Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
Thank you for telling me what you THINK my argument is, and also demonstrating how very wrong you have it.
Picks are not taken in isolation. When you take a pick, you make it for a team. Now, it's very true that often, you draft best player available, but in the case of this draft we were lucky as a team to have already secured the best player available in the entire draft. That meant that our priorities were not necessarily to find the highest source of immediate talent, but to select the players to provide talent across our roster, which is currently in need of a lot of patching up.
If you have a roster like Cleveland, which is in desperate need of patching but also stunningly devoid of raw talent, then it's true that you should just pick whoever you have the most faith in, in terms of upside. If you have a roster like ours, which already possesses a bunch of raw talent and is in need of depth and versatility, then it makes a lot of sense to trade down (like Griff did) and get more than one swing of the axe at filling out the roster. Which is what he did.
It may be the case that Garland ends up, in a year or two, or three, being better than either Hayes or Alexander-Walker. In terms of shooting, he almost certainly will be, unless he undergoes some kind of Markelle Fultz situation. But will he be better in tandem with Zion Williamson, Jrue Holiday, and Lonzo Ball? Very probably not, because he is lacking in several key areas that are clearly the areas of focus for this team: namely in passing, and in defense.
If you have trouble understanding that, then that's fine, but don't act like everyone on this board has just said Garland is garbage and moved on. We haven't. Get over it.