T10YL - 2014 NBA Draft
Four draft night trades (starring Saric, McDermott, Napier, and Marble) packed into one post.
This will be a challenge in portion control. I wrote 5,000 words about yesterday’s trade and it’s physically impossible to do that for all the trades coming up in July. Too many trades. Each of these four 2014 NBA Draft trades are interesting in their own right, but we’re going to condense them into one basically normal-length post, starting now:
The Names: Orlando Magic receive: Elfrid Payton (#10 overall). Philadelphia 76ers receive: Dario Saric (#12 overall), future 1st round pick (Landry Shamet selected in 2018), 2015 Orlando 2nd-round pick (Willy Hernangomez selected).
The Team Context: The 76ers were brazenly engaged in a thought experiment that attempted to arbitrage future assets against current suffering. They had already selected injured center Joel Embiid with the #3 overall pick, which seemed incredibly risky at the time but was going to age well.
The Magic had also already selected in this draft, taking Aaron Gordon with the #4 pick, but unlike the 76ers, the Magic had some interest in winning basketball games in the present.
The Trade: By 2014, Adrian Wojnarowski had developed a reputation as Twitter’s top NBA transaction insider. Woj had (and still has) a sufficiently robust network of sources to know essentially every draft pick before it’s announced by the commissioner. The draft is a contrived television event that has no reason to be popular, and its popularity is certainly hindered when NBA fanatics can get pick information quicker on their timeline than they could on the broadcast.
To circumvent restrictions imposed by networks on spoiling picks, reporters will use language that reveals a player selection without explicitly saying it. They aren’t “drafting Joe Player with the sixth pick,” they “are targeting Joe Player with the sixth pick” or “have no plans to pass on Joe Player at the sixth pick.” Silly stuff, but an additional advantage is that it adds a level of plausible deniability in the rare event that a reporter gets the wrong information.
At 5:35 Pacific time on draft night, Woj reported that “the Philadelphia 76ers have looked closely at Dario Saric for the No. 10 pick.” The NBA world was therefore stunned when the 76ers actually took Elfrid Payton with their selection, marking Woj’s first missed projection of the draft. But Woj wasn’t wrong. All he said was that they looked closely at Dario Saric. If you inferred anything else, that’s on you.
Payton was an impressive defensive prospect at the point guard position, but had a limited offensive game and couldn’t shoot. He seemed pretty superfluous with Michael Carter-Williams, who had just won Rookie of the Year a few weeks beforehand as the only 76ers starter who made it through the season without being traded. For a few minutes, fans speculated whether MCW would be on the move.
Woj was not to be outfoxed. Three minutes after his erroneous Saric projection and two minutes after tweeting out the actual pick, he followed up with a report that Elfrid Payton “could be on the move.” Evidently, at least according to Reddit user buckykatt31, the Magic were locked in on Elfrid Payton and the 76ers knew it. According to Woj’s subsequent reporting, the 76ers wanted to select Saric all along, but took Payton instead to swap for Saric and additional draft capital. At 5:51 Pacific time, Woj reported the Magic’s selection and the player swap.
Saric was a perfect selection for the Process-era 76ers. He had originally entered the draft in 2013 as one of Europe’s most-hyped prospects, but ended up sticking around for another season. Saric was back in the draft for 2014, but on June 24, he signed a two-year contract (with a third-year option) with Anadolu Efes (the future home of Shane Larkin we discussed yesterday). He told everyone that his intent was to play in Turkey for two seasons, improve his game, and come to the NBA in 2016. With Joel Embiid set to miss the season with a foot injury, Philadelphia had banked two top-10 talents without running the risk of adding talent to their present roster.
The Results: Elfrid Payton started with the Magic throughout his rookie contract, but never learned how to shoot. He was good enough to immediately play point guard in the NBA (finishing 4th in Rookie of the Year voting), but never good enough to play point guard for a competitive NBA team. Fortunately for him, the Magic were never a particularly competitive NBA team during his tenure. When his rookie contract was in its final season, the Magic traded him to Phoenix in exchange for a second-round pick that was eventually used on Jarred Vanderbilt.
Saric followed through on his two-year commitment to Turkey and then joined the 76ers for the 2016-17 season. His timing ended up being perfect; Joel Embiid missed the first two post-draft seasons after successive foot surgeries, but now both 76ers could debut at the same time. Embiid was more spectacular but less durable, tearing his meniscus after playing just 31 games. Saric hewed more towards “solid,” but his performance was enough for him to place 2nd in 2017 Rookie of the Year voting (Embiid placed 3rd). The next season, Saric was a regular starter and finished 20th in Most Improved Player voting (which seemingly means he got one third-place vote or three fifth-place votes out of 101 ballots).
In 2018, the 76ers took Landry Shamet with the 26th pick of the draft. This was their own draft pick that they had reacquired from Orlando; after several wretched seasons, Philadelphia had gone 52-30 to finish with the 5th best record in basketball. They opted to take a player that could quickly contribute to a winning team in Shamet, who immediately began sinking 3-pointers in a bench role.
Willy Hernangomez ended up being a quality NBA player, especially by the standards of the 35th overall pick with which he was selected. None of that quality manifested for the 76ers, who traded his rights to the Knicks on Draft Night 2015 for two future 2nd-round picks (2020 and 2021). These picks were used on Tyler Bey and Filip Petrusev, who combined to play 2:41 for the 76ers (with one combined rebound). If they had held on to Hernangomez, they could’ve had three of the top five rookies of the year in 2017 (Hernangomez finished 5th in voting).
The Aftermath: This trade ended up embodying the ideals of the Process. It’s tempting to call Elfrid Payton a good NBA player based merely on the fact that he started 395 games, but he never really proved that he could contribute to winning at the championship level. Payton returned to his hometown New Orleans in the summer of 2018 and randomly had a stretch where he recorded five consecutive triple-doubles, becoming the fifth player in NBA history to pull that off. He spent the next two years with the Knicks and then joined the Suns for the 2021-22 season, which was basically the first time he was used only off the bench (and the only time Payton’s team won a playoff series). But he hasn’t played in the NBA since then and his basketball action last season seems to have consisted of eleven games for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants (as a starter, naturally).
Saric and Shamet were more “fine” than “great,” but from a Process perspective they provided a larger amount of trade value than Elfrid Payton ever could. Saric ended up as a key piece in the November 2018 trade that brought Jimmy Butler from Minnesota to Philadelphia (Saric subsequently has gone to Phoenix, Oklahoma City, and most recently Golden State). A few months later, Shamet was a piece in the deadline trade that added Tobias Harris from the Clippers (Shamet subsequently has gone to Brooklyn, Phoenix, and most recently Washington). This utilization is an excellent proof of concept for what the 76ers were trying to do as long as you ignore what subsequently happened in each of Butler’s and Harris’s times in Philadelphia.
After missing the first two and a half seasons of his career with lower body injuries, Joel Embiid played at least 50 games in each of the next six seasons.
The Names: Chicago Bulls receive: Anthony Randolph, Doug McDermott (#11 overall). Denver Nuggets receive: Jusuf Nurkic (#16 overall), Gary Harris (#19 overall), 2015 2nd-round pick (#53 overall, Sir’Dominic Pointer).
The Team Context: Nobody thinks about these picks at all when they discuss the Nuggets’ 2014 Draft because the team selected Nikola Jokic with the 41st overall pick. This was a good day for them.
The Player Context: There was a pre-existing NBA player involved with this one. Anthony Randolph was drafted #14 overall in the 2008 Draft by the Golden State Warriors, then traded to the Knicks for the first half of the 2010-11 season and onward to the Timberwolves as part of the Carmelo Anthony trade for the second half of the year. Randolph signed a three year contract with the Nuggets in the summer of 2012. Over the next two seasons, he only had limited stretches of regular playing time for a Nuggets roster that was heading towards a reset.
Doug McDermott was only a three-star recruit in the class of 2010, but had the good fortune of a father who coached high-level college basketball. Doug played under his father Greg at Creighton University and very quickly showed that nepotism can pay off — he earned all-conference honors as a freshman and was a first-team All-American in his subsequent three seasons as he proved himself worthy of the “Dougie McBuckets” moniker.
“Subsequent three seasons” is atypical; a lot of guys who had accomplished so much in college would have left to take the million-dollar payday available in the NBA rather than the mere scholarship that colleges could offer in 2013. Those guys probably get better advice than the propaganda that Greg was incentivized to feed his son. In fact, Doug didn’t even get to keep the scholarship, playing his senior year as a walk-on when Creighton would have otherwise ended up over the scholarship limit. While paying tuition, McDermott led college basketball in scoring and won every major national player of the year award.
Jusuf Nurkic was also a standout in his competition, putting up an absurd 35.2 PER in his 28 Adriatic League games (nobody in the NBA has ever exceeded 33 PER for a single season). His contract was bought out one day before the lottery, positioning him to be a “late lottery” draft pick. Gary Harris was born in Indiana (hence the name, probably) and had played two seasons at Michigan State, earning honorable mention All-American honors and making it to the Elite Eight in his sophomore year.
The Trade: McDermott was announced as a Nuggets selection and fans immediately set to work “letting the hype begin.” That hype lasted for just a few minutes before McDermott was sent onward to Chicago. As a guy who had played high school basketball in Ames, Iowa and college basketball in Omaha, Nebraska (each charming suburbs in the Chicagoland area), going to the Bulls was perfect for McDermott.
The Results: In HoopsHypes’ redraft of the 2014 draft, Nurkic is selected #11 and Harris is selected #13. McDermott falls to pick #19. If all the teams had the benefit of hindsight, the Nuggets and Bulls could have just selected Nurkic and McDermott with their original picks. They didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, which is how the Nuggets were able to trade away the third best player for the picks that were used to select the other two.
McDermott has carved out a long-lasting role as a shooter off the bench, but started his career with terrible performances followed by arthroscopic knee surgery. He went back to Summer League after his rookie season and never really contributed at the level Chicago hoped for in his second year. His best performance as a Bull came in a 31-point game in January of his third season, fueled by a second quarter where he scored 20 points in about four and a half minutes. One month later, he was traded to Oklahoma City.
Nurkic quickly worked his way into the Denver rotation and made his first start for the Nuggets on January 7th of his rookie year after Timofey Mozgov was traded away. Nurkic injured his patellar tendon at the end of the season and required surgery that cost him the first couple of months of the next season. During this time, Nikola Jokic began his NBA career and quickly showed that he should probably be the team’s starting center. Nurkic made multiple trade requests after losing his starting job and was eventually shipped out to Portland at the 2017 trade deadline.
Gary Harris looked like one of the steals of the draft, playing the most minutes of any Nugget by the time of his second season. He received votes for Most Improved Player in that season and the one following, then signed an $84 million contract extension to take effect after his first four years. Harris started regressing immediately after signing that contract, as his health and scoring both declined year-over-year until he was traded to the Orlando Magic in spring 2021.
Anthony Randolph was traded by the Bulls (with cash) to the Magic in exchange for Theoretical Milovan Rakovic and waived by Orlando the very next day. He never played for Chicago.
It took until the recording to realize that we left out any discussion of Sir’Dominic Pointer. That was a reasonable decision, as he never played an NBA game. Great name, though.
The Aftermath: Doug McDermott is going to get traded at least five more times. The most recent trade was a 3-team trade that sent Buddy Hield from Indiana to Philadelphia and McDermott from San Antonio to Indiana. When the playoffs began in 2024, McDermott only got into blowouts, but as the Pacers grew successively more injured, his role increased and he seemed to perform well. In Game 3 (which the Pacers lost by three points), McDermott only played for 3:56; the Pacers outscored the Celtics by 13 in that stretch.
Nurkic spent several seasons in Portland and was good when he was healthy. In the spring of 2019, Nurkic fractured his leg in pretty brutal fashion and was expected to miss the next year of play. He was all set to return on March 15, 2020, but this was interrupted when the NBA season was suspended on March 11. He eventually returned and signed a 4-year, $70 million extension with Portland, who traded him to Phoenix about 14 months later.
Gary Harris signed a two-year contract extension in Orlando in the summer of 2022. That just expired and he’ll enter free agency in the coming days. He’s 29 until September 14 and has made about $107 million in his NBA career.
Anthony Randolph went to Europe after his NBA career ended, playing his first two overseas seasons with Lokomotiv Kuban in Russia. He joined Real Madrid in July 2016 (a teammate of Luka Doncic) and stuck around for seven seasons until he retired from basketball in July of 2023. Since joining Real Madrid, he has become a Slovenian citizen (a teammate of Luka Doncic) and was instrumental in the country’s EuroBasket 2017 continental championship – the only time Slovenia has finished top-three in any tournament.
The Names: Miami Heat receive: Shabazz Napier (#24 overall). Charlotte Hornets receive: PJ Hairston (#26 overall), Semaj Christon (#55 overall), 2019 2nd-round pick (#43 overall, Jaylen Nowell selected), cash.
The Team Context: Miami had been the center of the basketball universe for four seasons, but that status was in question. Lebron James’ contract signed in the summer of 2010 was expiring and he was set to enter unrestricted free agency. The time was right to suck up to him.
Lebron happened to be publicly enamored with Shabazz Napier, the point guard who had just won the national championship game in his senior season at UConn (he won it in his freshman year, too). “No way u take another PG in the lottery before Napier,” James tweeted on the night of the national championship game.
The Trade: The Heat had not made a single draft pick since James joined the team, trading everything that wasn’t tied down as part of a win-now rampage. They still had their picks from this draft. Shabazz was projected to be outside of the range where Miami could trade up, but when he fell to pick #24 they decided to pounce, trading away both 2014 picks and a 2019 2nd-round pick to move up.
This seemed to have its intended effect; Lebron tweeted “My favorite player in the draft! #Napier” after the pick was made. All the responses to this tweet take it as a foregone conclusion that James would now stay in South Beach as a result of the Shabazz Napier pick.
The Results: Lebron signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers a couple of weeks later. You didn’t seriously think Shabazz Napier was going to keep him in town, did you?
Perhaps because he wasn’t the team’s true target, perhaps because he was a reminder of happier times, or perhaps because he just wasn’t that good, Napier never had much of a chance in Miami. He averaged 1.6 turnovers per game (against just 5.1 points and 2.5 assists) as he shuttled between the D-League and Miami. The next summer, he was traded to Orlando for a conditional 2016 2nd-round pick, which didn’t convey. Now that’s a bad draft pick.
But maybe it just gets harder at this stage in the draft. P.J. Hairston spent longer in Charlotte than Napier did in Miami, but not much longer — he was traded at the deadline midway through his second season. He shot 34.1% from the field during his time in Charlotte. Basketball-Reference didn’t even bother tracking how Semaj Christon left Charlotte, but his first and only NBA action came with the 2016-17 Oklahoma City Thunder. He shot 34.5% from the field that season.
Only Jaylen Nowell put together a respectable NBA career, but his draft pick ended up being traded again more than four years before he was selected by Minnesota in 2019.
The Aftermath: Shabazz Napier cycled through six NBA teams by the end of the 2019-20 season. The only team that gave him more minutes than Miami was Portland, which is also the only team where he stuck around for two seasons. In February of 2020, Napier was traded from Minnesota to Denver, then was traded from Denver to Washington the next day. He had been in Washington for about a month when the season was suspended and finished out his time in Washington playing in Orlando (I’m going to link to this Wikipedia page every time it’s relevant for the next six years). His final NBA game was a loss to the Pelicans where there were no fans and he was a game-low -14. His first overseas contract was with Zenit Saint Petersburg, which he terminated after the invasion of Ukraine. He’s played most recently with Olimpia Milano in Italy; perhaps they’ve got a shot at signing Lebron this summer.
The other NBA careers didn’t make it to the pandemic era (except for Jaylen Nowell, whose career didn’t really start until then). P.J. Hairston played eighteen regular season and two playoff games in Memphis, with the two playoff appearances coming for substantial stretches in games that the Grizzlies ultimately lost by 32 and 26 points. He played ten games in the D-League next season, but announced his retirement from basketball in 2018. Semaj Christon is still playing basketball, though he hasn’t played in the continental United States in seven years. He’s played in China, Puerto Rico, Israel, France, Spain, Turkey, Germany, and most recently Italy, where he went from Derthona Basket in 2022-23 to Pallacanestro Brescia in 2023-24.
The Names: Denver Nuggets receive: Arron Afflalo. Orlando Magic receive: Evan Fournier, Devyn Marble (#56 overall).
The Trade: This is only barely draft related. What’s this doing here? I wasn’t prepared to discuss actual NBA players with careers and we’re out of time and space to do so.
Kendrick Lamar used to be jealous of Arron Afflalo. Afflalo was drafted by the Pistons and spent a long stretch early in his career with Denver, but was sent to Orlando as collateral damage from the four-team Dwight Howard trade. He had received Most Improved Player votes in each of his last two seasons in Denver and first season in Orlando, but evidently peaked around that level. He was coming off a season where he averaged 18.2 points per game, leading the Magic in scoring. But he could opt out of his contract after the 2014-15 season and seemed likely to do so.
Evan Fournier had been Denver’s first-round pick in 2012, but hadn’t gotten that big of a rotation role yet. With any luck, he could develop into the type of player that Arron Afflalo already was. This was basically a swap between present and future versions of a player by teams that saw themselves on different ends of the competitive cycle. Because Denver was getting the more-proven commodity, they had to throw in a 2nd round pick in Devyn Marble.
The Results: Afflalo’s reunion in Denver was extremely short-lived; when they didn’t end up winning enough games to be competitive, he was traded at the deadline for a package of players that most notably included Will Barton. We’ll discuss that in February.
Fournier’s stint in Orlando lasted much longer, as he grew into a larger role on a worse team to become a regular starter for the next six seasons. He lasted in Orlando until March of 2021, when he was traded to the Celtics for Jeff Teague. Orlando won this trade just on the basis of NBA players exchanged.
And they also got another borderline NBA player. Devyn Marble played 457 minutes of basketball across 44 games for the Orlando Magic in his two season NBA career. The Magic went 15-29 in those games. 13 of those games were on a Friday (and he had an unfathomably poor True Shooting % of 27.6% in those Friday games). That’s about all I’ve got.
The Aftermath: Fournier is still in the NBA, spending the first half of this season as a typically healthy scratch for the Knicks and the second half as a member of the rotation for a wretched Detroit Pistons team.
Afflalo ended up signing with the Knicks in free agency, then the Kings and Magic in subsequent seasons. He ended up falling out of favor as the landscape of the NBA shifted and teams lost interest in shooting guards that took a high volume of 2-point shots and didn’t make enough of them. His final NBA game was a good one, as the Magic beat the Wizards and Afflalo went 5-for-7 from the field.
Devyn Marble has had a decent European career, starting in Greece and then moving on to Italy. Those sound nicer than subsequent stops in Kazakhstan, Israel, and Poland. His most recent team was Hapoel Galil Elyon (his second Israeli team), but it doesn’t seem like he’s played any basketball in 2024.
Apologies to all the players selected with 2nd-round picks and traded for cash; you don’t qualify as a notable trade for our purposes.
June 27, 2024:
Pittsburgh Pirates receive: Ernesto Frieri
Anaheim Angels receive: Jason Grilli