AJC (C-Viv): Wilcox comments on draft philosophy

[sturt]

http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/basketball/hawks-enter-nba-draft-with-unknown-number-of-holes/nmgj7/

 

“We do our best to separate the draft from free agency,” assistant general manager Wes Wilcox said. “Certainly, they are connected. Our focus in every draft is to identify the best player who fits us. There is the long-standing debate over drafting the best player versus drafting for a position of need. It’s certainly something we all juggle. We’ve become comfortable with being guided by what we call our draft objective, which remains the same every year, we want to draft a guy who fits without our culture, fits (coach Mike Budenholzer) and his system and can add to and become a piece of our core.

“We do that regardless of position and focus more on the character traits and the skill more than anything else.”

 

“It’s a tough question because it goes to the fundamentals of the draft,” Wilcox said when asked if a player at No. 15 can help right away. “The next layer to this is we are trying to identify the best player over the duration of their career. We all deal with this — evaluating the 19-year-old with the 22-year-old. We call this, internally, the developmental arc — from your pre-prime of 19 to 25 and your prime of 25 to 30 or 32 and then your post-prime of 32 to the end of your career.

 

“Doing our best to line up the 19-year-old with the 22-year-old is a challenge. One of the good things about our team is if we draft someone at No. 15 we are likely in the position where we can focus on their development and put them in the program and give them the appropriate time to get acclimated to the NBA. If you draft an older player, they are probably closer. If you draft a younger player, they might not be as close.”

 

“You may end up with a 19-year-old where there is positional opportunity or a 22-year-old where there is not a positional opportunity,” Wilcox said. “That is where we believe in our development staff, our assistant coaches, to where we can continue to improve the player and give them a chance to be a good Hawk long-term.”

[Guest]

Vague much? Lol...geez

Edited June 20, 2015 by Spud2Nique

[sturt]

Yeah, there's all kinds of follow-up questions I'd like for C-Viv to have asked, but then again, even though I certainly want to be able to predict what we'll do, I don't really want our guys giving away enough to help other teams predict what we'll do.

 

We need a Hawks code... kinda like maybe speaking Vulcan or something?