Wages of Wins 3 on 3 Draft Round 4

Posted on September 30, 2011 by

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On the Miami Heat Podcast Mosi Platt and Alfredo Artuaga brought up a great idea. If the NBA players put on a 3 on 3 tournament in a great venue such as Las Vegas who wouldn’t want to watch? Mosi even did a rundown of how the best three person combos on each team looked. With no NBA to watch the Wages of Wins Network decided it would be a lot of fun to draft three person teams (and one alternate) using a snake draft. We’ll be posting the results the next couple of days. Here are our contestants

  • Greg Steele, our Houston Rockets experts, has the 1st, 12th, 13th and 24th picks
  • James Brocato of Shut Up and Jam (a Seattle Supersonics/Oklahoma City Thunder blog) has the 2nd, 11th, 14th and 23rd picks
  • Patrick Minton of The NBA Geek (a Timberwolves blog) has the 3rd, 10th, 15th and 22nd picks
  • Arturo Galletti, co-editor of the Wages of Wins and head writer at Arturo’s Silly Little Stats has the 4th,9th, 16th and 21st picks
  • Ben Gulker of Pistons by the Numbers has the 5th, 8th, 17th and 20th picks
  • Devin Dignam of NBeh? (a Toronto Raptors blog) has the 6th, 7th, 18th and 19th picks.

Each contestant kindly added a few words explaining their pick. In case you missed it you can find the first two rounds here: Round 1 and Round 2. With that let’s get on to the next round!

Round 4

1) With the 19th pick Devin selects Kevin Garnett

My second pick is Kevin Garnett (that sound you just heard? Arturo). Like Odom, Garnett is very flexible. defensively, he can cover every position. Offensively, Garnett can even handle the ball if he has to; I distinctly remember him bringing the ball up the court on a regular basis when he played in Minnesota. And while Garnett can’t shoot the three, he certainly has some range (check out his Hoopdata splits).

2) With the 20th pick Ben selects Kobe Bryant

Because I am devaluing Wins Produced numbers because I believe 3-on-3 basketball is fundamentally different from NBA basketball, I’m going to pick a player that WP proponents typically run away from: Kobe Bryant. As wildly overrated as Kobe is, he’s still among the most potent offensive options on the perimeter. And in a structure where help defense will be mostly non-existent, I’ll take Kobe as my fourth many any day.

3) With the 21st pick Arturo selects Jason Kidd

You know that old guy in your pickup court who knows every dirty trick in the book, fouls you on every play yet never gets called for anything, gets all the cheap rebounds and makes you pay for leaving him open from long range? Jason Kidd is that guy.

4) With the 22nd pick Patrick selects Landry Fields

I’ll take Landry Fields.  More rebounding, height, solid defense, and he’s my worst 3pt shot at .390 lol. He’ll be a great sub for Dunleavey when I need more toughness.

5) With the 23rd pick James selects Andrei Kirilenko

With my final pick, I’m going to go with Andrei Kirilenko. He’s a quick, long, aggressive defender, able to defend virtually every position. He is also a very good three point shooter. With Kirilenko, I can go with a number of different lineups, and I believe I have the personnel to match up with just about any team and create nightmare matchups for opposing defenses.

6) With the 24th pick Greg selects Stephen Curry

Okey dokey, here goes he final pick of the draft: Steph Curry. In a
draft where Ray Allen went in the top 12, it seems that Curry should
be in the top 24; he can do at least everything Ray can do, and pass a
bit better besides. Curry gives me the flexibility to shift between a
3-pt (2-pt) lineup of Curry, Ginobili, Love and a slashing lineup of
Ginobili, Smith, Love. To my mind, Curry is about the best long-range
shooter around, though he does give me another mediocre defender. I
think in a 3-on-3 league, the 2-pt. lineup would difficult to stop
with Curry and Love running the pick-n-pop or pick-n-roll, but would
need good defense from Manu and Josh Smith in order to supplement
Curry and Love.

We had a ton of fun with this and we may have a few more posts coming on the subject! Any surprises or bets on which team wins?

-Dre

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Posted in: Arturo, Basketball Stories, Ben Gulker, Devin, Greg Steele, James Brocato, Patrick Minton