Piston Pete wrote:The Moose wrote:smann7 wrote:Did I hear the 4 worst records have an equal chance of #1?
Who do you guys like at 6 or 7?
bottom 3 teams have a 14% chance, the 4th worst has a 12.5% chance
For me I think I like Sharpe or Eason
The kicker, and the benefit to finishing with a worse record is it puts a cap on how far you could fall.
Worst record - worst pick possible is 5
2nd worst - worst pick possible is 6
3rd - 7
4th - 8
And so on….
And although the odds for the 1st overall pick are similar at 3 and 4 (14% to 12.5%), have you looked at the odds beyond that?
The odds for the 3rd worst record to stay in the top-5 are 67%
The odds for the 4th worst record to stay in the top-5 drops to only 55%
Well, when you say staying in the top 5, you're mainly talking about picking 5th specifically, because the difference between picking top 4 is 52% vs 48%. The differences in odds for picking at any of the top 4 picks is pretty minimal for the bottom 4 teams, as you said its mainly about how far you fall. Finishing 2nd or 3rd makes you likely to fall to 5 or 6, 4th makes you likely to fall to 6 or 7.
Now, with that being said, it comes down to what you prefer. Would you rather the team gel well together, Cade and Bey succeed, and the team wins some games, and we likely fall to 6 or 7. Or would you rather Cade and Bey struggle a bit, the team loses confidence, and we likely fall to 5 or 6.
For me I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I want Cade to continue looking like he was a deserving 1st pick, Bey keeps emerging and maybe we lose some competitive games.
I should preface this by saying that imo there is a gap after the top 2 prospects, so I'm not all that worried where we would pick 3-7. We have already done the work to have one of the best chances at a top 2 pick. 1st-3rd worst have a 27.4% chance at a top 2 pick, 4th worst record has a 24.7% chance at a top 2 pick.
https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/28/22597310/nba-draft-expectations
I think this is an interesting look at why picking 5-7 mostly comes down to picking the right guy in the right situation.