Elfrid Peyton

Paul George is the only player on the Pacers!

Not like they had Lance Stephenson, Roy Hibbert, David West, and all kinds of depth, along with a perennial COY candidate in Vogel. George was groomed in a perfect situation on an already-successful team behind an All-Star caliber starter.

Cousins, meanwhile, developed under the least consistent, worst constructed, annually least-talented team in the league, under some coaches who can't even manage to find assistant jobs anywhere.

There is no comparison to by made.

Again, how does that mean that George hasn't had more success than Cousins? Let's not pretend that George isn't the best player on that Pacers team. Like I said, this isn't about who's more talented - it's about who has had more success. Cousins hasn't even made the playoffs, it's not even like a KG Duncan thing where KG was getting to the playoffs every year but not winning championships. Even if we're talking about talent, George has achieved every single accolade since entering the league that Cousins has.

Except that this was your original post:

It's not debatable. You take Big Cuz over a 100% healthy Paul George every time, no matter what your franchise looks like on draft day.

I don't think that Mac's debating that, he's merely saying that the Cousins v. George argument has a wee bit more merit than a Nik v. Payton one.

I read back through the entire thread to unravel the inanity of this discussion. I don't think he has a point at all. You would probably be complaining about taking Harden over Tyreke and Brandon Jennings as well.

Whatever happens over the next ten years of Nik and Elfrid's careers, this thread will still be stupid.

I remember no such thing.

Then why are you wasting your time posting here? My point was simple - Darth Divac said (I paraphrase) "oh please, don't criticise the drafting of Nik over Peyton. You guys wanted George over Cousins back in the day too, and by George (pun intended) thank goodness we picked Cousins instead". In other words, stop your moanin', Nik was the right pick because we picked him. I was merely picking on the notion that we'd really be that much worse off had we drafted George instead.

It's easy to call it hindsight, but I thought there were some obviously glaring problems with Nik and if our FO wasn't obsessed with being a worse version of the Warriors, we could've came away with a better player.

What leaks? Grant land has only mocked Vivek though..

In the hellish post-Malone-firing landscape when every single news organization seemed to be picking up leak after leak about the discord in the organization, I'm fairly certain there was an article or two regarding Vivek's strong-arming of the whole draft process. That said, that was a while ago and there are simply so many "The Kings FO is a crapshow" articles that I don't know where to look to prove myself right.

That all said, the Grantland documentary certainly doesn't do anything to dispel the notion that Vivek was really gunning for the Sauce.

EP vs Pistons, 14 points, 13 assists, 4 rebounds 2 turnovers.

i want grantland to do a 2016 draft video so we can see vivek tell, i mean ask the crowd who they should pick.

Third worst shooter in the NBA:

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nba-kyle-korver-best-shooter-nba-atlanta-hawks/

Should have drafted Payton and then signed or traded for a veteran SG.....that was the correct move. They drafted Stauskas in part because he was NBA ready. They were wrong on that part. They were wrong to turn over the SG position to 2 young guys. Many who were on the Payton bandwagon before the pick was named wanted Payton and a vet SG as the moves to make. That's not hindsight.

Drafting Nik over Payton was a stupid, stupid, stupid move that was panned by everyone.... Just like the firing of Malone. Vivek's fingerprints were all over it.

And no, this isn't hindsight. I was all in on Payton going into last years draft, and I remember there was A LOT of posters who were also wanting us to get Payton.

And even if he wasn't available, drafting Nik was STILL a stupid move, because now you are hoping a rookie shooter is going to be NBA ready, because the LAST rookie shooter who plays the SAME POSITION wasn't! You'd think the FO would have learned from their past mistakes, or the mistakes of the previous FO (who thought rookie Jimmer was so NBA ready they let go of Beno).

I cant wait for this coming draft.... We're probably going to pass on Winslow for Hezjona. Or trade down and get that 7'1 Indian dude.

Payton is a friggin beast. Who cares if he cant shoot. Neither could Kidd.

We need to cut Nik some slack here...he hasn't looked like a productive player until Karl came in and got familiar with his players and spots for them to be successful, which is still a work in progress. Players that get drafted by this team either bust or don't get developed properly and go flourish elsewhere where there is more stability within the organization...I liked the Nik I saw under Karl, he has a good basketball IQ and you can see it. He will produce sooner than we think IMO.

neither. Drafting DMC is the greatest thing to happen to this franchise on court in the past 10 years

Well I'm not so much angry that we ended up with Nik, I'm more mad that we drafted a SG back to back, while passing on an awesome PG prospect when that was an area of need.

In a vacuum, I like Nik as a prospect. He has size, underrated athleticism, a great skill set, and enough BBIQ and work ethic that he will probably, at the very least, end up a good rotation player. While this past draft mirrors the Jimmer draft in that we selected a supposedly NBA ready shooter while passing on a better prospect that played a position of need (in the case of the Jimmer draft, I'm talking about Kawhi, who is currently destroying the Clippers..... ) Nik is more than likely going to turn out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than Jimmer, so there is less potential for angst down the road.

Still....I really wish we could have nabbed Payton as well on draft day (I remember PDA was making some valiant attempts).