[Anton123Participant]

There are many players that are drafted that aren’t expected to produce right away or even within the next couple of years. If it’s an international player, teams often elect to have them play overseas (Tomas Satoransky, Davis Bertans, etc. etc.) and come over when they can help the team. This is a good move because then a team doesn’t have to pay the player, have him occupy a roster spot or have his contract expire before he can be useful to the team.

However, American players rarely do this coming out of college (some second-rounders do, but not top-40 prospects), This means that you get to rent a player for just 4 years even though he may be useless to you the first three. If I were a Pheonix fan, for example, I would be worried that both Bender and Chriss would only become good by their 3-4 years and then demand big money or leave the team altogether.

The Toronto Raptors recently decided against stashing an incredibly raw international player (Bruno Caboclo) to develop him themselves. He now has 2 years left on his rookie contract and still doesn’t look like an NBA player.

To me, getting stashed is against the interest of a player, but is fully in the interest of the team. The player gets to train with NBA players and then gets a big paycheck earlier if he is brought in right away. Teams love rookie contracts, especially with the rising salaries, and would love to have more ready players for less money.

Still, it’s much easier to convince a player to stay after his contract is over than win him over in free agency, so drafting guys like Bender and Chriss still makes sense. That’s how GSW, SAS and OKC were built. It must be said that all these teams over the years have also benefitted from having players on rookie contracts that contributed (the GSW championship team had Barnes and Ezeli).

Is there any way a team can convince a top prospect to not come over straight away? What do you think of using top picks on guys that may leave the team as soon as they become quality players? Is the risk of paying a guy four years for training him worth it?

[HitsterParticipant]

 Euro guys often have buyouts but will still declare before they become draft eligible, these guys often wait a few years so they can negioiate a none rookie deal or their buyout is reduced etc.

I’ve never really heard of a team drafting an NCAA guy first round and not signing him. I don’t know what the implications of this is. Lets say the Spurs drafted a raw prospect from the NCAA late first round and they decided not to sign him for the next season, what would the scenarios be?

 

[kazamParticipant]

 Sounds a lot like the Josh Huestis and OKC deal a couple years ago. He spent his first season not on a rookie scale deal but in the D-League with the OKC Blue. Essentially he was paid only $25K rather than what the 29th selection of the draft should have been paid which would have been around 900K. He signed his ‘rookie’ deal after his first D-League season. 

I can’t link it for some reason, but a good article on yahoo if you search josh huestis draft and stash

 

 

[GBeeParticipant]

 Draftees or potential draftees have to agree on being stashed or at least communicate that they are willing to be stashed during the interview process. That’s why a guy like Zubac, who to me was clearly one of the best C prospects in this past draft, dropped to the 2nd round.  He told teams that he was not willing to be stashed, while guys like Yabusele and Zizic were.

Also, losing a player who a team has birds rights to is kinda hard to do.

The benefit of not stashing a player overseas, or even in the D-League is that the NBA team gets to oversee and have hands on involvement in the player’s development.  The players also get indoctrinated into the system early.  Ideally, a team could use a D-League affiliate to maintain that hands on approach while not taking up an active roster spot, keeping them relatively close and ready to be "called up" but its not the same bc D-League comp is trash and no matter how hard the parent team tries to implement systems, they’re not gonna be the same from 1 level to the next under different coaching staffs. Can a team really trust an unafilliated overseas team to develop their player properly? I’ve seen my share of prospects get drafted and buried on int’l rosters because they can’t beat out vets or the coach refuses to play them bc they have no future with the team. A number of things could happen to that prospect while stuck in that limbo (like losing confidence as a player).

If drafting more ready to contribute players and/or having contributors on rookie contracts (and I do agree since the rookie scale hasn’t changed while salaries went up) that is important, then the team shouldn’t draft projects.  Or that option could be limited by the league by raising the age limit, which I’m sure will draw some naysayers on this board because there seems to be a tendency to side with what’s fair for the players as opposed to what’s good for the product.

 

[goldie92689Participant]

 D Leauge structure needs to be fixed to accomadate developing players under long term contract. You should get paid for actual NBA service time otherwise you should be on a minor league salary. D League salaries need to be more equitable.  D league needs to make commitments to larger non nba markets like KC, STL, PITT,  JAX, SD, etc, etc. 

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