Tanks, but NO Tanks: The lottery odds against drafting a franchise player

I would rather be the Celtics. But you are missing the point... you are asking basically the first question I posed and I think everyone would want to be the Celtics in this case.

Only 1 team out of 30 wins a title. It's quite rare for a reason.

 

If there are no guarantees either way, I would prefer to go with the one where we field a competitive team rather than the approach that makes a mockery of the sport. I mean, as long as it cuts both ways, at least go out with some dignity.

Of course they have better assets than we do. They have franchise players! The point is, even after they sucked to get their franchise players, they are still going nowhere. What good are those trade assets? Who are they going to trade for? Trade their franchise player for another franchise player?

By maintaining a competitive group, once we spot a potential franchise player in the draft we can package picks and a Scola or a Martin for him. We have a team now where once you plug him in, we are ready to contend almost immediately.

It has become increasingly clear that established superstars are very hard to trade for if they are not forcing a trade to you. The objective of maintaining a competitive team would be more for trading up in the draft than trading for a CP3 or Melo- a much easier task.

 

so thats about one a year, right? they arent always drafted first overall either.

so with a high lotto pick and a little luck, you can land a superstar in a year or two of playing the lotto. at the very least you have a solid chance of drafting an all star when you have a high lotto pick.

do you think the odds of a team trading an all star to the rockets can match that? even if you did think so, that wouldn't make up for the loss of assets spent acquiring said all star, when a draft pick is free. or what about the salary cap ramifications of adding an all star via trade vs one on a rookie contract?

bottom line is the draft gives you a BETTER chance at landing an all star or a superstar than through trade or free agency. why? because you dont have to hope to convince another team to trade with you or convince an all star to sign with you! if the talent is there, you just take it!

 

No, there is probably no Dream in this draft, but that's not an excuse to trade our assets for borderline stars, so we can have the honor of getting stomped in the first round.

And as I pointed out, we don't have to keep the lottery pick. We currently don't have enough assets to trade for a top 15 or top 10 player, who's still in their prime, but we might have a better chance of trading for that type of player if were were offering a top five 2011 draft pick. Oh yes, that might get a general manager's attention.

 

Reminds me of what I was telling someone earlier. If I could guarantee you that your team would make the playoffs for the next four years, but would never advance past the second round, would you take it? I wouldn't.. I'd rather roll the dice in the lottery to eventually have a chance to win it all.

If you're telling me that we can't make the WCF with our present core three guys (my argument), then I could care less if they're entertaining to watch for the next however many years. The only thing I care about is being competitive enough to win championships.. it should be the only thing that every passionate fan cares about.

I don't see the point in keeping Morey & Adelman for the next 5 - 10 years if we're going to continually have a competitive team that can't advance past the second round. I'd like to keep them.. but I also know that we need to give them the pieces (Adelman) or opportunities to acquire them (Morey) to build a championship roster.

Fixed it for you.

We don't need to fill up each roster spot with draft picks. All we need is to acquire that one elite talent and then we build around him. I don't care if we draft the guy or trade the high draft pick for him, as long we get him. Those type of players can completely turn a franchise around and have you competing year in and out for a spot in the NBA finals. The Mavericks did it with Nowitzki. The Heat did it successfully with Wade (you forgot about him in the above quote). The Spurs with Duncan. The Magic with Dwight. The Heat with LeBron. The 76ers with Iverson.

We need that one guy that can completely take over a game, independent of what the opposing defense tries to do. In the end, basketball is an individual sport. Individuals can impact the outcome of games more so than just about any other sport. We don't have anyone capable of flipping the switch and telling the team, "I won't let us lose." And Andre Iguodala/Gerald Wallace are not those type of players either.

I'm more than on board with this plan, as I've said from the beginning. I've never advocated holding a fire sale -- I've just been making the point that the present group isn't good enough to get to the NBA Finals. Adding Wallace/Iguodala type players doesn't solve our problem of not having the one guy who can take over a game and not let you lose.

 

The fact is you don't get to "choose" to be the Celtics by tanking. Often you end up being the Clippers or the Grizzlies... lotto pick collections leading up to one rebuilding project blown up for the next. Other times you end up being the Rockets/Blazers/Jazz of recent vintage, getting enough talents to get into the playoffs or even reach 50-55 wins before fans start b****ing about how you should rebuild since the lotto pick train stopped.

Celtics had a rare combination of good luck not experienced by 95% of the last place teams in NBA history-- they were able to trade a #5 pick for Ray Allen, and Al Jefferson, a 15th pick from a few years ago, for Kevin Garnett, and struck gold with a mid/late 1st rounder with Rondo.

Now if you tell me tanking gives us a good chance of getting Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Rondo, I'm all for it. But it doesn't.

Just like staying competitive when you are a lower-seed playoff team (like the post-Shaq Lakers) and looking aggressively for a "Paul Gasol trade" or otherwise getting another star doesn't have a good chance of working out.

Both approaches depend on luck. I don't see any evidence suggesting that the "long term" thinking has a better probability of working out just because "long term" sounds wiser and smarter. If you have it, present it.

 

no tanking please,, if i were the Clippers fans, even though they had Griffin and Gordon, they still losing,,

all I care is winning, even only the regular season games,,

 

Yo hater, the point of that post was that you should try and grab these sleepers, before they explode, Morey did it, everybody knew Love was a good player, this year, he is taking it to another level.

PeAcE

 

Hahahah really? So we shouldn't draft a superstar because other teams whom drafted said superstars aren't winning championships? Thats the worst theory I've ever heard. Maybe those teams aren't winning because the older teams who drafted superstars are still winning those championships. Like The Lakers and San Antonio, and Boston who used their draft assets to get other stars to play along a star player, whom they drafted. Oh, and to those who say this draft is weak, lets just wait till they play an NBA game first. Last years draft was not good. Only John Wall is doing something, and hes been out with some injuries. I want a star player on this team, and no team is going to trade us for some role players, and no free agents want to come here and play with a bunch of role players. So all in all, the draft is the way to go.

 

Actually, it's more than a little luck. Beyond the question of whether there is a superstar in a given draft, there is still the question of your team's chances of getting him even with a high pick.

Assuming by "high lotto pick" you mean a top 6 pick, we are talking 60 draftees during those 10 years. If there are 6 true "superstars" among them as listed in the OP, you are still just talking about a 10% chance of getting a true superstar when you have a top 6 pick. Even if you are twice as good or lucky at drafting as the average NBA GM, i.e. you have double the chance of getting a superstar compared to normal NBA teams, you are still talking about a 20% chance of landing a superpstar with a given draft.

This means it shouldn't be all that unusual for even a good/lucky drafting team to spend say, 4 straight years with a top 6 pick without getting a superstar in return. In fact, if you have a 20% chance of getting a superstar each year, your probability for landing a superstar in at least 1 out of the 4 year is still only about 60%. And chances are if you really are good at drafting, your team will not have a top 6 pick for all 4 years (since the "talent" you acquired will have won some games and taken you out of the top draft spots).

 

with this many superstars coming from the draft, only idiot does not want tanking.

 

Yeah. Perhaps. But I wasn't banking on getting a superstar by having a lottery pick in this years draft. I was hoping to land one by having lottery picks in the next three or four drafts. And I think it's even feasible that we could have multiple lottery picks in some of those drafts if we move some of our more desirable veterans.

Further, if our roster is full of players on rookie scale contracts, we'll have room to sign a superstar if one becomes available as well. We'll also have many young promising players and picks to trade if one becomes available that route. All in all, I see no better way to go about acquiring that superstar we are currently in dire need of. And I don't see how continuing to trudge on with a team that either barely misses the playoffs or barely squeaks in as an 8th seed is going to help us get there any quicker.

 

i dont care if we're assured a superstar, tanking is shameful and should be illegal. you're providing a product that people pay good money to watch, purposefully losing those games is ripping off the fans and shouldn't be allowed.

 

I always thought AI won't make us contenders but then I challenge people to look at the rockets record over the last 3 years where battiers scores >15 points And fills the stat sheet with >10 combined assists/rebounds. We might be a lot closer than we think.

And I'd love for battier to return in a reduced capacity at a lower salary even if we can get AI.

 

Ok... but as me and the OP pointed out, this doesn't guarantee a title... not even close. Sure we'll be a 50 win team but I would argue that Houston is just a legit defensive C away from being a 50 win team again. It doesn't even have to be Dwight Howard either, it could be a guy like Marc Gasol that was found in the 2nd round. Just a tall guy that can plug up the middle.

You are putting words in my mouth, dude. The point of me bringing up all of these teams that drafted superstars was to further accentuate the point that the argument that "we won't win a title, so we must rebuild" is flawed because the odds of us drafting a player good enough to win us a title is extremely low. People like to point out that 18 of the last 20 titles in the past 20 years were from teams that built through the draft, but they forget to mention that of the said 18 championship teams there are only 5 players that were drafted and the proceeded to lead their team to a title (Jordan, Hakeem, Duncan, Kobe, Shaq). 5 players in TWENTY years. The "we need to rebuild through the draft to win a title" while true, it's very overrated. Those are horrible odds.

What rebuilding through the draft does for a team is give them a good shot at being a playoff contending team. I pointed out all of those good draft picks that have led their teams to consistent 50 win seasons. But we aren't that far from being a team like that ourselves (as I've already pointed out).

I guess that's the difference between you and me. I would take it every day and twice on Sunday.

Because you have to figure each "rebuild" would take maybe 6-8 years each if your GM is not r****ded, and at least 3-4 of those years you are guaranteed to be a crappy team. You aren't going to get the #1 pick your first try out most likely, and said pick might not pan out. And even if everything goes according to plan, the most likely results range from where Utah and New Orleans are now, to where Houston was with Yao and McGrady, to Denver with Melo, etc. The average case is a 2nd round playoff threat at best.

So I'd rather see a team that only makes the second round every so often than see a crappy team for a few years that MIGHT do better than said team only making the 2nd round every so often.

I would agree with your first statement. However, do you not think we have the assets to grab a "star" level player? Maybe guys like Melo and Chris Paul are unrealistic... but guys like Danny Granger or Chris Kaman are in the realm of possibility in the next year or two. I mean... we got Kevin Martin with Landry and McGrady's expiring... so it's clearly possible. And that probably wouldn't be enough to win a title on their own, but again I refer you to my very lengthy post arguing how much luck it takes to build a title contender.

And I would argue that if we chose to shut it down and rebuild, those two are probably not going to be around that long (Adelman for sure would be gone). So when we do finally get the players, it's going to be an unproven coach (probably Elston Turner) coaching them and we're more likely to be the Grizzlies or Clippers than Lakers or Spurs in that cast.

I agree that the goal should always be a championship roster. But I think that realistically the odds are better if we go the Boston Celtics route than the Bulls/Lakers/Spurs route. And both are slim... but it is what it is.

 

The "have star, look for other supporting star(s)" method has won how many championships? all but a handful have been 2+ star/hof players, you need to acquire that first star how?, in the history of the league, shaq is the only team leader whose came thru anything but the draft, and then he had kobe who was always expected to be a superstar.

 

Solid point. This is how the Spurs did it, how the Lakers did it... and they've won like 8 of the last 11 titles or something to that effect. But this exact plan was also successfully implemented by the Yao and Tmac Houston Rockets, the Roy/LA Blazers, the current Bulls (and it took them a good 10 years to get there), the Hawks (again, took about 10 years and had more to do with trading for Joe Johnson than the picks), the Utah Jazz (took them about 7 years to get to where they are now), the New Orleans Hornets, the Suns a few years ago, the current Mavs, the Nuggets, the Thunder. And these are just the teams that have successfully rebuilt. There are plenty more teams that have tried to rebuild through the draft but failed miserably. The Raptors wasted how many years on Bosh? The Bobcats wasted time with Okafor and Wallace and they are about to start rebuilding again. The Bucks tried with Bogut and Redd and that failed. Teams like the Pacers, Twolves, Grizzlies and Kings have been mediocre for awhile, and havn't made it out of the first round in a while and it's just not working.

I'm trying to nail a point home. A full roster rebuild takes a lot of time, and odds aren't in our favor to develop a team that much better than the one we have right now.

 

Tanking is a legitimate option but our roster is too good. Unless we start giving away our talent (Scola,Brooks,Martin) we can't tank unless we fake injuries.

If it is a legendary draft maybe.. Otherwise... No. Ride the wave.

 

LOL its like you didn't even read the OP. How can you guarantee our rebuilding through the draft will be any better than Memphis, sactown, portland, pacers, atlanta et al's building thriugh the draft?

 

But you can't guarantee that. You have arguably worse odds in the lottery than you do now, which is the whole point.

Again, thats your opinion, not a fact. If we add a couple other players of Scola/Martin/Brooks caliber, as Morey has shown he is capable of doing then we could very easily make it to the WCF, specifically in 2-3 years when Kobe, Duncan and Dirk will be in decline.

Thats basketball fan rhetoric, which means nothing.

Kobe Bryant had a terribly mediocre finals last season and it didn't matter. He was successful because he had a good team.