Dan Wolken, USA TODAY

If you’re like me and gearing up to watch all four hours of ESPN’s NBA Draft coverage on Thursday night, prepare yourself now to come away convinced that Deandre Ayton is the best prospect to join the league since Anthony Davis, Luka Doncic is a can’t-miss star, Jaren Jackson Jr. is a prototype big for the modern NBA, Trae Young’s shooting range begins when he steps into the arena and a bunch of teams picking in the second round came away with “steals.”

This is, of course, a fairy tale. But it’s one we get sucked into year after year, even though the evidence shows us that at least 90 percent of the commentary surrounding the draft will look ridiculous by the end of a player’s first contract.

Just consider 2013 when Jay Bilas declared that No. 1 pick Anthony Bennett “is absolutely a stretch 4 that can score from Day 1 in the NBA,” (he didn’t score Day 1, Day 150 or Day 500), Bill Simmons claimed that No. 4 pick Cody Zeller “got picked apart too much” by scouts (he didn’t get picked apart enough) and when Bilas fawned over No. 7 pick Ben McLemore, calling him “the guy who, from a talent perspective, is the most likely in my judgment to be an All-Star out of this NBA draft class” (To be fair, he didn’t specify an All-Star in what league).

Or how about the next year when Bilas started the show declaring it “the deepest draft of quality talent we’ve seen in a long, long time," and it turned out similar to every other draft. Jalen Rose waved the pom-poms for fellow Michigan Man Nik Stauskas at No. 8, comparing him to Drazen Petrovic and calling him “one of those guys that goes on the court and thinks I’m the best player out there” (267 games later, he’s surely been disabused of that notion) and the entire panel agreed that Michigan State’s Adreian Payne was a brilliant pick by Atlanta at No. 15. “A classic stretch 4,” Simmons said (the Hawks hit the eject button on Payne fewer than eight months later, trading him straight up for what became the No. 19 pick in this year’s draft).

This isn’t meant to pick on those guys, who are all excellent at what they do, put in a lot of work on prospects, make a ton of smart observations and know way more about basketball than 99.99% of the people who will be watching the draft.

But it begs the question: Why can’t we bring ourselves to be more skeptical about the draft when confronted with the reality that most of the players will fail to live up to the perception of them on Thursday night? Why the breathless hype over unpredictable 19- and 20-year olds and so little realism about the actual odds of getting someone great?

If you look at the numbers, a singular truth emerges: Every NBA Draft will more or less give us a couple future All-Stars, a handful of other starting-level players, a handful more who become role guys and a whole bunch who are never heard from again. There’s some slight variance from year to year, of course, but that’s the template and it really doesn’t change much.

Over a 25-year period from 1990 to 2014, 80 percent of the players drafted No. 1, 2 and 3 have averaged at least 10 points in the NBA. From picks 4-7, it drops to 61 percent. From picks 8-11, you’re down to less than a coin flip chance (42 percent) of finding a double-figure scorer. And then from picks 12-15, it dips all the way to 29 percent.

Again, that’s just one metric, and there are certainly a number of valuable defensive players and bench guys who average fewer than 10 points. But as a baseline for judging the eventual impact of lottery picks, it’s pretty clear: Despite all the hype and analysis built into Thursday night, we’re basically throwing darts after the top three.

Another thing you’ll hear over and over on at the draft is that a particular team “can’t afford to miss” on their pick, which is utter nonsense when you look at the record of the league’s most successful teams.

The Warriors changed their franchise by nailing Steph Curry at No. 7, but the next year they took Ekpe Udoh at No. 6. That was a massive miss, but it didn’t matter because they kept making picks and eventually found Klay Thompson at No. 11 and Draymond Green in the second round. Danny Ainge is almost universally hailed as a draft guru, but he’s whiffed on a bunch of first-rounders too (Fab Melo, James Young, R.J. Hunter). Until the bottom fell out this year, the Grizzlies made seven straight playoff appearances and a Western Conference finals despite wasting first-rounders on Hasheem Thabeet, Xavier Henry, Jordan Adams, Tony Wroten and Wade Baldwin.

Therein lies the paradox of the whole enterprise. The most important thing that could come out of any draft (picking an All-Star) is the least likely to happen, while everything else tends to be fairly insignificant in the bigger picture of constructing a good team.

Yet for four hours on Thursday, we’re all going to get sucked in again to the cynicism-free sugar high of another draft, where every prospect is going to be the best version of themselves, their weaknesses are all fixable and the fit alongside their new teammates is seamless.

Then next year, even when we’ve figured out that half these guys can’t play, we’re going to do it all over again.

knicks1248 wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:Id rather take my chances drafting rather than throwing our picks away for bloated contracts for one dimensionals players like we did for over a decade

Dude we haven't drafted well at all, so how can you say that, and just because on president traded draft picks for trash doesn't mean it isn't possible to make a very good trade using your pick.

So your saying I don't trust them to make power move trade, but you trust them to draft a game changer, which they have yet to do

StarksEwing1 wrote:Truthfully its a pretty bad topic to post the night before the draft when 99.9 percent of the fanbase is excited about getting a 2 young prospects tomorrow.

It's a crap shoot and there is so much data to prove it. There's a NY times article posted on the front page of this board

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/sports/nba-draft-tanking.html

some quotes from the article

The best moments of that 2011 draft arguably happened outside of the top ten picks, and they underlined a more important point: Nothing beats a quality organization. The Golden State Warriors took Klay Thompson with the 11th pick. The Indiana Pacers drafted Kawhi Leonard with the 15th pick and promptly had their pockets picked by the San Antonio Spurs, who traded for Leonard, who would become one of the league’s top five players.

The Chicago Bulls held the last pick of the first round that year. With the 30th pick, they took the future four-time All Star Jimmy Butler.

Talk of the hapless naturally turns my eyes to my Knicks, the Sacramento Kings and the Phoenix Suns. Any fan of the aforementioned franchises would be advised to seek therapeutic help before persuading themselves their teams will find salvation through the draft.

The Kings are near sui generis in their ability to dive into the draft pool and emerge holding something unappetizing. As Al Iannazzone of Newsday pointed out, they have had four top-five picks and 11 top-10 choices in the past dozen years and missed the playoffs in each of those seasons.

As for my Knicks, they could self-publish their own how-to book of management dysfunctions.

I don’t want to argue against innovation. The Philadelphia 76ers are seen as the great counterexample, a team that embarked on an epic spasm of losing, year after grinding year. That period became known as The Process, the mad vision of their former general manager Sam Hinkie.

You might even say it worked.

In fact, this study found that a team that achieves high mediocrity — say, 45 wins — is better off bringing in the best possible minds and carefully adding talent, rather than engaging in a tear-down. Those teams trend up more often than drift down.

As Motomura’s study noted: “Very good organizations and G.M.s develop successful franchises that win more, even if they pick late in the first round.”

When you suck you try to hit a home run with raw talent, when you decent or better, you draft players that fit( see spurs, boston, GSW)and are easy to develop

Dan Wolken, USA TODAY

If you’re like me and gearing up to watch all four hours of ESPN’s NBA Draft coverage on Thursday night, prepare yourself now to come away convinced that Deandre Ayton is the best prospect to join the league since Anthony Davis, Luka Doncic is a can’t-miss star, Jaren Jackson Jr. is a prototype big for the modern NBA, Trae Young’s shooting range begins when he steps into the arena and a bunch of teams picking in the second round came away with “steals.”

This is, of course, a fairy tale. But it’s one we get sucked into year after year, even though the evidence shows us that at least 90 percent of the commentary surrounding the draft will look ridiculous by the end of a player’s first contract.

Just consider 2013 when Jay Bilas declared that No. 1 pick Anthony Bennett “is absolutely a stretch 4 that can score from Day 1 in the NBA,” (he didn’t score Day 1, Day 150 or Day 500), Bill Simmons claimed that No. 4 pick Cody Zeller “got picked apart too much” by scouts (he didn’t get picked apart enough) and when Bilas fawned over No. 7 pick Ben McLemore, calling him “the guy who, from a talent perspective, is the most likely in my judgment to be an All-Star out of this NBA draft class” (To be fair, he didn’t specify an All-Star in what league).

Or how about the next year when Bilas started the show declaring it “the deepest draft of quality talent we’ve seen in a long, long time," and it turned out similar to every other draft. Jalen Rose waved the pom-poms for fellow Michigan Man Nik Stauskas at No. 8, comparing him to Drazen Petrovic and calling him “one of those guys that goes on the court and thinks I’m the best player out there” (267 games later, he’s surely been disabused of that notion) and the entire panel agreed that Michigan State’s Adreian Payne was a brilliant pick by Atlanta at No. 15. “A classic stretch 4,” Simmons said (the Hawks hit the eject button on Payne fewer than eight months later, trading him straight up for what became the No. 19 pick in this year’s draft).

This isn’t meant to pick on those guys, who are all excellent at what they do, put in a lot of work on prospects, make a ton of smart observations and know way more about basketball than 99.99% of the people who will be watching the draft.

But it begs the question: Why can’t we bring ourselves to be more skeptical about the draft when confronted with the reality that most of the players will fail to live up to the perception of them on Thursday night? Why the breathless hype over unpredictable 19- and 20-year olds and so little realism about the actual odds of getting someone great?

If you look at the numbers, a singular truth emerges: Every NBA Draft will more or less give us a couple future All-Stars, a handful of other starting-level players, a handful more who become role guys and a whole bunch who are never heard from again. There’s some slight variance from year to year, of course, but that’s the template and it really doesn’t change much.

Over a 25-year period from 1990 to 2014, 80 percent of the players drafted No. 1, 2 and 3 have averaged at least 10 points in the NBA. From picks 4-7, it drops to 61 percent. From picks 8-11, you’re down to less than a coin flip chance (42 percent) of finding a double-figure scorer. And then from picks 12-15, it dips all the way to 29 percent.

Again, that’s just one metric, and there are certainly a number of valuable defensive players and bench guys who average fewer than 10 points. But as a baseline for judging the eventual impact of lottery picks, it’s pretty clear: Despite all the hype and analysis built into Thursday night, we’re basically throwing darts after the top three.

Another thing you’ll hear over and over on at the draft is that a particular team “can’t afford to miss” on their pick, which is utter nonsense when you look at the record of the league’s most successful teams.

The Warriors changed their franchise by nailing Steph Curry at No. 7, but the next year they took Ekpe Udoh at No. 6. That was a massive miss, but it didn’t matter because they kept making picks and eventually found Klay Thompson at No. 11 and Draymond Green in the second round. Danny Ainge is almost universally hailed as a draft guru, but he’s whiffed on a bunch of first-rounders too (Fab Melo, James Young, R.J. Hunter). Until the bottom fell out this year, the Grizzlies made seven straight playoff appearances and a Western Conference finals despite wasting first-rounders on Hasheem Thabeet, Xavier Henry, Jordan Adams, Tony Wroten and Wade Baldwin.

Therein lies the paradox of the whole enterprise. The most important thing that could come out of any draft (picking an All-Star) is the least likely to happen, while everything else tends to be fairly insignificant in the bigger picture of constructing a good team.

Yet for four hours on Thursday, we’re all going to get sucked in again to the cynicism-free sugar high of another draft, where every prospect is going to be the best version of themselves, their weaknesses are all fixable and the fit alongside their new teammates is seamless.

Then next year, even when we’ve figured out that half these guys can’t play, we’re going to do it all over again.

Quick everyone! Stop having fun and enjoying yourselves!

knicks1248 wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:Truthfully its a pretty bad topic to post the night before the draft when 99.9 percent of the fanbase is excited about getting a 2 young prospects tomorrow.

It's a crap shoot and there is so much data to prove it. There's a NY times article posted on the front page of this board

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/sports/nba-draft-tanking.html

some quotes from the article

The best moments of that 2011 draft arguably happened outside of the top ten picks, and they underlined a more important point: Nothing beats a quality organization. The Golden State Warriors took Klay Thompson with the 11th pick. The Indiana Pacers drafted Kawhi Leonard with the 15th pick and promptly had their pockets picked by the San Antonio Spurs, who traded for Leonard, who would become one of the league’s top five players.

The Chicago Bulls held the last pick of the first round that year. With the 30th pick, they took the future four-time All Star Jimmy Butler.

Talk of the hapless naturally turns my eyes to my Knicks, the Sacramento Kings and the Phoenix Suns. Any fan of the aforementioned franchises would be advised to seek therapeutic help before persuading themselves their teams will find salvation through the draft.

The Kings are near sui generis in their ability to dive into the draft pool and emerge holding something unappetizing. As Al Iannazzone of Newsday pointed out, they have had four top-five picks and 11 top-10 choices in the past dozen years and missed the playoffs in each of those seasons.

As for my Knicks, they could self-publish their own how-to book of management dysfunctions.

I don’t want to argue against innovation. The Philadelphia 76ers are seen as the great counterexample, a team that embarked on an epic spasm of losing, year after grinding year. That period became known as The Process, the mad vision of their former general manager Sam Hinkie.

You might even say it worked.

In fact, this study found that a team that achieves high mediocrity — say, 45 wins — is better off bringing in the best possible minds and carefully adding talent, rather than engaging in a tear-down. Those teams trend up more often than drift down.

As Motomura’s study noted: “Very good organizations and G.M.s develop successful franchises that win more, even if they pick late in the first round.”

When you suck you try to hit a home run with raw talent, when you decent or better, you draft players that fit( see spurs, boston, GSW)and are easy to develop

Yes. Life is more complicated that Doom game...
Most people find it is true after Middle school... but some still confused all their life...
At least be happy...

fishmike wrote:where is the part of article that outlines the various other talent streams to build your team with?

This is really stupid. The draft has been an integral part of every successful franchise and every championship.

The salary cap prevents teams from using free agency to build a champion. If you dont execute in the draft your team will not have long term success. This is a fact and there is disputing it.

you're right in the essentiality of the draft, but the article also is right on the chances of success. Just chck the last 10-20 years of drafts and even as a basketball junkie you'll see a lot of first rounders that you won't remember at all -- other than perhaps he was drafted. Then you have the Sacramentos of the world who are always in the lottery and never improve

On occassion you can draft a savior who single handedly changes the teams fortunes, but more often than not success comes from culture, player development, team having a strategy that can succeed and often a little luck (e.g., finding a Marc Gasol or Draymond in the second round).

GMs can also make or break. For example, some GMs are skilled in the art of fleecing other team's assets (e.g., Ainge getting Nets pick; Houston getting Harden). And on the other side you can have GMs (many ex-Knick GMs) giving out bad contracts to vets for what they did in the past, following Knicks1248's strategy

I subscribe to the theory of names.

Can a player named Channing Frye be a star? No, I said it then when we picked him.

At 9, I just hope we have someone who can step onto the court game 1 and contribute in some way.

I don't know that I need upside, but steady.

I'd be happy if the player we got played 82 games and average mediocre averages and just held their own for stretches.

As a die hard Packers Fan they are the only team in the NFL that had 50 active players on their roster they drafted and thats been the case since Rodgers and Mccarthy took over. They are big on drafting and developing, and are damn good at it.

The problem I have with the knicks is that they are not really good at rebuilding through the draft or FA.

When Perry said that the franchise is still in the "talent acquisition stage" that's not a real plan. It sounds like your just going to go out and grabbing talented players regardless of fit and need.

Which is why we started last season with a slew of bigs and no real point guard, and ended the season with a slew of point guards and no real bigs, only to come in the off season with major question marks for both positions. How do we draft a PG last season and still in the hunt for one, like that position should be checked off already, we drafted a Center(willy) 2 seasons ago, and now we have none.