One of the most interesting aspects of Savage Drafting is balancing quality vs quantity. Tarheel even mentioned drafting too many B+ minutes and not enough A+ minutes. I feel the best teams I have put together have about 24,000 minutes and obviously that leaves some extra unused minutes. This year, I didn't set out to do this, but I drafted the fewest minutes ever in each world. The table below shows the % of minutes out of total minutes needed I am getting out of each of my draft picks. The % Used column is the % of minutes used from the 5 chosen seasons of each player. Please note that Kyle O'Quinn is being used 100% of the time for all his minutes but many are low minute seasons.
| Name |
Rd |
% Used |
% of Needed |
Cumulative |
| Nikola Jokic |
1 |
100.0% |
13.3% |
13.3% |
| Kobe Bryant |
2 |
100.0% |
16.4% |
29.7% |
| Jayson Tatum |
3 |
96.6% |
13.2% |
42.9% |
| Robert Williams |
4 |
100.0% |
4.7% |
47.5% |
| Dale Davis |
5 |
97.5% |
10.8% |
58.4% |
| Hot Rod Williams |
6 |
84.1% |
10.5% |
68.8% |
| Dejounte Murray |
7 |
89.9% |
10.4% |
79.2% |
| Kyle O'Quinn |
8 |
100.0% |
4.6% |
83.9% |
| Drew Eubanks |
9 |
77.4% |
4.1% |
88.0% |
| Jusuf Nurkic |
10 |
81.1% |
6.7% |
94.7% |
| Goga Bitadze |
11 |
94.7% |
4.1% |
98.8% |
| Jeremy Evans |
12 |
49.0% |
1.2% |
100.0% |
| |
|
|
100.0% |
|
Round 1 Nikola Jokic (20-21, 21-22, 22-23, 23-24, 24-25)
I really liked my team from Savage 21 and a 2nd place finish is pretty good so I just stuck to my rankings and took the player at the top of my list.
For context, this is my top 6 in savage Wilt Chamberlain, Lebron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Michael Jordan, Stephen Curry, Nikola Jokic. This pick does not offer much variety for backup options. No one can match Jokic's stats, so you have to just pick categories you don't want to concede on and find someone who is basically 75% of Jokic. Last season I picked Blake Griffin and I don't really like his performance so I decided there were only a few other backup alternatives. I was seeking someone with 22+ Usage, 20+ Dreb, 10+ Ast%, 50+EFG, 1,000+ minutes, for 5 seasons. My list of Jokic backups could be Carlos, Boozer, Blake Griffin, Bob Lanier (4 seasons), Jusuf Nurkic, Domantas Sabonis, Nikola Vucevic. Alperen Sengun only has 2 good seasons currently so maybe in 2 years, he can move into the list but not yet. Of the players on this short list, many require a higher pick than I want to spend so it was really only down Griffin and Nurkic. Since I wanted to try something different than last year, I decided early on I was going to take Nurkic around the 9/10/11 rounds.
Round 2 Kobe Bryant (02-03, 05-06, 06-07, 07-08, 08-09)
Following a Jokic pick where his defense is between 35 and 42 across the board, I would like to balance that out ASAP. That's why I took Ben Wallace last year S21 but Wallace was taken by Midge. Alternatives I was considering were Tyson Chandler (taken by jjmurphy1127), or Hassan Whiteside (taken by dBKC) or Bam Adebayo (still on the board, but I don't like his lack of offensive rebounding). With those top choices gone and the next best defensive players to pair with Jokic far down the ADP list, I decided to wait until later to draft my defensive pair for Jokic. One of the more challenging checkpoints to accomplish across all 5 worlds and at 40+MPG is getting 80+ Defensive coverage at PG/SG while not sacrificing rebounds, shooting, fouls, efficiency, or assists. I typically don't think Kobe is worth a 2nd round pick, but I didn't think there was a chance he would still be on the board at the end of round 3 so I thought it was the best choice to select Kobe with pick 43 and not only achieve my defensive coverage, but gain some super efficient high usage scoring at the PG/SG position.
Round 3 Jayson Tatum (20-21, 21-22, 22-23, 23-24, 24-25)
This pick drastically changed my entire draft trajectory from where I was thinking of going. I was really, really, really, hoping Patrick Ewing was going to be here for me but berkelon made a wise pick and took him right before me. I was devastated. This is pick 67 at the end of round 3, there are not many good players left that can balance out Jokic defensively and especially not any with 5 seasons. So this is where the draft changed from a big minute 5 season PF to a bunch of smaller minute players to fill the 5 x 48 = 240 MPG. As an alternative to Ewing, I was considering Gafford, but he is a SF, (yes he can defend C, but that means I also need a PF who can defend down to SF so Jokic can defend down to PF). Alonzo Mourning but I don't like his rebounding, Ibaka but I don't like his rebounding at PF, and Bill Walton but he has awful TO's and low minutes. Not worthy of a rd 3 pick in my opinion. Since I did not love any of my options, I looked at who else was on the board. Wow, Jayson Tatum and Kobe Bryant would get me a lot of quality minutes and allow me to go after lower minute players at SF and PF. I really liked that so I jumped in and took JT here. If I structure this correctly, I could fill all PG/SG minutes with only needing to draft 3 players.
More to come...