it's
a little bit different in the Major League Baseball draft.
But to get back to your question, Ryan, I think

(21:30):
it varies general manager to general manager. AJ Preller, the
longtime general manager of the San Diego Padres, famously goes
out and sees hundreds of players each year. Josh Burns,
when he was a general manager, was somebody who saw
a ton of players. Jerry Depoto in Seattle has always
gone out and seen a lot of players. But I
think the average general manager, unless you're picking in the
top let's say five to ten picks, really leaves it

(21:53):
up to their scouting department. And so here's the structure
in Major League Baseball, and I'd be interested how this
compares in the NBA. The scouting department, you have a
scouting director, You have area scouts who are responsible for
specific areas throughout the United States. Some of those areas
are as small as Los Angeles, or they may be
as big as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas. And

(22:15):
it's all based upon a number of players who've come
out of their population densities baseball the strength of the
baseball programs. So if an area scout sees a player
that he likes, he submits a report that then would
trigger what is called a regional crosschecker, And so most
teams have three to five of those, and it's based
upon East coast, West Coast, Midwest. Sometimes we have two
in the South because there's a bigger preponderance of players

(22:39):
coming out of the South. So that would then trigger
one of your regional cross checkers to go see a player.
If that regional cross checker also likes the player, it
triggers the national cross checker, of which you have two
of those, one who covers kind of central West and
one who covers central East to go see the player.
If that person also likes the player, it triggers the
scouting director to go see him. So the players who

(23:01):
are getting drafted, especially in the first couple rounds, are
seen by probably four to five to six different scouts,
and they're seen multiple times over the course of the
amateur season, and then what happens in the draft room
is all of that information is put into a model
that's coupled with video data, excessive amounts of data all
the medical team will weigh in and it produces most

(23:24):
baseball draft rooms a top let's say four hundred ranked
one through four hundred. That the model is done. But
what the Twins did, and I think so many teams
do now, is they banned players. So they'll put players
in bands of let's say two to ten players, and
that suggests all of these players within a band are
like talented, like valued, And then the scouts spend weeks

(23:46):
on end beating up those bands and determining within the
band do they want to move a player up and
down based upon makeup information, health and medical information, or
just their talent evaluations. If a scout wanted to move
a player up a band or down a band, that
required a larger conversation. But outside of that, they had
latitude to move within those bands and create a really

(24:10):
what we thought was a refined look at the whole class.
So in short, ran we really did. The general managers
don't get out there and see them. It's really different.
I'd be curious how does that compare to a scouting
department in the NBA. And one thing that is so
different in the NBA relative to Major League Baseball and
Major League Baseball, there's two different draft processes for international

(24:34):
players and for domestic players. In the NBA, it's all
bundled into one. So how does the scouting season look
like in the NBA when you have to go scout
people in Europe as well as the United States? And
then how do your models look and how do they
value high school players and compare them to college players
and international players.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
I think the biggest difference stat hearing you talk about
it is in the NBA, we do have called tiers
and seems like similar to bands where we have you know,
once you get to groupings of players, you evaluate them
against each other and there's some pretty robust conversations and
discussions that can get heated at times in rooms as
you're trying to rank players. But prior to that, I
would say that most of the presidents or gms try

(25:14):
to see as many of the players in their projected
pick range as they can in person. And so I
think the different statu is I hear you talk about
Major League Baseball in the process is that you do
have fewer players to evaluate, and I know as an
assistant GM of the Celtics, when I was in charge
of worldwide scouting, I think my last six years in Boston,

(25:34):
or especially when I was channel manager of the Phoenix
Suns for five and a half years. I'd look at
the events with multiple prospects, especially multiple top prospects, because
the position you never want to be in that obviously,
is saying, well, we have a pretty good team, we're
picking mid to late first round. We don't need to
worry about those guys at the top of the draft.
And then sure enough a trade scenario comes your way
that you want to do to move up to the
top of the draft. So you do have to be

(25:56):
prepared for all of them. And so that's what I
would do, is go to the doubleheaders. They have some
of these pre conference tournaments. Now, the Maui Invitation is
probably the most famous ones, but they have similar tournaments
in the Bahamas and Puerto Rico and other places around
the country. A lot in Madison Square Garden or the
Barclay Center in New York, you can go see a

(26:17):
bunch of top prospects at one time. So I think
that's the difference that usually you'll have regional scouts is
kind of the you know, lowest level on the totem pole,
and they may just watch players in their own region.
Some you know, NBA teams have those guys cross over
and go out of the region where they live occasionally,
but they're more filing reports and kicking it up to
director scouting, director player personnel and then maybe you know,

(26:40):
to an assistant GM as well. Each team structure is
the operation a little bit differently, So that's that's the
challenge I think with both organizations is how do you
have accurate evaluation at all levels Because the biggest difference
for me is, you know, the guys who were look
I was one of these guys starting out as a
video slash regional scout. Is you watch everybody and you

(27:02):
try not to miss anything and then just kick it
up the totem pole and the decisions are made obviously
higher up the chain, but with the top evaluator is
the last thing you'd want to do, especially if it's
geographically inconvenient to your point. Players are now, they're all
over Europe. That's been the case since I started the
NBA over twenty years ago now, but now guys are
playing in China, in Australia and New Zealand, and more

(27:24):
far flung places that if you put a president or
general manager on a plane and have them take four
to seven days to go down there and fly back
with all that he's going to miss in the time change,
the guy better be at least decent that you know,
that's not a real pleasant conversation as an underling if
you tell one of those guys to go do this
and then the guy can't play at all. So I
think it's a combination of in person scouting, you know,

(27:45):
video scouting as well the analytical piece of it. And
so the game has changed now where in the NBA
it's virtually impossible to hide a player or stash a player.
You know, historically teams tried to do that. Now, I
mean you can get stats in video uh and you know,
really information from any player in the world. And if
a guy is good, the NBA is great at not

(28:06):
letting him slip through the cracks. It just comes down
to who evaluates and better. We know, one of the
questions you know, I had for you Thad kind of
going going forward is you know you talked to us
about you know, the models, and so how would as
a general manager? You know, we we know the moneyball
historically and and and that kind of model that Billy

(28:26):
Bean and uh, you know that some extent the U
Seen and Company made famous and had a lot of
success with. But as a executive, how would you personally, uh,
you know, way analytics versus the eye test and kind
of more old school scouting scouting and across the league,
where do you think you've kind of fell in onto
the spect on that spectrum because imagine different teams based
on the top decision makers pedigree and the organizational philosophy

(28:49):
approached that fairly differently.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, it's it's been the biggest evolution in sports, uh,
in my career without question. You know when I started
in Colorado and then Ultimate in Texas, Texas, we were
you know, there were two schools of decision making. One
was are you kind of an analytics based decision making
group or you a scout based decision making group? And

(29:12):
I think everyone today is a blend of the two.
But at that time, I'm dating myself back about fifteen seasons,
you probably were in one camp or the other. And
in Texas we were really a scout based decision making group,
which you know, candidly and reflection had a lot more
subjectivity to it and a lot more volatility to it.
But we had a general manager at the time, John Daniels,

(29:33):
who was absolutely excellent at executive decision making, and he
was able to assimilate a ton of information, pull it
all together, strip away the biases, strip away the subjectivity,
and ultimately make excellent decisions. Historically, it's not to say
we didn't make mistakes along the way, but we learned
from those mistakes. But I think he was about the
best I've been around in terms of assimilating information and

(29:57):
acting really boldly and creatively to better the franchise, and
so we did not get burned as much as you
probably normally would with the level of subjectivity that we
introduced into our decision making. I think at the time
we also had some of the best scouts in the game,
and they were informing his decisions, our decisions, so it

(30:18):
was really set up to succeed. When I went to Minnesota,
part of the appeal for me to go to Minnesota
was because I was aligning myself with Derek Valvue came
out of Cleveland, and Derek was part of a franchise
that was on the cutting edge of analytics and building
out processes. And so I've really gotten exposed to a
very forward thinking scout based decision making group and a

(30:39):
very forward thinking analytics based decision making group. And I
think the answers of balance. I've always felt in decision making,
you want to ground all your decisions in the data.
You just be remiss not to. There's so much information
out there. Use as much of the information as you
possibly can. But then I want to make those decisions
humanly and for two reasons, And it shows up so
prominently in the draft. I think with regards to this

(31:03):
is the sense that these scouts have gone out there
and you know, in the NBA they're literally pounding the
pavement of the globe for the draft. It's really the
United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. But they're spending, you know,
in some cases two hundred days away from their families
to submit these scouting ports. We have to include their
information into our models, otherwise you're disenfranchising a large group

(31:27):
of your employees. So all of these models, and maybe
one of the biggest misconceptions for fans, the biggest driving
factor of the models are those scouting reports that those
guys submit now we marry it up with a lot
of information to try to refine our decision making. But
I think at the end of the day, as long
as we're dealing in sports where players are human beings,
you have to make these decisions humanly. There's no model

(31:49):
that singularly captures everything that goes into being the best
NBA player the best Major League Baseball player. So I
think it's incumbent upon us to really incorporate both into it. Ryan.
One thing a few of our listeners had asked, and
I want to throw this to you, is because I
certainly felt this is you kind of alluded to it earlier.

(32:11):
Take us into to draft night. You know, in Major
League Baseball we cannot trade draft picks. In the NBA,
you can trade draft picks. You mentioned earlier that you'd
be remiss, even if you're picking twenty second, not to
be very familiar with the top of the draft, because
you never know when a trade could come along. We
really didn't have to do that in Major League Baseball.
One of the refinements is if you were picking twenty

(32:32):
to thirty, you really didn't spend a lot of time
on the guys that you knew were going to go,
you know, in the top ten in the draft, so
you really were able to refine your search process. U
guys can't do that. Well, you're the envy of all
general managers in Major League Baseball because we'd like nothing
more than to be able to trade draft picks. When
you if you could take the listener into draft night

(32:53):
in an NBA war room, like, how much time are
you spending on the phone talking to other general managers
about potential trades? Is that exclusively you as a GM
or do you assign other people to have some of
those conversations? How do you stay as nimble as you
possibly can? You said there are five minutes in between picks,
but as we all know, that goes by extremely quickly
when you're wheeling and dealing.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
No, it absolutely does. And the way it works in
the NBA is you can trade picks relatively easily up
till the afternoon of the draft. And I'm talking about
mechanically you can do it, whereas I think it's usually
around two o'clock on the first day. Before the first
day of the draft, the NBA says, okay, the board
is locked because what they don't want is a bunch
of confusion with the broadcast partners, the media folks. But

(33:39):
as you know, we're all human and people work best
when there is a deadline. Either picks are usually made
right at that deadline, or team verbally agree after the
deadline but can't execute it before the draft start. So
that's where it gets a little complex in the NBA.
To remind our listeners to actually formalize a trade, you
need to have every party involved, so at least two
teams on the to the league office. If there are

(34:01):
more than two teams, the third fourth, however, many teams
are involved, need to be and they need to confirm
every part of the trade, every single aspect of it.
And so the challenge is that especially on draft night
when things are moving so quickly, and look, if there's
a mistake, you don't get to reset it right, you
don't get to unwind it. We talked on a recent
episode about the now infamous trade between the La Lakers

(34:23):
and the Charlotte Hornets where the Lakers got Mark Williams
in a deal the Dalton Connect and pick it's going
back to the Hornets, and then after the deadline, the
Lakers didn't like something they saw physically with Mark Williams
and then avoided the trade, so the players and assets
returned back to their respective teams. You can't do that
on draft night, and I bring that up because if
you pick somebody thinking you have a deal in place

(34:45):
with another team, but it falls apart for whatever reason,
you're stuck with that player with that and so that's
where the pressure comes in is you can't say, oh,
you know what, NB, I know you just did a
round or two of the draft, but something got screwed up.
Let's go back to the twelfth pick and start over.
If you guys can just wipe your boards plane and
let's just hit the reset button. So that is the
challenge in the NBA. You're right, you have five minutes

(35:06):
on the clock. What we would do with different teams
in Boston or Phoenix is usually take the entire five minutes,
or I actually say most of the five minutes. We
would have our boards set and usually, frankly, you know
picks in advance who you're going to take. It's usually
an either or. Where as players get drafted, you take
them off the board, and then when you get within
a couple of picks of your range, you hope you

(35:26):
have multiple guys you were comfortable with. That's one of
the challenges that sometimes you get really got one guy
and you know, I remember in twenty fifteen with the
Phoenix Suns, it was Devin Booker. Utah Jazz were just
ahead of us, and it was you know, we were
a bit nervous because if they took Devin Booker, then
what do we do because we really didn't have anybody
we liked. There was a huge gap for him to
the next guy. Fortunately, we got lucky Devon was still

(35:48):
there and you know, we'll go on to become one
of the best sons in the history of the franchise.
But but that's not always the case. Sometimes you're sitting
there and saying, oh, man, the guy we really liked,
we thought would be there is not. So in that point,
I think you dive into more trade scenarios, drop down,
drop back. And one of the questions I had for you,
Tha was because as I you know, I know obviously
the most about the NBA Draft. I'm a huge fan

(36:09):
of the NFL. That draft gets a ton of attention.
They do a great job promoting it and having you know,
months after the Super Bowl to really build up to
the draft. They've done an incredible job making that a
big event and now moving it around to different markets,
which I think is really smart. I'm not as familiar
with the NBA draft, excuse me, the Major League Baseball
draft in terms of the quantity versus quality debate. NBA

(36:30):
clearly is a quality draft. You don't see teams of
the Dallas Mavericks, for example, they would not take a
handful of picks to drop back a few slots, maybe
even one slot from the number one pick when Cooper
Flag is available. You see that a lot more frequently
in the NFL. Where does Major League Baseball and I
generally fall, you know, between those two ends of the spectrum,

(36:51):
NBA and NFL. And then what was your personal philosophy
on you know, quality versus quantity and you know, kind
of moving around with with you know, trading draft players
or doing things that are a little bit unique to MLB.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, So, I mean it's a great question. We have
so recently the Major League Baseball has trimmed the draft
down to just being twenty rounds, So it's twenty rounds
times thirty teams, so that's six hundred players selected. I
believe it or not. As recently as ten years ago,
it was fifty rounds, so you had fifteen hundred players
drafted every year. So once you got to about the

(37:26):
twentieth or thirty thirtieth round, like your board is picked clean.
You're picking people you're not familiar with. I will just
share a few stories. When I was in Colorado, our
scouting director at the time, Bill Schmid, who's now the
general manager of the team for the Colorado Rockies, to
turned to Danny Montgomery, one of our senior scouts, and
we got into the thirtieth round. He's like, hey, take

(37:46):
take the best athlete out of your region. He said, okay,
I got a guy, and so we announced the Colorado
Rockies select Michael Vick out of Virginia Tech. And they
turned to him and said, do you know if he
plays baseball? He's like, I have no idea, but he's
a hell of a quarterback. I bet you can play
center field and pitch. And so we've trimmed down the
draft a little bit. There's six hundred players taken now,

(38:07):
believe it or not, in major league baseball, just because
there's the minor league system. The average college player and
I'm talking about the good ones take three years to
get to the big leagues. The average high school player
who's good in the major leagues takes about five. So
we're really drafting the best available player. I think teams
really make mistakes when they go into the draft and say, hey,

(38:28):
I've got to get a catcher, I've got to get
a short step or a pitcher. You really have to
take the best available because that player is so unlikely
to help your team in the immediate term, so you
just don't know what you're going to need when that
player is available. So we've always taken the best available player.
And just to share some of the numbers with you,
it's really kind of stark. So six hundred players taken

(38:48):
every year approximately in the average draft of about four
to seven percent of those players, so about twenty four
to forty two players out of each draft will make
the major leagues. Only about six ten of them will
sustain a career longer than three years. So I think
the teams that are not selecting the best available player
really pay a penalty. Another way of looking at it

(39:10):
is war is one of these universal stats that tries
to capture the total value of a player. The average
war delivered by the first pick in the draft over
like the last twenty years, is approximately twenty war. Once
you get to the fifth pick in the draft, it
drops to ten. Once you get to the thirtieth pick,
which is approximately the last pick in the first round,
it's two war. So if you're getting a little bit

(39:33):
too nuanced and selecting a specific position, you have a
chance to really cost your franchise value. And so I've
always been part of franchises that have prioritized picking the
best available player. Don't try to look too far into
the future. Get the assets. If they help you as
a major league franchise by playing for you, wonderful. If not,

(39:54):
they're great trade assets to help you in other positions
when you're more aware of what your needs are three
to five years down the road. Ryan, one other quick
story I'm just going to share with you because you
alluded to this, is like, how when you go and
send one of your general managers, let's say to South
Africa or someplace in Africa to see a player and

(40:16):
he's not that good that there's a price to be
paid for that. Well, I think the other thing we experienced,
and I wonder if you had any experiences like this
was Since general managers in Major League Baseball don't see
a ton of players. When they do, it's noteworthy. So
I'm thinking back to a draft we had in Texas
where we had the fourth pick in the draft. That
the scouting director of the Texas Rangers then and now

(40:37):
is a gentleman named Kip fag who is absolutely stupendous
human being and a wonderful talent evaluator. He had a
guy in his hip pocket. He wanted to select a
guy named Alex Bregman, and he thought Alex Bregman, who
was going to Alice He was a little bit below
the radar streen for one reason only. He wasn't that tall,
and so we thought models weren't going to favor him.
They weren't going to believe in the power because of

(40:58):
his physical stature. So at four, we thought we had
Alex Bregman in our hip pocket. Well, John Daniels goes
and sees the SEC Tournament that year. The Houston Astros
are picking second and fifth due to not signing their
previous year's draft picks, so they got an extra draft pick.
So when they saw John Daniels show up the SEC tournament.

(41:20):
They ended up taking Bregman two, and they saved Kyle
Tucker to take five, which is one of the most
epic top five drafts in recent history. We ended up
picking fourth. We actually almost had to take a time
out because we were so convinced Alex Bregman was going
to fall to us that we were a little bit
thrown off. We ended up taking Dylan Tate, who goes
on and has a nice but not spectacular major league career.

(41:43):
But there is that risk of when you have general
managers sitting in stadiums, people take note of that, and
in that case, the Houston Astros, who were one of
the savviest teams in the game, made a significant adjustment
to their draft board to account for the fact that
we were encroaching on one of their players. I don't
know if Ran you have any of those types of
situations where your board has been scuggled a little bit

(42:06):
by the fact that you were a little bit too
prominent in your pursuit of certain players as amateurs.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, I think you do have to be careful. Although
in the NBA there are less secrets, right especially at
the top of the draft, It's not unusual to see
even the most prominent executives, whether it's Danny Ainge beside you,
Jerry Tim Connolly at watching all the top players that
those guys all watch you probably a number of times
this year, not only for Cooper Flag who's going to
be the number one pick next week, but for kon

(42:34):
Kin Nipple, Common Malawatch and others. And usually Duke's plaining
good opponents as well. So there is some of that yet,
but there's also we like to take our listeners behind
the curtain here on rosters the rings. There's also internal disagreement,
including on draft night, even on the clock. And yeah,
I can't be too specific, but my last draft was
as general manager of the Phoenix Suns, I thought our

(42:55):
biggest need was a primary ball handler. I was pounding
the table for a primary all handler. We took DeAndre
Ayton with the number one pick, who you know, I
thought was going to make more of an impact and
develop better than he has. He's had a solid career.
But but yeah, there was a playmaker. I really liked that.
Not to be too specific, but just generally he goes
by three letters. Those three letters aren't MVP, but probably

(43:19):
both of those things apply and there was a battle
and so you know, I lost it to someone higher
up the totem pole than me shortly after I was fired.
But by the way, as on the side, I'm really
enjoying watching the finals. Looks like, okay, seem might pull
this thing off. So we'll see who gets the MVP
of that as well. Not not to jump around, but
so yeah, there is you know, internal disagreement. There are

(43:42):
trade offers, and you have to be concise, and I
think that's what stands out that to me. You mentioned
it with your history, is the communication internally, and okay,
let's have the debates in advance and try to anticipate
what is going to happen, because the last place you
want to be is on the clock, you know, debating. Okay,
we need to call the commissioner and put a name

(44:03):
in who is it? That's a really bad feeling and
that's where a lot of mistakes are made if internally
you can't agree. So what I'd always try to do
to the extent I could impact it. And yes, sometimes
the owner does get involved and overrule you. That happens
fairly often in the NBA. Anyways, is that okay, you
know kind of decision trees. If this guy's available, we
take him. What if he's not available, at what extent

(44:25):
are we out of players that we're comfortable taking, and
what do we have on the board As far as
trading back trading, you know, out of the draft entirely
trading the pick for a player. Obviously, that's a lot
to process in real time. So I think the best
organizations go through all those iterations and scenarios before it happens. So,
just like anything else being on the field or on
the court, if and when it happens, you're prepared to

(44:47):
react accordingly.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
You know, Ran, I think you're illuminating a point which
is really valuable for the listeners to hear, Which is
the part of the science of decision making at the
executive level is understanding all the inf all of the data,
all the analytics, all the video, all of what your
scouts are saying. But part of the art form is
incorporating the voices of the people around us. And so
you know, I know you were saying with a little

(45:11):
bit of a stomach acid, the story where you acquiesced
and ultimately took a player who turned out to be
a very good NBA player, maybe in lieu of taking
a player who's been an absolute superb one. But that
is part of the art form, right is if you
are always lording your executive decision making power over the
people around you, they're going to have less of a

(45:31):
vested interest in the outcome. And so there's times at
which they're pivot points in all of our careers where
maybe we didn't go with what we thought was actually
the best decision in lieu of deferring to the people
who were experts in the field in which we were
tapping into to try to engender, you know, not only
their loyalty in their morale, but really acquiescing to their expertise.

(45:54):
And that is part of the art form of decision making.
And I'm sure we both have countless situations that and
I'll tell you I was on the other side of
that a few times where that what I thought was
the right decision didn't prove to be the right decision,
and I was saved by the fact that I had
the humility to acquiesce to some of my senior leaders

(46:14):
within the room. But that really is a challenge, you
know that that is something that I think each and
every major decision we made, we listed the thoughts an
input of five, ten, fifteen people around us. You couldn't
keep a score book as to who was right and
who was wrong. You had to do the best you
could to assimilate as much information as you possibly could.

(46:34):
But part of this of making these decisions humanly is
making sure that you do maintain a vested interest in
the outcomes of the people around you, no question about it.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
And nobody's right one hundred percent of the time or
anywhere close to one hundred percent of the time. We
are dealing with humans. And as you know that, I
know this is true in MLB, it's certainly true in
the NBA. The biggest question is that once somebody is
handed a life changing sum of money, how will that
impact positively or negatively? Will he be motivated to show
it's worth it and that he's going to go on

(47:05):
to become an exceptional, all time great worker. Know Kobe Bryant,
the NBA comes to mind. The work ethics stories are legendary.
I was around Kevin Garnett with the Boston Celtics. He
was absolutely like that it didn't matter all the all
NBA accolades, MVPs Defensive Player of the Year. KG wanted
to win the game that night and win the drill
and practice that day. And that's what makes those guys exceptional.

(47:28):
On the other end of the spectrum of the guys
who say, well, geez, now I got one hundred or
now hundreds of millions coming, it's easy to get complacent.
I think that is human nature. So hows somebody going
to react when you give him a big sum of money?
I think is something that kind of cuts across sports.
But that we're going to come back after this. We're
going to tell some more draft stories. I know you
wanted to hear. I got some good ones about twenty

(47:48):
two thousand and seven with the Boston Celtics lottery night
in that draft. I want to hear some of your
Major League Baseball stories as well. He is Dad Levine.
I am Ryan McDonough. Stick with us on Rosters to
Rings right back after this, Welcome.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Back to Rosters to Rings. We have an awesome opportunity
now for Ryan to take us behind the scenes and
explain all of the decision making that led up to
the epic two thousand and seven draft and how it
impacted the Boston Celtics franchise.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Yeah, so that it was a nerve wracking time in Boston.
I was hired by Wick Rousbeck, the owner of the Celtics,
in two thousand and three entry level video room at
worked for the franchise for four years. A few months
after I got hired, they brought in Danny Ainge to
run bask Co operations. And the Celtics were the only
team in the league, I believe with three max contracts

(48:48):
Paul Pierce who was worth a max contract, Antoine Walker
and Vin Baker who were probably not worth Max contracts.
Not to pick on those guys, but so the organization
just decided to do kind of a full set other
than Paul Pierce, try to rebuild on the fly around.
Paul Pierce was a very talented player. So the team
had won, you know, it was a consistent playoff team

(49:09):
that we inherited, but a long way from we thought
winning the Eastern Conference championship. And then at that point
that you remember the early two thousands, the Lakers, led
by Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal were dominating the league.
The New Jersey Nets at that time, led by Jason Kidd,
Kenya Martin and company. They were the best team in
the East. They win the East couple of times and

(49:30):
get to the finals, and the Lakers would whack them
pretty good. So we just determined that, you know, we
need to go through a you know, kind of a
rebuild on the fly. But that twenty two thousand and
six two thousand and seven season was brutal. The Celtics
had the second worst record in the league at twenty
four and fifty eight, and we set the mark for futility,
which anytime you lose eighteen games in a row in

(49:51):
any sport, but especially in Boston. That and with that
franchise and the illustrious history in particulars you know, in
Boston at the Guarden, the only hand championship banners. You
don't get the division championship or even the conference championship.
You need to win the whole thing to get the
banner up in the rafters.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
So that was it.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
That So on lottery night, we're slotted second. There was
a consensus top two in the two thousand and seven draft,
Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, and well you probably know
what happened. That the lowest we could fall was five,
and ESPN told us that they were going to send
in a camera crew, which we agreed to because they
told us we're only going to show this on our

(50:31):
network if you guys win or get the second pick.
The celebration, well, you can probably guess what happened next.
A few hours later, the lead on Sports Center was
Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge. One of them was kind
of put at his head in his hands, running his
finger through his hair. The other kind of slammed his
hat down on the desk. And it was the headline
in Sports Center that night with Boston Celtics fall to

(50:52):
five in a worst case scenario.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
My goodness. Okay, so you guys are picking up the pieces.
You're you're now picking fifth? What what what is plan
B now? Like you know, walk walk the listeners through.
If you stayed at five, who do you think you
would have taken? Was it clear cut in your mind
if they had said, okay, the Celtics are picking one.
Do you know for sure who you guys would have

(51:17):
taken or was there a debate between Odin and Durant
If you stated too, I know you've said before you
just taken the guy who fell to you, but tell
us iterations along the way. At what point did you
guys flip your conversation to let's consider trading this. How
far would you have had to fall? Clearly five as
a yes, but what about three? Four? How would you

(51:39):
guys have conducted yourself in the draft of that it happened? Yeah,
great question.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
I don't know, because we didn't really think about the possibility.
I think we always we actually realized what the numbers were.
And you know, sometimes it's it's hard because the fans
don't look at the odds. The odds were most likely
that we would end up I believe with the fifth pick.
The lottery structure has changed over the years, but that
was also the worst case scenario. But that is where
we ended up. And to answer your question, there would

(52:05):
have been robust and there was robust internal debate between
Greg Odin and Kevin Durant. Now this is going back
almost two decades, but the school of thought in the
NBA at the time and historically was that you need
a big man to protect the rim, to rebound to
score in the post. On the other hand, Kevin Durant
was a scoring prodigy, so there had already been frankly,

(52:26):
firmly entrenched camps established on either side, but we had
not had the time to or been able to bring
in the players to work them out, interview them, and
go through the medical process in particular. And I feel
bad for Greg Oden because he always gets brought up
in this conversation that it really wasn't his fault. It
wasn't like he underperformed. He just broke down physically. He

(52:46):
couldn't play. And that's why the medical evaluations were such
a significant part of the draft process, I imagine in
Major League Baseball as well, because just like we discussed
in the last segment, not every executive or scout is
right all the time, and we all make a number of mistakes.
Not every team doctor or medical experts right all the time.
So you're going, you know, on their best guest, off

(53:07):
of X rays or scams or you know, if they're
able to get their hands on a player and manipulate
them a little bit, what they think. So yeah, and
answer your question, I am on record for Kevin Durant
and Angel attest to that if we ever have them
on the show, I would have pounded the table on
that one. But to fast forward, to the draft that
the first question we had is what can we do

(53:27):
do to avoid getting fired? The next question was, you know,
with the fifth pick, Paul Pierce at this point is
very unhappy given the season we were coming off of,
so we decided to explore trade opportunities if we kept
the pick. You know some of the players from memory
in that draft where guys like Jeff Green, I think
Corey Brewers in that draft, Al Horford, Mike Connelly, who

(53:49):
have had very successful NBA careers, went just ahead, so
they would have been gone at five. So on draft
night with the then Seattle SuperSonics, which is kind of ironic,
we're having this conversation during the NBA Finals. We'll see
if ok so he's able to hang on and close
this thing out win the title. But shortly before the
Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma and became the Thunder a

(54:10):
young Sam Presty, one of the best executives in all
of sports, had taken over and he wanted to rebuild.
So Seattle actually got lucky that they moved up to
the number two pick. They ended up with Kevin Durant.
They wanted another pick high end the lottery to build
alongside him. So there were a lot of parts in
the deal, but the most important pieces were the fifth
pick going from the Boston Celtics to the Seattle SuperSonics,

(54:32):
ray Allen coming back in return, and the brilliance of
Danny Ainge. And I'd like to think I helped a little,
but mainly this was Danny and and Wick Grauspeck, the owner,
where that they were able to get Ray Allen to
join Paul Pierce and hold enough other things. And when
I say things, I mean expiring contracts, draft picks and
young prospects to then with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen

(54:54):
and tow go back to Kevin Durant and his representative
and the Timberwolves granted us permission to do this, but
talk to accumeing to Kevin Garnett and his representatives KG
and his agent Andy Miller. You know, let us talk
to Kevin about, Hey, what if you come to Boston
and play now with Ray Allen, who we have in
addition to Paul Pierce. And luckily we were able to

(55:15):
consummate the deal with the Timberwolves about a month after
the draft. And it's funny that we're sitting there in
training camp, which was in Rome, Italy that year on
one of the NBA's foreign tours, and we're watching the
group say, you know, you know, I don't know a
lot of talent.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
On the floor.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
I think we're going to be pretty good. And our
international scout, an Italian guy. He was like right out
of Central Casting. He's a great guy. I go, hey,
what do you think and he goes, man, these guys
are bleeping good, you know, and it is Italian accent,
and I said, okay, well, maybe we're better. Maybe we're
you know, we're being a little too cautious or defensive here.
I believe that team started out twenty nine and two
fad and it remains the biggest turnaround from one season

(55:52):
to the next in the NBA. The team went from
twenty four wins and the second worst record in the
league to sixty six wins, the best record in the league,
and the two thousand and eight championships. So yeah, fond memories,
a lot of you know, fascinating fascinating stories stat about
what could have been. I don't want to think about
what could have been, because I'd probably be digging ditches
or making sandwiches somewhere had that not worked out. But

(56:13):
I do want to ask you about Major League Baseball
in the draft because I know when you were with
the Rangers and then left Texas and got to Minnesota.
I believe it was a similar situation that right where
you were coming into a team that was picking near
the very top of the twenty seventeen draft. Take our
listeners inside that process.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
You know, I hate to say that because you know
such reverence for Terry Ryan, who was the general manager
of the team in twenty sixteen, But it was about
the best case scenario when you join a franchise that
had finished worst, which means you're picking first in the draft,
but you didn't have to watch a single one of
those games. So we got to benefit from the losses,
but we didn't have to watch any of the losses.

(56:52):
So we walked into the twenty seventeen draft preparation with
the first pick in the draft, and it was one
of those drafts, as we've referenced before, where there wasn't
the clear cut phenomenal player who was going to be
the consensus first pick in the draft, and so there
are five players at the top of the draft. They
ultimately go one through five in the draft that we
thought were all worthy of consideration with the first pick.

(57:14):
So you know, you reference. Leading up to the NBA Draft,
there's a lot of trade discussion, well leading up to
the Major League Baseball Draft, there's a lot of discussion
with agents. So Sean Johnson, the longtime scouting director of
the Minnesota Twins, who's extremely talented, talent evaluator and leader,

(57:34):
what he's doing is he's working the board in the room.
He's looking at all the information, all the analytics, He's
talking to all the scouts concurrently. He is then asking
a few of us to get on the horn with
some of the agents of these players to find out
what their demands are. Because there's not a firm number
that you pay players based upon where they're selecked in

(57:55):
the draft. You have some latitude. So there's a handful
of us who are doing that, who are making those calls,
and so we would come back in the room and say,
I got this amount for this player, and he's like, Okay,
now we're going to reconfigure the board a little bit
because now we understand that the acquisition costs. So the
top five players in that draft go and order Royce Lewis,
who we ultimately selected, Hunter Green, who's gone to have

(58:17):
a great fledgling career with the Cincinnati Reads, Mackenzie Gore,
who was part of the Juan Soto trade and is
now one of the starting pitchers for the Washington Nationals.
Brendan McKay was actually the first guy to get to
the big leagues out of that grip, a two way
player out of Louisville, who unfortunately has had a series
of injuries which has derailed his career. And Kyle Wright,

(58:38):
who came up and pitched for the world champion Atlanta Braves.
And all five of those guys were in consideration. They
were a handful of us who were mining information with
the agents. We were trying to be as strategic as
we could to not indicate who the order of preference
we had. We were just trying to find out information,
what would this player sign for if we selected him first.

(58:58):
Once we got all of that information, in addition to
the scouting information and all the analytical information, Sean Johnson
ultimately made a decision under our direction to say, let's
pursue Royce Lewis, and so we ultimately did sign Royce Lewis.
All five of those players have had wonderful starts to
their career, McKay unfortunately having some injuries. But time will

(59:19):
tell whether or not that was ultimately the right decision.
It was the right decision for the Twins at the time.
Royce has been a wonderful player, a wonderful contributor in
the community. So I think it all works out. You know,
to circle back to your experience, Ryan, very briefly, is
you know there is good fortune that takes place in sports, right,

(59:40):
and some of these things where you are, you are
making lemonade out of lemons, and you guys could have
been derailed by the fact that you dropped to fifth.
You made the most of that situation. And it's a
testament to always being able to map out different options,
different alternatives, trusting the people around you, making the best
decisions that are in front of you. But in that situation,

(01:00:04):
you guys couldn't have ultimately done much better than what
you did. But it was a win win scenario, right
because Oklahoma City benefited from that. And I just want
to give a quick hat tip to Sean from Arizona
here we are talking about the two thousand and seven
draft with KD. Now we're looking at the off season
of twenty twenty five, and we're still talking about how
relevant he is in these conversations. You mentioned Mike Conley,

(01:00:26):
you mentioned the group out of al Horford, out of Florida, Like,
these guys are still playing in today's game, these are anomalies.
These are excellent players. They were excellent in two thousand
and seven, they're still excellent in entering twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
It's pretty remarkable, it really is that, and that's the
next evolution I think sports science, in addition to the
professionalism those guys have, how well they've taken their care
of their bodies. We know that Lebron James is famously
not in the NBA, Tom Brady in the NFL, and
I think you'll continue to see that trend where guys
are shattering records on the agent Kurr, playing longer than

(01:01:01):
ever before and better at later ages. I throw Steph
Curry into that group as well, but he's still doing
at a remarkably high level. For the Golden State Warriors,
they're off the chartstead when you look at historical trends
in the NBA that I really enjoyed this and one
of the things we want to hear from our listeners
here on Rosters to Rings, you know, is is their thoughts,
you know, kind of on the on the format, any

(01:01:21):
specific guests we did the first show the two of us.
We had a few great guests over the last couple
of weeks and we'll get back next week to having
more guests. So please, you know, give us a review
if you want to put five stars. I'm not going
to complain about that, but also send us your comments
either on Twitter. I know people call it x now,
but I still refer to as Twitter or Instagram. Let
us know what you think of the show, and if

(01:01:42):
there's anybody you'd like us to have on that now,
we'll see if we can track them down. Or any
issues you want us to discuss, we'll get into those
as well. But rejoin us next week on Rosters to Rings.
The NBA Draft will be upon us. We'll know at
that point who the who won the NBA Championship. We'll
probably talk about free agency, which is approaching as well
in the NBA and Major League Baseball, coming up to

(01:02:02):
the trade deadline as teams get into the heart of
their season, we'll touch on all that and more. He
is sad Levine. I am Ryan McDonough. Thanks for joining
us and come back next week on Rosters the Rings.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Please join me host bad Levine, Ryan McDonough and other
general managers every week for Roster Syrings on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts