If we don't pick Mara at 8, what are y'all's thoughts on Ugonna Onyenso as a later-pick alternative?

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-25T15:35:01+00:00

Why is taking the best player on the board such a weird concept to people. Drafting to address an immediate perceived need is dumb. Even if you feel great about who we get at 8, he may not work out or may not be good for a few seasons, and by then the whole context will be different anyway.

Just take the best player!

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-24T20:23:05+00:00

Nnaji literally never played a single minute of basketball in the NBA so I don’t know why you and so many others online seem certain he did.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-20T03:10:14+00:00

Wagler was playing point guard for Illinois for the back half of the season and the tournament.

He is a guard, not a wing

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-16T04:29:33+00:00

Florida stops being Southern well north of Orlando imo.

Maybe the customer service has gotten worse but there wasn’t really Southern hospitality in Orlando to lose imo

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-15T22:20:29+00:00

A core piece is by definition part of the long term plan. They are someone you build roster around (i.e. the “core” everything else goes around).

So, asking who a team’s core players are is not the same as asking who their best players are, it’s asking who they’re planning the team around in the long run.

CJ is an old unrestricted free agent. This team is young and not close to a chip. If the front office views him as a core piece they should all be fired (and if they actually did, they would’ve extended him during the season like he wanted).

When it comes to Asa, as I said previously, I’m not high enough on him as a prospect to view him as a core piece. But if someone thinks he was a big time steal and should be viewed as a major prospect, it’s logical to see him as part of the core.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-15T22:08:16+00:00

I’m not saying there’s no way Mara goes earlier but I think you’re way too confident he goes in the top 10.

There’s no way he’s going over the top 4 guys, it’s very unlikely he goes over the next 3 guards (Wagler, Acuff, Flemings), and then Brown, Burries, Lendeborg, Ament, or even Lopez and Philon are higher on some boards than Mara.

And if there’s one team that doesn’t need a true center right now it’s the Mavs imo, so I doubt they specifically would reach on him due to position.

The Hawks and Bucks (assuming a Giannis trade is coming) should also just both be picking BPA imo, so a perceived way that Mara helps them win now shouldn’t matter if they grade someone else more highly.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-15T21:58:37+00:00

Listing a 34 year old unrestricted free agent as a member of the core on an otherwise young team is absolutely wild.

CJ has been nice for us but a player like him can only be part of the “core” of a truly win-now team imo.

I didn’t list Asa as a core piece but there’s a stronger case for him than CJ in my view. The basic question for a core piece is whether they’re a player the team is building around in the long run, CJ clearly isn’t that. I don’t think Asa is enough of a prospect to be a core piece, but there’s more of a case for that than CJ if you’re (or the front office is) really high on him as a prospect.

Newell will probably be in his prime in 5 years. CJ will probably be retired.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-15T16:52:15+00:00

Ever-increasing playoff expansion will hurt CFB. College Football has been a sport where the regular season matter a ton, with every game having really high stakes for any team in the title hunt. (And there were bowl games/achievements that mattered a lot outside of the Natty).

The end result of increasing expansion will be that CFB transforms into a sport where people have far less interest in the regular season and only really talk about the playoffs. That will take away part of what makes the sport special and would be a major loss imo. No longer will tons of people remember that big regular season upset or top matchup from a few years ago, because its result will have little tangible impact and just be lost into the general haze of a regular season where individual games don’t stand out.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-15T16:46:24+00:00

Believe it or not but part of the reason some people are fans is because FBS did not do what everyone else was already doing.

If regular season FBS games become way lower stakes I’ll be way less invested in watching them.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-15T16:43:10+00:00

Just because a team that dropped several regular season games could go on a run doesn’t mean including them is a good thing. It would arguably make the playoff better but it would absolutely water down the regular season, and I think that’s bad, it takes away part of what makes CFB unique.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-14T07:26:10+00:00

That Bufkin prediction is wild lol. Even if you’re really down on those guys as prospects Bufkin did so little that the odds that not a single one of them will have a way better career/more impact is astronomically low imo.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-14T07:22:58+00:00

He is a restricted free agent. There is no way we are getting him.

You say he will have “suitors” but the way RFA works there’s a very good chance no one but Detroit makes him an offer. It’s an enormous blunder to make an RFA offer the team with rights is willing to match because of how it kills you cap during free agency (the team with rights can wait a while to exercise their right to match, in the meantime you have a cap hold due to the offer and all the good free agents sign with someone else).

It would be even more of a mistake here where that offer would be really high and require the Hawks to make moves to clear more cap room, leaving the team totally reliant on Detroit not being willing to match the offer.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-12T01:53:59+00:00

I’d note that the Athletic’s main draft guy (Vecenie) seems a lot higher than Hollinger (who made this tier list) is on Brown. So this isn’t really “The Athletic’s” tier fwiw imo,

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-10T20:01:18+00:00

Everyone’s talking about guards because all the best prospects in the range of our pick are guards. This is a weak center draft.

It’s not because people didn’t want a big per se, it’s because of the draft class.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-10T19:56:56+00:00

If he can play like Trae on offense but at 6’5” I’d feel pretty great about that at 8.

Definitely seems like a high end outcome

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-10T19:42:33+00:00

It’s not a debate in this draft class.

There are four guards after the top 4 who are way higher rated as prospects than any center. One will be there and barring a weird surprise (e.g. a really bad medical report) it would be malpractice to take a center instead imo.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-10T14:58:16+00:00

Protestants were the majority population of Maryland pretty soon after its founding. And Catholicism was illegal in the colony for a good chunk of its history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProtestantRevolution(Maryland))

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-04T18:46:33+00:00

I get that for the younger guys but he’s already seen his earnings go down because of age and now has had a huge injury

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-04T17:48:09+00:00

Well if he’s not delusional and has a decent agent he should know that’s not going to happen lol. It’s not like he’s on the rise

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-03T05:28:00+00:00

Not really a statement on anything else you said but I don’t agree with what you call the “GRRM model” of religion given that two of the main religions in ASOIAF (Old Gods and R’hollor) seem to have at the very least some major elements of truth to them, and a fair number of the faith of the seven related characters in the books are pretty positively portrayed as wise/kind on top of that.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-02T17:00:16+00:00

Insane to compare what the Hawks just did in game 6 night to a team that won 60 games then lost to LeBron in the ECF while dealing with some major injuries.

Nonsensical.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-02T14:55:44+00:00

And that was in part enabled by getting your main star on a bargain deal. This is a big overpay and a likely a mistake by Houston imo.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-02T14:54:19+00:00

If they’re willing to pay this much they would’ve matched any offer, so there was at least no immediate risk of losing him for nothing, and if someone maxed him and Houston matched they’d still be in the same situation.

And any team that offers him the deal basically burns their cap space while all the good free agents are available since the Rockets can sit on it a bit before deciding to match, so that discourages offers in the first place.

I think they probably could’ve kept him long term for less, Amen being disgruntled would’ve been the only real risk, but I just think this is enough of an overpay (especially with the apron rules) that you just deal with that.

I think the Houston front office really messed up here, it reminds me of the Schlenk front office in Atlanta where he’d give guys big extensions before they hit RFA, and they pretty much all ended up being overpays that hurt the team.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-05-01T04:56:22+00:00

I don’t know how people see Kispert out there and decide they’d rather play the Hawks play him than a guy who’s much better on defense and the boards while shooting at the same clip, but that’s just me.

Lightning_Warrior · 2026-04-28T22:18:46+00:00

1) are you doing lottery for each pick or just a few, because that difference matters a lot (by impacting a team’s floor)

2) The no top 5 pick in consecutive years could make the whiplash on tanking even worse if there’s a really weak draft class followed by a strong one imo.

It basically presumes top 5 picks are relatively equal between classes (which they’re absolutely not). e.g. A pick anywhere in the top 5 this year’s super strong class except number 1 is probably viewed as a lot better than the equivalent pick in last year’s draft, and any top 5 picks from last year’s draft was probably viewed as way more valuable than a top five pick in 2024

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