gesa2 wrote:Awolf if you look back through this years thread as well as the last 2 or 3, you’ll find several instances of this argument between payitforward and others. The data does show a correlation between draft order and success but the value drops off quickly and after the first 7-10 picks any 2 later first round picks are likely to be worth more on average. Payit argues that it drops so quickly after 3 that the rule would hold that early, but many disagree. He also uses anecdotal data to make his argument which drives some people nuts even if we mostly agree with him. Is that a good summary? No need to go through it all.
Got it, thank you. I'll spare everyone from beating a dead horse then....
What an odd response, awolf.... It's by no means "a dead horse," given that the only difference between gesa2 & me is where the correlation begins to drop off & how steeply (earlier than he thinks & far more steeply!)
In my case, I'm not speculating. I have researched this -- by which I mean in peer-reviewed academic journals not by linking to a blog post written by someone who made something up yesterday & look how cool it is....
This is, essentially, an economics problem -- calculating value gained for value spent. I'd be happy to continue to dialogue about it, but I'm certainly not interested in having an argument with you: it's great to have you as an active participant!! Please keep it up!
Your response to the facts about 2020...
Spoiler:
To summarize, the dozen best players out of that draft don't reflect pick position at all:
Tyrese Haliburton (12) Lamelo Ball (3) Desmond Bane (30) Immanuel Quickley (25) Tyrese Maxey (21) Josh Green (18) Xavier Tillman (35) Kenyon Martin Jr (52) Isaac Okoru (5) Onyeka Okongwu (6) Tre Jones (41) Isaiah Joe (49)
...was to object, quite reasonably, that a single draft is a small sample size.
Hence, one could look at another. 2017, 2018 & 2019 exhibit more or less the same pattern as 2020 where, leaving 1-3 aside, almost all the best players were picked outside the top 10. So do, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, & even the incredibly weak 2016 draft.
E.g....
Spoiler:
2017: Josh Jackson, De’Aaron Fox, Jonathan Isaac, Lauri Markkanen, Frank Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr. & Zach Collins went from 4-10. The only two good players on that list are Fox & Markkanen -- in Markkanen’s case, it took until his 6th season for him to get there (& not for the team that drafted him).
OTOH, Donovan Mitchell (13), Bam Adebayo (14), John Collins (19), Jarrett Allen (22), OG Anunoby (23), Derrick White (29) & Josh Hart (30) all went from 13-30.
How many more would you like?
Looking at data with an open mind is often the best way to change one's perspective. OTOH, at least in my personal experience, reaffirming shibboleths without looking at the actual data can lead me to harden mistaken beliefs.
gesa2 wrote:Awolf if you look back through this years thread as well as the last 2 or 3, you’ll find several instances of this argument between payitforward and others. The data does show a correlation between draft order and success but the value drops off quickly and after the first 7-10 picks any 2 later first round picks are likely to be worth more on average. Payit argues that it drops so quickly after 3 that the rule would hold that early, but many disagree. He also uses anecdotal data to make his argument which drives some people nuts even if we mostly agree with him. Is that a good summary? No need to go through it all.
Got it, thank you. I'll spare everyone from beating a dead horse then....
What an odd response, awolf.... It's by no means "a dead horse," given that the only difference between gesa2 & me is where the correlation begins to drop off & how steeply (earlier than he thinks & far more steeply!)
In my case, I'm not speculating. I have researched this -- by which I mean in peer-reviewed academic journals not by linking to a blog post written by someone who made something up yesterday & look how cool it is....
This is, essentially, an economics problem -- calculating value gained for value spent. I'd be happy to continue to dialogue about it, but I'm certainly not interested in having an argument with you: it's great to have you as an active participant!! Please keep it up!
Your response to the facts about 2020...
Spoiler:
To summarize, the dozen best players out of that draft don't reflect pick position at all:
Tyrese Haliburton (12) Lamelo Ball (3) Desmond Bane (30) Immanuel Quickley (25) Tyrese Maxey (21) Josh Green (18) Xavier Tillman (35) Kenyon Martin Jr (52) Isaac Okoru (5) Onyeka Okongwu (6) Tre Jones (41) Isaiah Joe (49)
...was to object, quite reasonably, that a single draft is a small sample size.
Hence, one could look at another. 2017, 2018 & 2019 exhibit more or less the same pattern as 2020 where, leaving 1-3 aside, almost all the best players were picked outside the top 10. So do, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, & even the incredibly weak 2016 draft.
E.g....
Spoiler:
2017: Josh Jackson, De’Aaron Fox, Jonathan Isaac, Lauri Markkanen, Frank Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr. & Zach Collins went from 4-10. The only two good players on that list are Fox & Markkanen -- in Markkanen’s case, it took until his 6th season for him to get there (& not for the team that drafted him).
OTOH, Donovan Mitchell (13), Bam Adebayo (14), John Collins (19), Jarrett Allen (22), OG Anunoby (23), Derrick White (29) & Josh Hart (30) all went from 13-30.
How many more would you like?
Looking at data with an open mind is often the best way to change one's perspective. OTOH, at least in my personal experience, reaffirming shibboleths without looking at the actual data can lead me to harden mistaken beliefs.
If I look at each draft on its own, I'm going to find many situations where pick Y performed better than pick X and that Y >> X. But if I look across all drafts in aggregate, then I should hopefully see a formulaic representation of the value of each pick.
I just ran a quick lit search and came across this paper that took an interesting approach to find the value of each draft pick. In this study, the author uses the average of each draft pick's best 5 seasons to determine their value. I thought this was a novel approach because you really care about that ~5 year window of prime to help win a championship.
The advanced metric used during these 5 years was winshare and PER. We can debate the validity of winshare and PER but both pass the smell test when looking at overall players.
The author also does the simple math to say what each pick is worth relative to the first overall pick.
I attached one table and graph to share findings. The r^2 is very high with this approach.
Now, we can debate if a player has double the WS or PER as another player, that player is twice as valuable. In a game where only one team wins, I don't think this is true. But the data does infer the expected relative performance based on draft position.
First of all... thank you for your high-level response.
Now... put simply, I don't think the above is a useful way to analyze this issue. It would take a major intellectual effort & much writing time (indeed, a significant essay on methodology in the social sciences) for me to explain the problem thoroughly, but in sum I can say that it involves several faulty abstractions from reality with the result that the output patterns have no genuine relationship with anything real. (I also don't think either PER or WS are useful in this context, but that's a separate matter).
Now, the above para was unhelpfully programmatic & abstract. So, let me simply illustrate the problem by showing you what happens when you stay closer to what the data itself tells you.
Here are the best players taken from 4 down in a series of drafts. Each name is followed by its pick position. Each list is unordered -- i.e. not necessarily by player value or pick position. Nor do I agree to die upon the hill any list's accuracy, & there may even be names that you don't know. I don't think any of the less well-known players affect my argument. I just didn't feel right leaving them out!
I tried for 10 a year, but reality is messier than our schemata.... At the end of each list is the average pick position of these guys in their draft.
2011
Spoiler:
Thompson 4 Valanciunas 5 Kemba 9 Klay 11 Kawhi 15 Vucevic 16 Harris 19 Joseph 29 Butler 30 Bojan Bogdanovic 31 Bertans 42 Isaiah Thomas 60 average pick position = 24.5
2012
Spoiler:
Lillard 6 Barnes 7 Drummond 9 Lamb 12 Sato 32 Crowder 34 Green 35 Middeton 39 Barton 40 Scott 43 average pick position = 25-26
Aaron Gordon 4 julius Randle 7 LaVine 13 Nurkic 16 Capela 25 Bogdan Bogdanovic 27 Anderson 30 Dinwiddie 38 Jerami Grant 39 Jokic 41 Jordan Clarkson 46 average pick position = 26
2015
Spoiler:
Porzingis 4 Turner 11 Lyles 12 Booker 13 Terry Rozier 16 Delon wright 20 Portis 22 RH-J 23 Tyus Jones 24 Nance 27 Looney 30 Harrell 32 Holmes 37 Connaughton 41 average pick position = 22.2
payitforward wrote: Now, let's say I'd had the #15 pick in each of these drafts. What would have been my best outcome?
Spoiler:
I get Kawhi, Draymond Green, Giannis Antetekounmpo, Nikola Jokic, Terry Rozier, & Dejounte Murray. That's not too bad, is it?
But, what if -- somehow -- all those guys were gone!
Spoiler:
I could still get Jimmy Butler, Khris Middleton, Rudy Gobert, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Tyus Jones & Pascal Siakam. Once again, that's pretty good.
Then again, imagine if I'd had the #2 pick in 3 of those years & the 3 pick in the other two!
Spoiler:
Wow! I could have come away with Dereck Williams, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Cody Zeller, Jabari Parker, & Jahlil Okafor!
What a haul, huh?
I'm not going to get into individual drafts or individual players but let me try to see your point with this approach.
In my previous response, I talked about average performance across 30 years of drafts. Average isnt always the best metric, especially when evaluating an NBA draft, since there are only 150 starters and ~250 total rotation players. What you really want to do is maximize your chance of finding a star.
After pick 10/11, you can see a dramatic shift in slope with a long tail. So if your goal is to maximize your chance to hit an all star, then you'll want "more bullets in your gun" if you are selecting outside of the top 10. From the data he pulled and when he conducted the analysis (2020), 25% of lottery picks have become an all-star, 8% of 1st round picks outside of lottery become an all-star , and 4% of all non-lottery picks become an all-star.
I think this the story you're trying to say with the list of names from each draft. But the data still shows, on aggregate, that a higher draft pick has a higher chance of "hitting".
If that happens, and we keep #8, that would be incredible.
I’ll give credit to Sheppard for the Porzingis deal…that was a coup de gras. Easily his best move.
Some random troll wrote:Not to sound negative, but this team is owned by an arrogant cheapskate, managed by a moron and coached by an idiot. Recipe for disaster.
You don't know if we wouldn't keep 8. The pavers might value zinger and we might play hard ball and get it done. Zinger value on his current contract if super high to a team like Portland.
gambitx777 wrote:You don't know if we wouldn't keep 8. The pavers might value zinger and we might play hard ball and get it done. Zinger value on his current contract if super high to a team like Portland.
NatP4 wrote:8+Porzingis for 3+23+filler seems fair to me.
Although I’m sure they are targeting Scoot at 3. Not a big fan.
Well we haven't heard anything about 8 we just heard 3 for zinger. Which if that happened winnger instantly wins exec of the year. I would play hard ball and holds on to 8. If we do get three I would instantly try to trade back. In my dreams we keep 8, get 18 for Beal, get 3 for singer and trade back.
But I could be more.ok if we got 3 and 23 but I still play hard ball with them and keep 8 .
payitforward wrote: Now, let's say I'd had the #15 pick in each of these drafts. What would have been my best outcome?
Spoiler:
I get Kawhi, Draymond Green, Giannis Antetekounmpo, Nikola Jokic, Terry Rozier, & Dejounte Murray. That's not too bad, is it?
But, what if -- somehow -- all those guys were gone!
Spoiler:
I could still get Jimmy Butler, Khris Middleton, Rudy Gobert, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Tyus Jones & Pascal Siakam. Once again, that's pretty good.
Then again, imagine if I'd had the #2 pick in 3 of those years & the 3 pick in the other two!
Spoiler:
Wow! I could have come away with Dereck Williams, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Cody Zeller, Jabari Parker, & Jahlil Okafor!
What a haul, huh?
I'm not going to get into individual drafts or individual players but let me try to see your point with this approach.
In my previous response, I talked about average performance across 30 years of drafts. Average isnt always the best metric, especially when evaluating an NBA draft, since there are only 150 starters and ~250 total rotation players. What you really want to do is maximize your chance of finding a star.
After pick 10/11, you can see a dramatic shift in slope with a long tail. So if your goal is to maximize your chance to hit an all star, then you'll want "more bullets in your gun" if you are selecting outside of the top 10. From the data he pulled and when he conducted the analysis (2020), 25% of lottery picks have become an all-star, 8% of 1st round picks outside of lottery become an all-star , and 4% of all non-lottery picks become an all-star.
I think this the story you're trying to say with the list of names from each draft. But the data still shows, on aggregate, that a higher draft pick has a higher chance of "hitting".
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From my point of view, there's only one metric: use the draft capital you have to get the best player(s) you can. The rest takes care of itself.
If players coming out of college carried marks on their foreheads like "potential all star," "likely role player," "danger: probable bust," & the like that would be one thing. But, they don't. Indeed, the unbelievably low level of accuracy in GM's picks is mostly the product of that fact.
Hence "maximize your chance to hit an all star" is, strictly speaking, impossible: all you can do is try to take the best player(s) you can, & the low correlation of pick position to league performance from 4 down indicates how hard this is.
Of the 10 players taken before SGA at 11 in 2018, exactly 1 (Luka Doncic) has proven to be better than he is (not enormously better, but still... def. better). Of the other 9 (Ayton, Bagley, JJJ, Trae, Bamba, Carter, Sexton, Knox & Mikal Bridges), only Bridges is even close to being comparable as a player (tho JJJ & Trae are certainly good players).
I mention '18, b/c we hadn't referenced it yet. But, the real point is that it's the same in draft after draft after draft. There are no exceptions. Try looking at: https://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_2001.html. If you can't pick a guy at 4 who is even remotely in a class with the guys who go 28 & 31, what use is it to look away? Accept it.
Even in 2003, everybody's favorite draft, Mike Sweetney, Jarvis Hayes, Marcus Banks, Reece Gaines, Troy Bell & Zarko Cabarcapa went before David West -- & way way before Kendrick Perkins, Leandro Barbosa, & Josh Howard. Not to mention way way way before Zaza Pachulia who played over 22,000 minutes in the NBA. Not to mention way way way way way way before Mo Williams, James Jones & Kyle Korver.
Or how about '05 when Ike Diogu, Andew Bynum, Fran Vasquez, Yaroslav Korolev, Sean ay, Rashad McCants, Joey Graham, Hakim Warrick, Gerald Green & Julius Hodge all went before Nate Robinson & Jarrett Jack, & way way way before David Lee, CJ Miles, Ersan Ilyasova, onta Ellis & Lou Williams -- not to mention light years before Amir Johnson & Marcin Gortat -- who went 56 & 57 & combined to play almost 40,000 NBA minutes at a high level!
If GMs are good at predicting outcomes, tell me how they managed to pick Hasheem Thabeet, Tyreke Evans, Ricky Rubio, & Jonny Flynn before taking Steph? Not to mention that 8 of the 9 picks following Steph were utter nonentities yet went before Jrue Holiday who (like Steph) has played over 30,000 NBA minutes at an extremely high level.
Do I need to list the literally dozens of non-entities who went before Patrick Beverly, Danny Green & Patty Mills?
Terrence Williams went #11 that year & managed 2900 NBA minutes. Patrick Beverly went at 42 & is still in the league at 16K+ minutes & counting.
Nor is this a set of exceptions. This is the rule -- all I did was pick a few astonishingly egregious cases. The entire sequence of every single draft from 4 down offers the exact same simple & unavoidable lesson.
Nor should it be any kind of surprise. You do your best, but predicting the future, individual cases I mean, is not a high human skill. & anyway, the guy you pick is not a finished product, & the guy you didn't pick isn't one either. So it's no surprise if things don't turn out the way you'd like.
BTW, if I haven't made this crystal clear, Awolf, I think you're smart as h#ll, & I'm enjoying this exchange a lot. I take nothing personally (unless someone intends a personal affront, which obviously you don't!). But I take everything seriously -- which means, in this instance, that I take you seriously.
What you write matters to me, & it matters to me to write back at the highest, most uncompromising intellectual level I can. You dig?
The biggest fallacy before this draft was the Wizards needed to trade Beal before this draft since the Wizards didnt get anyone that moves the needle in this draft.
I wouldn't be mad with Anthony Black but I just don't see the upside with him. If you can't shoot and not an overwhelming athletic freak of nature, I don't see the huge potential there.
I'm fascinated by what direction Dawkins/Winger go...
Please keep it up!
