We've heard some rumors that Larry Riley is "trying like the dickens" to keep our 2012 lottery pick from going to Utah. One of the possible scenarios could have us sending our 3 other draft picks to Utah. Here, I'm going to present some evidence using the past 20 years of draft picks that might influence your vote. So don't make your decision until you read the story.

I've gone back through the last 20 drafts and compiled a list of the all the picks that would be involved in each year. I then rather subjectively answered the question "Would I do this trade?" for each draft. The answer is overwhelmingly YES! Of course, you might look at these names and have a different opinion.

Update: As pointed out by "Asmanz", I should have looked at the 8th pick, which is the highest pick that we might give up. So here's the table for that followed by the one, that I guess now you can think of as, "Should we try really hard to tank?"

Even in the cases when the my answer is NO, there are only a few cases where the reward for staying put was large (literally) in Omer Asik, Kendrick Perkins, and arguably Ersan Ilyasova who has really been coming on lately. And some might argue that you might be better off with Eric Gordon in the 2008 draft, but I think for the Warriors, Asik would clearly be the better choice right now. One other thing should be clear, those later picks are simply not very good in most years. You could argue that there are always good players to be found, but that's ALWAYS with hindsight, because those players would have been drafted earlier otherwise. Looking at how the draft ACTUALLY turned out gives you a good idea how rare it is to find those sleeper picks.

Ok, answer the poll now.