THIS is part of the solution. You have to know who to take. Not only that, in this age of 1 year college wonders headed for the league, you gotta know who the high school kids are. You gotta be able to properly evaluate talent, you gotta know who the franchise guys are and you gotta get into a position to maximize your chances of drafting those kids. And then the huge unknown is injuries. Injuries can take career franchise guys and turn them into after thoughts. The reason why the #1 pick is overvalued is not every year is there a definitive Career and Franchise and Championship caliber baller in the draft!!! It's just that simple. And then in other years, there are multiple guys that are on the same level and you really don't know who is going to top their draft class. In fact, most of the time it is this way. Years like this last one, 2012, are the exception, when there is a definitive #1 pick (Anthony Davis). Now he could wind up injured and wind up with a mediocre career (Danny Manning), but Davis was the clear top of the heap of this year's draft class. The odds are very, very good that he will be the dominant player in this draft class provided he remains injury free. It is only once in a while (Magic, Lebron, Shaq, Duncan), that there is a definitive #1 player, that is a franchise player and a championship maker. Those guys aren't in every draft. They usually come along once every 3-5 years, maybe two or three guys every 10 years. You gotta be able to see 'em coming. You gotta position your team to have multiple shots at drafting that prospect. And THEN you gotta get lucky with health, etc. In my humble opinion, when I look down the road over the next 3-4 years....the two best players that are going to be coming into the NBA are Andrew Wiggins and Cody Zeller. I think they are a cut above Noels, Shabbaz, Jabari Parker, etc., who could all turn out to be very, very outstanding pros. But when I look at them all in a group, Wiggins and Zeller stand out. In my opinion, if we are going to play around in the lottery, these are the two guys we gotta try to funnel down our assets to attain. Just my opinion, though. I'm sure plenty of you will be all over Shabbaz or Noels, Parker, etc. But these are my two guys.
What are you even talking about. The fact that great players have came out of lower picks does not mean that #1 picks are "overvalued". Look at CDrex's post, the lower picks have even worse averages. In the end, every pick is an unknown and the #1 guys are still #1 for a reason.
So 50% of #1 picks are either busts or mediocre, but according to some folks at least one of our rookies this year will become an all star/borderline all star,,,, nice
This is what I don't get in the NBA... How can a bad contract (Baron Davis) can get you a bonafide superstar (Kyrie Irving)? I understand it was luck to win the lottery, but just having a SLIGHT chance is worth the gamble. I have no clue how Morey didn't get a piece of this trade (maybe he did I don't know). These are the moves that get you out of the cellar. These are the moves he should be calling all GMs now to do. This is what we should be doing (period) is trading for bad contracts for HIGH draft pick potential. Instead we give up Lowry for a lottery pick. I don't get it, once the bad contract is almost up (it has value) we can then take another bad contract and so on. We haven't taken a bad contract since Jefferies in 2010 (which helped get the Knicks pick), IMO we should be doing more of these types of moves for the next 2+ years.
Just a couple points: 1. I like the idea of what you are trying to do here. I do question your inputs, though, and your scale. You're putting this out as almost an absolute but we don't know what goes into the performance scale. 2. Your chart is not really my point. My point is if you draft #1, then your odds of that player winning a championship as your primo player are relatively low. My point is there are only 2-4 true franchise and championship making caliber player that come along each decade. And my point is if there is a Magic Johnson or a Lebron James in the draft, even if you tank and are the very worst team in the league, then you've got less than a 25% chance of winning the draft. So, the point is, if you are really going to target someone to get through draft, if you are really going to get that championship producing franchise making player in the draft, then you're going to have to control 2 or 3 lottery picks just to put the franchise in a position to have the best odds of winning the stupid things. And then again, you might push your odds of winning the lottery over 50% and still LOSE it!!! And here's another point I'm going to make. If you do all this stuff, and you still come up empty on that primo player, well guess what....some of you would say, "So what, we got the second or the third best player in the draft." But what you don't realize is it won't make a difference besides helping us be the first also-rans over the next decade. Or you might wind up with a total bust (David Greenwood) if you don't land Magic Johnson. The point is .....still...... and has always been..... there's only about 10 true primo players in this league. And that's being generous and recognizing how the rule changes have watered down to some degree the level of domination of the best players and mixed a lot of very good players in with great players. So, unless we are going to trade Jeremy Lin....and Asik....and really get bad this year...and trade away some of our other youngsters and picks to control picks in the 2014 draft...then we have virtually no shot at Wiggins or Cody Zeller this year. Yeah, we may pick up a decent baller with the Toronto pick. So what. The odds are even greater that guy is a bust. We are still stuck in no-man's land even though you guys think we're gonna tank and build through the draft. I can tell you this....without more definitive moves from Morey...this bunch isn't tanking. They'll be scraping and fighting all the way down the stretch and will wind up somewhere between #11 lottery pick and #7 seed in the playoffs. We are essentially in the same place as last year's team...stuck in the middle again. In my opinion, our best shot of success and to improve this team is to play the kids and get them to gelling and looking good. At least their trade values go up.
Yes, I kicked myself as soon as I posted for not specifying my criteria. Blue is a normalized total career win shares, with those achieved in the playoffs counting extra. Red is win shares per 48 minutes, with playoff WS/48 being weighted in. The 'average' player is the one who fell closest by least-squares regression to the average in both categories for that pick. I know what you mean, that's why I said I think ALL picks are overrated. But going with the average examples in my post, would you rather have Chris Webber to build around, or have Joe Kleine, Larry Hughes, and Erick Dampier? All the talk around here is about how we need to avoid just piling up role players and get a franchise guy. My point was that, really, the expected value of any given pick is essentially (#1 = borderline franchise guy, #2-5 = best player on a bad team/3rd best on a title team, others = role player); certainly this can be subverted with good drafting, but there are 30 teams out there who at least THINK they're good drafters, so generally I'd expect any given pick by any given team to revert to the average. Don't take my data as a pro-tanking post; I don't see a huge appeal in having a completely unwatchable season for a player that, odds-wise, is 25% Chris Webber, 21% Armen Gilliam, 18% SAR, and 36% Marbury. But at the same time, a tiny fraction (say, 2%) of the league's meaningful players enter the league as a #1 pick. It's hardly fair to say that the pick is then a failure because those 2% don't win 75% of the championships, when championship teams can be built with them, with other draft picks, with trades, OR with free agents, and usually all of the above. You're not going to get any better of a sampling of #1 players for a title team by picking a pu-pu platter of low lottery picks, because there's simply not that many players to choose from - the last 20 years have essentially belonged exclusively to Jordan, Hakeem, Duncan, Shaq, Kobe, Wade, and Lebron in that regard (4 of whom were #1 picks).
Yeah. My point was not that having many lower picks is better. My point is true franchise building championship contending players are very, very rare. You just gave the list of the last 20 years. Go back 30 years and you can add 2 names, Magic and Bird. That's 9-10 guys over 30 years. Which makes my point. Only 3-4 true franchise players max per decade. So: 1. Unless you can see them coming and 2. Unless you either get lucky or you specifically plan to be lucky by tanking and also controlling other lottery team's picks through trades or pick swaps, then the odds of building a championship team by drafting your franchise making player.....are extremely low. --------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- Now, I'm going to make a case for points 1 and 2. 1. You gotta see them coming There's only two guys that I see in college and high school right now that will be coming into the league in the next 3 seasons that will be that type of player: Cody Zeller and Andrew Wiggins. Why? Because Cody has already proven as a freshman that he is the dominant big in college basketball. He's unstoppable offensively with a plethora of moves, and he's very, very good defensively. He's a true 7 footer with a dominant offensive skillset and a very good defensive skillset. He's a franchise maker and either a 1 or 2 best player on a championship winner. He will most likely drive his team to either an NCAA championship or they'll get very close. The ONLY thing that could change that is a significant injury. He has proven he is going to be a great, great big man in the NBA barring injury. Andrew Wiggins dominated the high school game as a sophomore. That doesn't mean much by itself until he goes against guys that are older. He did that all summer and dominated once again. He's got all the tools, a tremendous skillset, and his game needs tweaks but minor tweaks for him to become an all-around beast. He's got two years of h.s. eligibility left, and is the best player in h.s. He'll probably only use one year. If he were in this last draft as a 17-year old, he would have likely gone second to Anthony Davis. He's proven he's better than Shabbaz, who is a very, very good player that is going to be one and done in college and Wiggins is two years younger. Why not Shabbaz? He's gonna be very, very good. But there's already a better perimeter player on the scene (Wiggins). Shabbaz is going to be a great player in the NBA barring injury. McGrady was great too. Just one example of a great player who played in the same era as a greater player (Kobe). Why not Parker or Noels or Gobert or somebody else? Short answer is they are unproven. Well, Wiggins is unproven as well, isn't he? No, he's not. He's already proven he's better than the #1 rated perimeter player in the 2013 draft. Parker/Noels/Gobert and the rest...they are unproven. Noels, at this point, is just a long, rangy kid that dominated h.s. because of his tremendous length and ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. He has no offensive skillset. And he hasn't proven that his defense is dominant at the college level. Now, this could change in a hurry. If Noels proves that he is every bit the post defender that Anthony Davis was at Kentucky, then you would have to reevaluate him as a potential franchise changer. Same with Parker, McAdoo and the others. But at this point, they aren't proven. They haven't dominated the college game. But they might. McAdoo might dominate this next season and move himself up to the same level as Shabbaz and Wiggins. So, point #1 is you gotta see the great ones coming. 2. Unless you either get lucky or you specifically plan to be lucky by tanking and also controlling other lottery team's picks through trades or pick swaps, then the odds of building a championship team by drafting your franchise making player.....are extremely low. Just think of how we could give ourselves an above 50% chance of drafting either one of these kids. It's virtually impossible to do. We'd have to tank (obviously) for two seasons. We'd have to trade away a bunch of other assets, and most likely take on terrible contracts like Rudy Gay or Carlos Boozer to even have a ....... chance.
Zeller and Wiggins Muhammed and Parker I wouldn't put Noels in my top 5 right now. Not until he proves to be a dominant defensive presence at KY. I've got Gobert ahead of him right now. And to be honest I'm watching Gobert closely. I'm thinking he could move past Parker and Muhammed on my list in the near future if he continues to develop.
Wiggins is on another plane than Zeller, without question. You're looking at a man who's been frequently compared to Scottie Pippen and Lebron James. It's gotta be: Wiggins... (Gap) Zeller, Shabazz, Parker And then Noel, because as you said he's rather unproven. But Wiggins is in a class all by himself.
LOL, more like Wiggins ... ... ... ... ... ... Zeller Wiggins is compared to LBJ, or some say he'll be better. Lebron with a lethal 3-point shot. Jabari Parker is also veeery good, but not as good as Wiggins. I played Parker in a U17 game. I play for Denver, him and that Chicago team killed us.
