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I was bored and was looking up some information about past drafts when I found a kind of cool trend.

The team that gets the first pick in any given draft has an average increase in wins of about 16. Meaning that a team that only won 20 games but got the #1 pick will win about 36 games the following season.

I only looked this up for the time span of 2000-2007 but i think it's pretty significant.

2000 N.J. selects Kenyon Martin and the next year they win 26 more games than the previous year.

2001 Washington selects Kwame Brown and wins 18 more games than the year before.

2002 Houston selects Yao Ming and wins 15 more games than the year before.

2003 Cleveland selects Lebron and wins 18 more games than the year before.

2004 Orlando selects Howard and wins 15 more games than the year before.

2005 The Bucks select Bogut and win 11 more games than the year before.

2006 Toronto selects Bargnani and wins 22 more games than the year before.

2007 Portland selects Oden and has so far won 8 more games than the previous year.

The value of the number one pick goes far beyond just the player that is chosen. The pick also changes the mind set of the team and how it's fanbase feels about the team. The total change in the thought process of the franchise is seen in the increase in win totals the following year.

I just thought that this was interesting and people might be interested to see it.

Ill put money if the heat get 1st pick that they win more then 20 more wins!!

Can you REALLY count Portland when Oden did not play a single game? lol

Jersey went from 31 wins to 26 wins after drafting KMart.

Oden shouldn't count b/c he hasn't played.

Washington improved b/c of Jordan.

The Bucks and Raptors both improved mainly due to the play of TJ Ford.

All the other teams improved b/c the players they picked were good players and helped the team.

In terms of improving the attitude and mind set of the team, maybe it could apply to Toronto, but I think that was mainly b/c of Brian Colengelo not Bustnani. For the other examples, I don't think you can correlate it to the improved environment of the team from having a number one pick.

Ok with the NJ thing I guess i got the wrong year.

Oden didn't have to play to have a hugely positive effect on his team. His teamates felt on top of the world because they drafted him. The simple presence of Oden has created a very positive and bright future. Simply put these guys know they are going to be good so they play better and play with the knowledge that they will be competing for championships for a long time.

Jordan is largely responsible for the up swing in Washington but don't discount what having that Number one pick did for the team morale.

I'm not saying that getting the number one pick means that your automatically going to be a better team. However, the evidence shows that all of these teams improved after getting the number one pick. I personally think that it has to do with team management having hope and either putting faith in his new #1 player or making the appropriate moves after getting a great prospect.

I don't know why this is interesting news. First, the teams that tend to pick #1 tend to be bad, and bad teams tend to get better, both by simple regression to the mean, and usually the elimination of whatever was causing them to lose (low cap figure, youth, bad coach, etc.). Second, these teams get to pick the best player they can find on Earth not in the league that year. All rookies don't make a huge first-year impact, but many do, like Duncan, LeBron, Yao...

So it would really be very shocking to have a team do worse after getting the #1 pick. That New Jersey did is much more of a story than the other 12 teams or so improving (especially since the improvement was often slight, as in Elton Brand or Iverson.

Between simple regression to the mean, and teams not tanking because they already have their long-term guy most of the immediate improvement has nothing to do with the player added.

Even with LeBron (one of the few players on this list good enough to be a significant help on the court as a rookie), most of the 1st year improvement was just Cleveland trying to win, instead of shooting at the wrong basket for stats.

I'd bet my leg that Miami wins at least 13 more games next season. These teams tank quite a bit at the end of the season..

Paydro70 wrote:...simple regression to the mean...

QFT