The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

I went back and forth on this move until I finally decided that it deserves its own post — and for you to decide if it was the right move at the time.

2005: Drafted Andrew Bogut ahead of Marvin Williams and Chris Paul:

First of all, at least Harris didn’t take Marvin Williams.

The NBA has a dirty little secret: despite what the marketing people and TV analysts tell you, most teams have no chance of winning a championship at any given time and it can’t be done by slowly building deep teams around chemistry and balance and a good-but-not-great big man. No, you win championships by having superstars. Specifically, Hall-of-Fame level superstars. The type of guys who don’t come along often and once they do, don’t change teams often. Actually, You need two of them at the same time. Jordan/Pippen. Olajuwon/Drexler. Shaq/Kobe. Duncan/Parker/Ginobli. Shaq/Wade. That’s how you win titles. With great players.

Detroit isn’t really an exception to this , they had two underrated, borderline superstars (Billups and Rasheed Wallace) and two other all-stars (Ben Wallace and Richard Hamilton) and an unprecedented lack of injuries for two years to win their recent title.

As it’s turned out, Harris passed on a great player , Paul , for a moderately above average one. Some day Chris Paul might carry a team to a championship while it’s pretty clear that Andrew Bogut might someday be a good third option on one. But second-guessing 3 years later is easy. Was drafting Bogut the right or wrong move at the time?

The case for Andrew Bogut:
Good big men are a rare commodity, and when they come along everybody knows it before they hit the league. Look at the best big men in the league: Howard, Stoudemire, Yao, Camby, Shaq, Okafor, Duncan, Garnett. The only ones of that group not taken in the top two of the draft were Garnett (because he was the first high schooler in 20 years) and Stoudemire (because the whole “5 high schools in 4 years” and other character questions scared teams off). That’s why when you get a chance at a good big man you do it , because you never know when you will get a chance at another one. Olowakandi aside, if there’s a big guy worth taking at #1 then he won’t disappoint you.

It’s not the Bucks’ fault that the year they won the lottery the big guy available just happened to be a little short on the athleticism that separates the “next generation” stars like Howard and Stoudemire.

Bogut has basically become what everyone thought he would be, except for some reason people thought he had 18-foot range on his jumper coming out of college. As he’s bulked up his jump shot seems to have gotten worse and worse, but maybe that’s actually a good thing , the last thing the Bucks need is a center who likes to float around the perimeter. He’s a high-percentage scorer, good rebounder (an a team where he gets no help at that) and an underrated defender (if you factor in the fact that he and Varejao take by far the most charges in the league, Bogut is actually pretty good at that end).

Bogut was the boring pick but the right pick. While Chris Paul may be a once-a-generation talent, there are still darn good point guards and combo guards regularly available at the top of almost every draft (Derrick Rose, OJ Mayo, and Eric Gordon next year, for example). However, there isn’t a true center on the horizon (trust me , if Roy Hibbert was going to be good he’d have been the #2 pick this season or #1 last year).

If they hadn’t taken Bogut they’d be looking for a big guy for 20 years.

The case for Chris Paul:

One of the main arguments why the Bucks didn’t seriously consider taking Paul in 2005 was the wealth of point guards they already had. TJ Ford was a question mark coming off of his neck injury, but all indications were that if he could play at all he would be 100%. They also had a capable, inexpensive second option available in Mo Williams should Ford not be able to go. Sounds like a pretty good reason to not take Paul.

But it’s actually the exact reason why they should have taken Paul.

In college, everything about Chris Paul pointed to stardom , he was the unquestioned leader of a Wake Forest team that was #1 in the country for a while with him as the only NBA player. His character was well known , off court he is very quiet and unassuming and on the court he has a “win at all costs” mean streak. He’s a cold-blooded leader. His athletic ability was unquestioned , as fast as anyone this side of TJ Ford, if maybe a little smaller than you would like. His stats were eye-popping: 2.5 steals per game, 3:1 A/TO ratio, 85% free throw shooter. He may as well have had “NBA Stud” tattooed on his forehead.

Meanwhile, everything about Bogut said “moderately above average.” Solid character, not that athletic in an athletes game, and he played in a pretty weak college conference.

Paul’s rookie season turned out to be a complete anomaly , every other point guard in the league since Magic Johnson has needed at least one season to get his feet wet. It turned out that Paul was ready to go from day one, but the more realistic assumption was that he would need a year as Ford’s backup to grow into an NBA role. This also would give Ford time to prove his health and raise his trade value. Mo’s contract was so favorable that teams would have been salivating to get their hands on him, and once Ford proved himself to be healthy the bidding could start. You think Phoenix would rather give up a low first rounder for 2 years of Mo for $3 million or sign Marcus Banks for 5/$25? Additionally, TJ turned out to be perfectly tradeable, so that point guard logjam would have cleared itself out perfectly well.

And now, 3 years later, it’s turned out that Larry Harris passed on the second best player in the game to snap up the 75th best.

Andrew Bogut over. Chris Paul: another perfect example of why you always take the guy who has the best chance of being a great player rather than the guy who best fits your team. Just like Bowie over Jordan.

Good or Bad Pick? What’s the Right Answer?

So you see why I call this “The Move That Cannot Be Categorized”? There really isn’t a right answer. How much better would the Bucks be today with Paul instead of Bogut? They would probably have Pachulia, and since Paul missed almost 20 games last year there’s no guarantee that last season would have gone any better. Say the Bucks would have won 10 more games with Paul than with Mo. That doesn’t get them very far , right there with the Knicks. So instead of Yi, they would have Joakim Noah.

Additionally, a starting lineup of Paul/Redd/(Simmons or Mason)/Villanueva/Pachulia still has lots of the same questions they do today , no bangers, no rebounders, no defenders. It would be a more exciting lineup; and having a guy who can get into the lane and draw a foul would be nice, I guess. But is that a great team? Not really.

I’m proud to say that in 2005 I was telling everyone who would listen that the Bucks should take Paul. But I was saying that as a fan. That doesn’t mean that if I was the GM then I would have taken the little guy over the big guy.

I guess that the bottom line is that this is the only move that Harris has made that could have changed the direction of the franchise, and that hasn’t happened. They are still a .500 team with only one borderline all-star and their absolute best-case-scenario is the second round of the playoffs.

But does that mean Bogut was the wrong pick? No “¦ it really doesn’t. It means that there’s more luck involved than this than anyone would like to admit.

I’ve gone back and forth with concluding that Bogut over Paul was good or bad. And I think my final conclusion is “¦. Good pick. Even with Paul, there is no guarantee that this team would be much better. However, with Bogut in place it will be easier to retool the roster over the next 5-6 years than it would without him because it’s true , there aren’t many quality big guys around.

Up next: (part five in a four-part series) Has Larry Harris done a good job? The Conclusion.