Post#19 » by jman2585 » Fri Apr 5, 2013 2:46 pm
How to Rebuild, or “Why there is no Pacer model”
I saw alot of talk on the General Forum about the "Pacers Model" and how it should be favoured over a draft centric model, and I thought I'd post my views here for discussion.
I disagree with a lot of the things said in this thread, including the central premise; that what the Pacers have done is a model to be emulated by other teams.
Some Context- Just how good is the Pacers team?
I hate to begin this post on a negative note, but some of the comparisons of this Pacers team to the Detroit team of 2004 (who I’ll get to later) are very unfortunate ones. The 2004 Pistons regular season record is clearly misleading, because as people have noted, they only obtained Rasheed Wallace late in the season, then they went on a tear to close the season. Without Sheed, they were not title contenders. With Rasheed the Pistons in 2004 has a team of 3 guys who were more or less franchise type players. Billups definitely was by 2004, Ben Wallace was a defensive franchise player like Mutumbo in 2004, and Sheed could be that guy when he wanted to be… which wasn’t all the time, and he came with some bad habits, but he was basically a star. He was the best player on a Blazers team who in 2000 were 1 bad quarter away from eliminating the Lakers, and almost assuredly winning the title (back then, the real finals was played in the Western Conference Finals). In addition to those 3 guys, they had an all-star (Rip) and a really good glue guy who was an above average starter (Prince). The Pistons also has 6th man of the year Corliss Williamson, a young Okur and some other serviceable guys coming off the bench like Elden Campbell. Looking at the Pacers, I find it hard to see the comparison. Roy Hibbert getting compared to Ben Wallace is a joke, even if he is one of the better defensive 5’s in the NBA, he’s no Ben Wallace. The Pacers best guy and only all-star is no a franchise player like Billups was, the current version of David West is not as good as Sheed was in 2004, and the Pistons are more talented everywhere else too. Granger isn’t going to help them much. He replicates what George does, and will just take touches from West and George, and is bad as an offensive scorer (which is unfortunate, since that’s his job). He was a pretend all-star, not a real one like Rip. Granger is also coming back from an injury, and may not be the same again. There’s a reason the Pacers have often looked at trading Granger. He’s just not that good.
Now of course, the Pacers are a good team, and fans have every right to be happy about their team. Sometimes the best thing for a franchise is to build the fanbase by having a respectable and competitive team, and the Pacers are certainly that. Recovering from the Brawl and aftermath, I’d be happy with the current team too. But the portrayal of the Pacers as “one guy away” like the Pistons is wrong, unless that guy is someone like Chris Paul or Tony Parker or Dwayne Wade. Does anyone see a way for the Pacers to get anyone like that? I sure don’t. The Pacers are not a real contender, they put up a fight against a Heat team without their only serviceable big man. That Heat team now has Ray Allen added to it, along with more depth (useful bench bigs like Chris Anderson for instance, who has been very solid for them), and more experience playing together (which was the only thing holding the Heat back in 2011, where they also almost won with a more flawed team). The Pacers right now are probably the 7th or 8th best team in the NBA (which is in line with their SRS too), which is good of course, but should be put into context. People have already pointed out the Pacers record broken down against good/bad teams, etc, and in the West the Pacers would be assured of a 1st round exit. Nor is the NBA about “match ups” when you’re playing true contenders. If it was the Heat would have lost to multiple teams last year with whom they had bad match ups (including the Thunder). Match ups are nice for first round upsets, like the 2007 Warriors, but the real contenders don’t lose because of frickin match ups. As some posters like Trevelyan pointed out, better teams like the 2011 Bulls and 2011 and 2012 Celtics failed against worse Heat teams than the current one, in spite of fans insisting that they would win with their “good defence” or “great match ups” (and in 2012, in spite of the Heat missing their only good big man). I literally don’t see how you could make a case that the 2013 Pacers are a similarly good team to the 2011 Bulls for instance, who had everything the Pacers had going for them but better, on paper and on the court, which is why they performed much better.
So that’s some important context, the only reason their fans can talk about an ECF’s appearance is because the East is much weaker than the West, so already their “model” is an issue for half the teams in the NBA (who don’t play in the East). Until a few games ago, the Pacers were virtually tied with the Nets and Rose-less Bulls, and I assume nobody is seriously holding those teams up as a model for how to build a contender. Not that I disagree with those teams going in the direction they’re going… the Bulls are winning for their fans in the hope Rose comes back and things change (they won’t, but they’ll be good enough to sell it, and the owners will make a fortune as usual in the process), and the Nets need to have a team which is good now to win over the NY fanbase, and have an owner who doesn’t give a damn about the luxury tax (and it’s working, they team is building a great fan base- ticket sales are up over 20% despite having the most expensive tickets in the NBA, and they figure to make a profit even with the crazy spending, while long term their equity and revenue will continue to increase like crazy). That direction makes sense for those teams, just as your direction makes some sense for yours, but they are not “models” to be emulated (see later section on this). It’s also strange that you are unwilling to cheer for the Nets and Bulls, who are also playing to “win now” instead of “tanking” (which is supposedly bad). Shouldn’t the fans of the Nets and Bulls be thrilled ownership didn’t tank, and instead tried to win as much as possible under your logic? After all, it’s not like the fans pay the luxury tax bills of these teams, so how much they’re spending is irrelevant.
Nor is the Pacers situation likely to change for the better. David West is a free agent this offseason, and some team like the Mavs who want to win now is sure to overpay for him, which means you’re potentially going to lose him. Even if you don’t, West is turning 33… he’s clearly going to get worse sooner rather than later, and the Pacers can’t easily find a replacement for a guy like that. Granger has been getting worse for years now, and is likely to continue to do so once he’s on the wrong side of 30, he’s a guy who relies more on athleticism than the average fan thinks. George’s improvement has been nice, but there’s no indication he’s going to be a star. There are many fundamental things about his game that he has shown no real improvement with, and very few players ever do at this juncture. He can be an all-star for you, but that’s about it. George Hill is what he is, a guy who is ideally a 6th man on a contender, and after seeing Hibbert regress this year (though continue to play great D) I hope no Pacer fans are realistically looking at Hibbert as their savior. Hibbert is a player almost every team would love to have, but he was very lucky to make his only all-star team, it was mainly owing to injuries to guys like Horford and Bogut (who was good back then). The new front court all-star vote system basically ends Hibbert’s prospects of ever making an all-star team again. Nobody else on the Pacers is particularly significant (and I’m including Lance). That’s a team with 1 all-star (but who is not really a franchise player) and 1 good (but not really all-star calibre) defensive big as their 2 best players. How many teams built like that have contended for a title? Zero. Likewise, talk of how the Pacers are better “from 4-10” is a distraction. The Kings were better than the Lakers from 3-12 in 2002, but the Lakers were the better team. Depth is nice, but the NBA is a star game, and nobody should be trying to argue they’re better than a top heavy team like the Heat by looking at who has the better 6th man.
Next year it’s easy to see the teams who will have improved (or in the Lakers case, sorted their S#@$ out) and gotten better than the Pacers, but it’s doubtful the Pacers will improve much. The Bulls likely get Rose back, and move ahead of the Pacers. The Lakers/Houston get Dwight healthy, they’re now better than the Pacers. The same sorts of teams are all likely to be better than the Pacers too (Heat, Spurs, Thunder, Clippers, Memphis, etc), and the Pacers at best will be right there with teams like NY, Denver, etc. As I said, this is not a bad place to be. Sometimes teams do better to win a little in the short term, see if they can luck out, and build a winning culture. I’m a fan of what the Hawks have been doing in recent years too, since even if they weren’t contending for a title, they were building their credibility back with the fans, and hopefully rebuilding the fanbase after many disastrous years.
What is the “Pacers Model”, and how realistic is it to “emulate”
Another thing about the Pacers “model” is that it has almost no defining characteristics which teams can copy. I have heard in depth explanations of what Moreyball consists of, or the Spurs/Thunder model, “being the Knicks/Lakers”, or building through the draft in general. But the Pacers model isn’t a model at all, it is defined only by a negative; “don’t tank”. That’s not a model. There was no particular plan in drafting Granger or Hibbert or George. The front office thought those guys were the best available, they were more or less right, so they drafted them. Every front office is trying to do that already, they don’t need to look to the Pacers to gain this wisdom. Some teams could do a better job of it of course, and get better scouts (though I’d peg the Spurs and Thunder as having the best scouts to be honest, and generally work with far worse picks), but there is nothing unique to the Pacers in trying to do this. The Pacers weren’t looking at advanced stats and trying to pick based on a method everyone else was overlooking like in Moneyball, they just thought “he looks like the best guy for this pick”.
Then let’s imagine every team did have scouts equal to the Spurs or Thunder (or Pacers), heck let’s imagine that every front office was equally good. 16 teams still make the playoffs, and 14 don’t. That doesn’t mean the 14 who didn’t were bad, we just established they were all equal… but there is an unequal number of talented players, and there are unequal conditions in which teams play. There is only 1 Lebron James. There are only 4 teams in NY or LA. There are richer teams and poorer teams. So even if every front office was equal, some will still be “losers” by your definition, which is illogical. Most of the variables, front offices can’t control. They can’t control what city they’re in, whether they have a rich ownership or attractive location, etc. What they can control is what pick they have. Let’s go back to the hypothetical example of every team having “the best” front office possible. You know by definition you cannot “steal” a player by being smarter than the other team, because everyone is equally smart… what you can do is lose a meaningless game at the end of the season, to make sure you pick one spot sooner, and are now able to increase the chances you get the player you want. That’s usually a smart move, not a dumb one. Being a good GM is all about seeing ahead of the curve, but it’s also about knowing how to follow a strategy, and part of that strategy is to maximise your advantages over your opponents (other teams). A higher pick helps do that, and if your team lacks the talent to make the playoffs anyway (because remember, finite talent in the NBA), it’s probably sensible to work towards that strategy, rather than spend a lot of money trying to move from being “bad” to “mediocre”.
The draft lottery is also the place where you get superstars in the NBA, and generally that’s how all recent champions (or top contenders) have been built. The Spurs got Duncan through the lottery, the Mavs got Dirk in the lottery (along with some of the other assets that they used to build the team over the years, which in turn were moved for other assets), the Thunder got their guys in the lottery, the Celtics got Pierce in the lottery, acquired Ray Allen with a lotto pick, and got KG for a package which included young guys (and a guy drafted 14th, so effectively the lottery). The Heat got Wade from the Lottery, and acquired Shaq for a package that included a lottery pick asset. The Bulls got Rose, Deng, Noah, etc, from the lottery, not to mention other assets they used to enhance the team. The Cavs and Magic, who each made the finals once and had some great runs, got their stars from the lottery. If the front offices of the Cavs and Magic hadn’t been so bad, those teams would have probably won titles too. Sure, the Heat were lucky to get Lebron and Bosh, but few teams can plan for that (and when they do, they can often miss out like the Spurs in 2003, or the Mavs recently did). The only real examples of champions (or almost champions) who built teams without the draft lottery are the Lakers and the Pistons. The Lakers had 2 stars force their way there in a way that would not be possible today. In today’s game Kobe’s bluff would have been called, and a higher team would have drafted him and held on to him, and more scouts would have seen him owing to the increased amount of high school scouting that exists in the modern NBA. Shaq would have been stuck on a proper rookie contract in today’s game, and would have been stuck with the Magic for 7-8 years, just like Lebron and Dwight were. Nor can most teams hope that an MVP calibre guy will force his way to their team because he wants to make movies and rap albums.
That leaves the Pistons, a team constructed on a series of unreplicatable flukes. A General Manager who proposes to construct a team “like the Pistons did” should be fired. It’s almost impossible. You’re relying on other teams totally mismanaging potential stars, nobody else picking up on it, and then the team giving them away to you because they are foolish (i.e. Ben Wallace and Billups), giving all-stars away to you for nothing (Sheed), trading you a young all-star for an aging has been for dumb reasons (Rip), and you lucking into the perfect guy to complement these players late in the 1st round. No GM can “plan” those circumstances, and we’ve seen that in recent years, where Joe Dumars has unsuccessfully tried to repeat his fluke model to no avail (because lightning rarely strikes the same place twice).
What are the alternative models like?
I’m going to leave aside Moreyball as requiring a thread of its own (though I think Morey is highly overrated), and focus on the alternative of the draft lottery, since most teams can’t plan on being a big market like LA or Miami, and since most other touted models are either bad (Isiah Thomas Knicks for instance), or not mutually exclusive (using advanced stats more). A common error is that fans point to some badly managed team, like say the Wolves or Kings, and say “see, the lotto doesn’t work”. That is to misunderstand the situation. No “model” is a guarantee of success, you still have to implement that model well. A team trying to use the (non) ‘Model’ of the Pacers who did it badly would suck too. Any model fails when done badly, and no model protects you from an incompetent front office. However one model greatly increases your chances of success, especially if you are a small market, and that’s building through the draft lottery. As I noted above, it’s how pretty much every recent champion or recent powerhouse was built (even if they used some of those lotto picks as assets to get veterans to round out the team). Guys you draft are also stuck with you for 7-8 years whether they like it or not, so you don’t have to worry about your location.
Moreover, a model using the draft lottery doesn’t necessarily mean you have to “lose on purpose”. The guys on the court will be trying to win as hard as they can if you do it right. Just avoid veterans, and let the young guys grow together, so the improvement comes from within (like we saw on the Thunder. They did badly with Durant early on, and got better every single year). There are many examples of successful “build through the draft” contenders, but virtually no teams who go from treadmill to contender without good lottery picks. Heck, the Pacers best guy is from the lottery, albeit the #10 pick. The Pacers aren’t an example either, since they’re not a contender, and there are almost no others examples in recent history. Look at the top 5 teams in the NBA right now, they all got to where they were by knowing when to “tank” a season or more. The Spurs, Heat, Thunder, Clippers and Memphis all got to where they are through the lottery. There was of course very good management in addition to the lottery (especially for the Spurs and Thunder), but they still needed the lottery to do it. If those teams had tried to add veterans and win a little more in key seasons they probably wouldn’t be where they are today. Better yet, even if a team is terribly managed (like the Paxson Cavs, or the Wolves, or the Magic) the lotto offers fans a way to succeed in spite of bad management. Eventually even the worst managed team (like the Wolves, Warriors or Clippers) can turn it around with some luck, this year the Wolves would probably have made the playoffs if not for all the injuries, and should be a good chance next year, and this is in spite of their terrible management. In the East they’d certainly make it. The Warriors decision to tank a little last year was crucial in netting them a huge building block going forward (whereas one spot lower would have left them with a much worse pick this year in a crappy draft).
Teams should not (and are not) trying to implement the “Pacer model” (which has little to show for it at this point). They are trying to implement the Spurs model, which is why so many people from the Spurs front office get hired by teams who want to improve their management. And it seems to work quite well. The Thunder got some of the top guys from the Spurs front office, and have been a model franchise. There are 4 other franchises whose top guys are from the Spurs front office- 3 are new, so we’ll await to see how they go (Orlando, Atlanta & Utah), and the last is the Hornets. So far it seems to be going pretty well. Orlando is going to rebuild through the draft like the Thunder did (and fans are turning up to games to support the process), the Hornets are already in the process of doing so (fans are thrilled that the front office wasn’t allowed to go for mediocrity like the Pacers did with the vetoed Paul trade, and instead got to tank for Anthony Davis), and Atlanta and Utah’s best assets are from the lottery as well; they could both consider tanking in the future as the means to make the transition to contender, depending on how the offseason goes of course.
Who is trying to do what you guys and the Pistons did? Loser teams like the Bucks. I promise you, their fans would give anything to be going in the direction of any one of those 6 franchises who are managed by former Spurs guys. Don’t believe me? Go to their message board, all of them want to tank, and hate their mediocre front office. The Pacers have done much better of course, but it’s very hard to construct a team like that, and even when you do well (like the Pacers), you almost always come out as not a contender. Nor have the Pacers been flawless in their management, the Kawhi trade looks pretty bad for them now, and in a few years it will look much worse. So far all the Pacers have to show for their efforts is their 2nd season above 500 in the last 7 years, and a win% this season and last that still isn’t any better than what the Hawks managed in recently (were the Hawks a model franchise to be emulated, or were they a team who was going to peak at the 2nd round, not unlike the Pacers?).
So yeh, enjoy your successes, but let’s not get carried away here, or misunderstand the Pacers situation.
