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Message: [QUOTE="billsin01, post: 2133277, member: 837"] Agree with all of this but I'm not sure draft position is the end all and be all for these guys. Yes, if you are Jaylen Brown, and you are the no. 3 pick in the draft there is literally no possible argument that you should return. But the key for him is b/c the investment is so great, the Celtics [I]have[/I] to have some patience and try and develop him. They have too much financial commitment to pull the plug quickly. If you go at 25, however, a team wants you to develop and they'll work with you but they have nowhere near the financial incentive to do so for any length of time. Why does that matter? Well, the point is that Buddy Hield has a huge senior year and while he gets drafted below brown, he has had a really solid rookie year (playing in 70 games, starting in 43; around 10 ppg for the season and has been really good in sacramento scoring ~14/game on 50% shooting). Brown's been fine but Hield is ready to play and succeed. So while the draft position is lower, he's going to have a lot more leverage if these trends continue next year for contract no. 2 -- a huge key to making a ton of money -- vs. Brown. Anyway, you can discuss this in a lot of different ways, but my point on kids leaving is that I'd want whatever my carrying tool is to be ready for the NBA before I leave -- Waiters is a scorer and explosive athlete, so he was ready. MCW was 6-6 and could play the point and got a bunch of minutes under his belt while finishing strong his soph year, I get why he leaves. But Richardson is a scorer who didn't really score or shoot consistently in college. Lydon is a stretch 4 who teams are going to like far more for his offense than his defense, yet he didn't really play well offensively for much of the season. At the end of the day, I'm really happy for the kids that get the opportunity to move on and I hold zero ill will toward Lydon for making his decision. I also don't argue that Lydon coming back means a significant improvement in draft status next year. I'm simply saying that if I'm advising him, if I feel he has work to do on his game I'd rather know he was going to be playing 40 mpg as one of the primary focal points of a major college team, then sitting on a bench or riding around on a D League bus next year. Is that what he's destined for? I don't know, I'm just saying he's the type of kid who has a lot of offensive upside but I'd feel weird advising him to leave after watching him play so tentatively this season. [/QUOTE]

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