SoCalJazzFan wrote:So, it's really too early to tell at this point, but Jabari Smith, the presumptive #1 pick until the Magic at the 11th hour let it be known that they were going to select Banchero instead, looked completely underwhelming in his first summer league game. As the #3 pick, he should look much better than he did. Perhaps this was a bump in the road and he'll be great, or perhaps he will be added to the long list of top 5 draft pick busts.
The math is very much in favor of having a top-five pick be at least a quality player.
This analysis shows that the top five picks have a dramatically increased odd of becoming all-stars:
https://medium.com/@burakcankoc/what-are-the-odds-to-become-an-all-star-for-each-draft-pick-2d113d6b82e5https://basketnews.com/news-154367-seeing-the-future-estimating-value-of-nba-draft-picks-in-trades.htmlhttps://thedatajocks.com/nba-draft-pick-values/https://towardsdatascience.com/what-are-the-odds-a-statistical-analysis-of-tanking-in-the-nba-2c5fe228cd67It also should be noted that lots of recent 'busts' come from the NBA game-changing where big men (think Kanter) have become less valuable but teams had yet to figure that out drastically decreasing the value of those players' careers. Another segment of busts comes from a small selection of teams that seem to have cultural problems that decrease the likelihood of success for their picks, such as the Kings (Bagley, Papagiannais, Mclemore, Robinson) Knicks (Ntilikina) Timberwolves (Wiggins, Patton, Johnson), Suns (Bender, Chriss, Jackson).
Looking at the past ten years here are the sure-fire busts from the top 3 picks:
(Bagley, Okafor, Bennett, Williams, Kidd-Gilchrist)
Going back another ten years you've got Thabeet, Beasley, Mayo, Morison, Millcic, Brown, Swift as busts - that's 12 total busts from 60 players going in the top 3 the last twenty years.
Expanding this out to include top five picks here are other clear misses since 2000:
Bender
Jackson
Hezonja
Exum
Tyrus Thomas
Tskitishvili
Fizer
Which would bring us to 17 busts out of 100 players.
Then you've got a list of serviceable players who played below expectations, and of these had injuries that caused their fall from potential star status:
Evan Turner
Kanter
Jabari Parker
Derrick Favors
Marvin Williams
Emeka Okafor
Jay Williams
Fultz
Dunn
Some players are too young to make a firm decision either way. (Wisemen)
That still leaves 40 of the 60 players drafted that ended up making an all-star team. In fact, since 2000 only 43 (of 240 possible) players have been selected to be an all-star that have been drafted outside of the lottery. Taking it further only 92 of 1771 players drafted outside of the lottery have made an all-star team when drafted outside of the top 14 in the past 50 years.
If we instead look at hall of fame players the argument for tanking gets even more extreme as the first pick or second pick gives you over 30% odds of drafting a hall of famer, with the third pick having 18% odds and every other non lottery pick having less than 1% odds.
No top of that only three players have ever won an MVP that wasn't selected in the lottery in NBA history (Jokic, Nash, Giannis) with only Jokic being drafted after the 15th pick and the other two being the 15th pick.
The other thing that is discounted here is the sheer value of lottery picks- they might not hit every time but the value of a pick in the top five vs a pick in the mid-late first round is dramatic and can be the difference between striking out and hitting a home run when looking to add say, a second star next to Donovan Mitchell.
Something that matters here is what the end goals are, If you're going for a championship history will tell us you need a top-5 pick as only one team in the best 50 years has won a championship without a top-five pick on their roster. (Raptors)
Another factor to consider when it comes to the tanking conversation is the ability of the market to add top-end talent via free agency.
The current lottery/draft system is broken and incentivizes being well... not good. But the incentives are definitely there to rebuild in a dramatic fashion. Additionally hard tanking (sixers style) is no longer as important as lottery odds have been flattened so just being "bottom five bad" gives pretty good odds of landing a quality player.
Tanking also allows for teams to take flyers on younger or underappreciated players that might not make it on a competing team but can develop into quality players in the future. For instance, Joe Ingles signed during the Jazz's latest rebuild; It also allows for teams to rehab the value of players such as Andrew Wiggins.
This is all a numbers game and tanking is an attempt to move those numbers in your favor. Clearly, there is an opportunity cost but tanking shouldn't be dismissed as an effective strategy, multiple teams including the most recent winners (Warriors, Bucks, Lakers) along with their opponents (Celtics, Suns, Heat) all have major assets on their teams acquired via rebuilding or tanking.
