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All data obtained from the splits page of Basketball Reference and adjusted to per-36 min:
In games in which Manu played more than 30 minutes (265 games, 33.88 MPG):
FG% 3p% Total Rebounds, Total Assists
.448 .369 5.06 5.03
In games in which Manu played less than 30 minutes, but more than 10--to eliminate injury games--(392 Games, 24.39 MPG)
FG% 3p% Total Rebounds, Total Assists
.455 .378 5.16 5.10
If anything, that undersells the point, as the second number picks up most of his rookie season, when he was pretty average as a player. The difference is more pronounced each year after that.
Edit: Last year for instance (since he's only played in more than 30 min one game this year), here's the data:
More than 30 (51 games):
FG% 3p% TRB TA
.422 .344 4.33 5.52
Fewer than 30, more than 10 (27 games)
FG% 3p% TRB TA
.460 .366 4.5 6.6
Manu would not be the same guy if he played 36 per night.
Ginobili was the best best player on a 60+ win team last year. He has basically been tied for best with Duncan another couple of years. Ginobili outplayed Duncan IMO the playoffs, and particularly the finals, where the Spurs beat Detroit.
Bass isn't playing that much worse than his career norms, most of it that is shooting has been worse (like a lot of players this year), it could easily be just one season of bad shooting. But even at his best it's not like he was putting anywhere near elite numbers. Big men like Chris Anderson that are consistently good low minute players their whole careers typically have health/fitness issues and play less minutes and at a lower level than Ginobili/Harden. It's not that Ginobili has done merely "good" in limited minutes, its that has consistently put elite numbers year after year in minutes only slightly less than most starters.
I don't think it really matters what he could have done in 36 minutes, what did in 29 was valuable enough, especially when he's been consistently packed up by guys like Barry and Finley; 29 minutes of Ginobili plus 7 minutes of someone like that is still going to better than any SG combo that doesn't include Kobe or Wade.
Obviously I'm a Boston fan, so.
Interestingly, Popovich has babied Manu in terms of minutes, and his career has still been plagued by injury. Would it have been even worse if Popovich had tried playing him standard superstar minutes? Or, on the contrary, has Popovich damaged Manu's reputation by not allowing him to rack up big counting stats?
I agree that Ginobli has been awesome in the minutes he's played, but POOMA most elite wings play 36+ a game. 7 minutes is not "slightly less" IMO and saying Pierce isn't in his class is ridiculous to me.
I'm not a Boston fan in the traditional sense, but I also think that statement is off.
Since it's the Basketball Hall of Fame, not the NBA, Ginobili is a no-doubter to me.
If Manu could maintain his per-minute numbers at 36+ minutes per game, he'd be Kobe Bryant and would be, what, top-10 all-time at his position. I wouldn't argue that, because I think tshipman is right that he would lose efficiency. So I think Manu and someone like Pierce have similar value, just derived from different shapes. And I think it's plausible that both are Hall of Fame players.
Plays more: 6.4-14.4 44.9% FG, 2.0-5.5 36.9% 3P, 5.6-6.6 85.3% FT, 59.4 TS%, 1.0 orb, 5.1 reb, 5.0 ast, 1.9 stl, 2.6 to, 0.4 blk, 2.6 pf, 20.5 pts
Plays less: 6.1-13.4 45.6% FG, 1.9-5.0 37.8% 3P, 4.6-5.7 81.6% FT, 58.9 TS%, 1.1 orb, 5.2 reb, 5.1 ast, 1.9 stl, 2.8 to, 0.4 blk, 3.1 pf, 18.8 pts
This is supposed to be strong evidence that Manu has benefited from playing low minutes? (I think it has helped him, but primarily for health and defensive reasons. Yes, I know how the former sounds.)
I'm beginning to think he'll get suspended for at least the first round.
I think this basically right and I probably overstated it when I said Pierce wasn't in his class, however it was also only in regards to their peak value and I think Ginobili's peak is better, assuming you look sustained production over a few consecutive seasons. Pierce did have a few years on par with Ginobili's best, and might even have the best single season of the two, but didn't have as consistently sustained of a peak.
Yeah. His numbers are worse across the board (except FT shooting oddly). Again, the pattern of individual seasons shows the effect even more dramatically.
In addition, selection bias should favor Manu, as he'd be more likely to stay in games where he was shooting well. If Manu played 36 minutes a game, he'd be Joe Johnson. This is why I hate the per-minute superstar stuff.
Nonsense. As is the case for all frontline talent, he's more likely to play more minutes in games that are important and/or close, i.e. those against better competition.
***
Individual seasons, I'll grant you. Selection bias, I'll also grant. - and these need not be small things.
Not sure how you're otherwise getting numbers worse across the board, though. The shooting percentages being a tad lower could be explained by the higher number of attempts (and is more than counteracted by the difference in free throw performance). The hair difference in boards and assists is balanced by the difference in turnovers. That leaves scoring and committing fouls... which don't favor the low minute version.
***
So, given that there are the dual questions of: how much value did 'x' create (easier to answer) and how good was he (tricky)... what do you think is an appropriate penalty for answering the latter question?
***
I'm not willing to rule out out of hand that Manu is a top-10 SG, though I doubt it (or it would at least require a huge number of caveats and clauses). Don't really see why Kobe's name got brought up, though. (Yes, Manu has been a more efficient player than Kobe over the course of their careers ... still ...)
I dunno, I hold being on shitty teams in that era of the East as a pretty black mark against guys, including Iverson.
I don't think this is true. From last year, Manu's highest minute games were against Houston, Houston, Minnesota, Memphis, Lakers, New Orleans, Denver, Memphis again and Phoenix. I'm not doing the math, but their cummulative record can't be over .500. Manu only went over 36 minutes in nine games last year (not counting this year, since it's a weird schedule).
Okay. Like i said, I think it's an unknown whether or not Manu would be the same player at 36 mpg. I think it's extremely unlikely that it would be so--it would mean that Popovich has been acting irrationally since Manu's second year. It is possible. I think that the FT numbers are mostly explained by selection bias--he has the ball in his hands a lot when he's on the floor, and he's more likely to be on the floor when the Spurs are in the bonus.
I don't know. My general preference is to just do a mental fudge guesstimate. I dunno what right number is. Generally speaking, I heavily discount anyone who plays less than 33-37 per.
I would guess the right way to look at it is to design a study that looks at whether playing reduced minutes gets you more production, similar to the reliever studies. I don't know many guys bounce back and forth.
This does nothing to explain why his FT% would be higher. I can actually explain that though. You're reducing an already not very large sample size in terms of minutes played significantly (which is also probably why his fg% is very slightly lower, that's within error margins). But if you include his playoff stats (he's actually played roughly 20% of his career minutes in the playoffs, which seems absurdly high to me), you can see that in both Der K's regular season minutes as well as playoff minutes (when there's less selection bias except for good competition) is that he was pretty much able to maintain his rates when he played more.
I give him pretty big bonus points for his international career as well. He won an Olympic gold against a full team of guys like Paul Pierce.
Here's the splits of another life-long Spur, TP (again, these are all per 36 min and subject to a number of apples v. oranges issues):
Manu Ginobili
Plays more: 6.4-14.4 44.9% FG, 2.0-5.5 36.9% 3P, 5.6-6.6 85.3% FT, 59.4 TS%, 1.0 orb, 5.1 reb, 5.0 ast, 1.9 stl, 2.6 to, 0.4 blk, 2.6 pf, 20.5 pts
Plays less: 6.1-13.4 45.6% FG, 1.9-5.0 37.8% 3P, 4.6-5.7 81.6% FT, 58.9 TS%, 1.1 orb, 5.2 reb, 5.1 ast, 1.9 stl, 2.8 to, 0.4 blk, 3.1 pf, 18.8 pts
Tony Parker
Plays more: 7.4-15.0 49.4% FG, 0.5-1.6 31.3% 3P, 3.4-4.6 73.2% FT, 54.8 TS%, 0.4 orb, 3.3 reb, 6.3 ast, 1.0 stl, 2.7 to, 0.1 blk, 1.9 pf, 18.7 pts
Plays less: 6.9-14.3 48.4% FG, 0.5-1.5 30.1% 3P, 3.1-4.0 76.4% FT, 54.1 TS%, 0.5 orb, 3.4 reb, 6.9 ast, 1.1 stl, 2.9 to, 0.1 blk, 2.3 pf, 17.4 pts
Or that we're not measuring what Pops is trying to do appropriately. The last guy to average 35 mpg for them was Tim Duncan ... eight seasons ago. Parker has led the team in MPG the few years at a bit over 32 per game.
Have deep benches, put them in positions where they can succeed (and demonstrate that you have faith in them), keep your studs rested for the postseason. Seems to work.
Agreed. The "he had crappy teammates" line only goes so far. Garnett didn't always have much to work with in Minnesota prior to 2004 and he was still leading the Wolves to around 50 wins a year in a tough conference.
Except Manu plays less in the post season than most stars, too. 31.4 mpg. Ray Allen for his career is at 39.5 and over 40 per for two years in Boston. Kobe is at 39.3 MPG. Wade is at 40.5.
Duncan, by the way, is at 39.5 MPG. Tony Parker is at 36.3. It's not a Spurs thing. It's a Manu thing.
Sure, Joe Johnson is a hell of a player. I didn't realize we were talking about him for the HOF, though. I vote no on Joe Johnson, FWIW.
Garnett did carry some weak Minnesota rosters, but I think that a lot of people today don't really get how great Garnett was back in his heyday. "Not as good a franchise anchor as peak Garnett" is not really an indictment of a guy.
"Man, the Charlotte Bobcats are bad."
"How bad are they?"
"They lost to the Wizards by 28."
Wait, that wasn't a joke. That happened. Oh wait, they are a joke.
1. LeBron
2. Bird
3. Erving
Who else is better? Probably Rick Barry. I'll give you Scottie Pippen, although he's almost as much a guard as a forward; same for John Havlicek. 'Nique? Worthy? Paul Arizin? Dantley? Two guys who might have been better but had the heart of their careers cut out by injuries were Bernard King and Grant Hill.
True. And I do think Pierce is an obvious HOFer. That said, the east was really bad for much of the 2000's and for a team to have a star of his caliber and not be able to consistently stay above .500 in that mess...well, doesn't that have to count for something?
How much differently would Pierce be viewed if the Celts had never gotten Garnett and Allen and the last 5 years of his career had continued in the same fashion as the first 9? (and I guess you could ask the same question about Garnett and Allen, too)
This is a great theory if you're talking about Jason Kapono. When applied to Manu, I don't think it works. He's quite valuable even when he's not shooting well, and he'll be on the court at the end of a close game either way.
A team's best players play the most minutes when games are close. On very good teams, this means that they will play more against better competition or when they and their teammates are playing poorly. On bad teams, this means that the best players will play more against worse competition or when they and their teammates are playing particularly well. Just look at the Bobcats this year. Their 3 consistent starters (Henderson, Augustin, and Maggette) all play better as their minutes increase. The Heat's Big 3 show mostly the opposite trend (LeBron, Wade, and Bosh). When LeBron and Wade play very well, they tend to win easily and play fewer minutes as a result. The Spurs have been very good throughout Ginobili's career, so selection bias is more likely to disfavor him in this study.
Ginobili's numbers are functionally identical whether he plays 30+ or <30 minutes. I'd guess that his PER is actually very slightly higher at 30+ minutes due to slightly higher usage with no change in his percentages. I agree that Ginobili and Joe Johnson are in many ways quite similar, except that Joe Johnson converts his shots at a league-average rate and Ginobili at an elite rate. That difference doesn't seem to go away no matter how many minutes Ginobili plays.
4. Elgin Baylor
5. Adrian Dantley
6. John Havlicek
7. Alex English
8. Scottie Pippen
9. Dominique Wilkins
10. Paul Pierce
I feel like Arizin needs to be in the top 10, but I have no idea where. If you count Gervin as a SF, he belongs on the list, too, right? I don't even have Rick Barry there, but I dunno... It's a tough top 10. If Arizin and Gervin are in, then Pierce obviously isn't, but he's keeping some elite company. I do think that I hold Pierce's awful, awful Boston teams against him a little. I think Pierce moves up the list the next few years; he seems to have at least a couple of good ones left.
Every one of those teams other than Minnesota (horrible) & Phoenix (missed it by one win) were .500 or better last year.
I count Baylor as a 4 more than a 3. I don't think there's any way in hell Dantley, English and Wilkins are better.
Any doubt comes from the fact that Pierce is a prime candidate and not a peak candidate.
Define "awful, awful." Pierce was on a couple 30+ win teams (so was Dominique, I think), as I recall. The one truly bad season, 06-07, when the Celtics won 24 games, Pierce missed a large portion of the season (he played 47 games), and the Celtics did a lot of their losing when he was out (like that 16-game losing streak, IIRC).
I love Dominique, but I don't really see the argument for him over Pierce. And while I didn't really follow Alex English's career, just looking at the numbers, I don't see that argument either.
I will never understand why Atlanta traded 'Nique for Danny Manning in 1994. I thought that the Hawks had an outside chance at the title that season-they were the top seed in the East, MJ was on hiatus, they had a well-rounded team (Kevin Willis, Stacey Augmon*, Mookie Blaylock, and 'Nique), good coaching-but Manning was not a great fit for that squad.
*Augmon was a nice player for his first 5 seasons: ~14ppg, 5 rpg, 1.5 spg, 49% FG. He was viewed as a star defender. Then he left Atlanta, and only played 20 mpg twice for the rest of his career.
Had Wilkins been born a decade later and started his career with a defensive minded coach, he had all the tools to have been a dominant defender at the position.
While I have great respect for Pierce's defense, the difference between him and Garnett is huge. Pierce can defend players, but a great defensive big man can defend against teams. That is why Garnett is the alpha on the current Celtics team, and why peak Garnett + crap gets you 50 wins while peak Pierce + crap gets you 35-40 wins.
Clips. For the Grizzlies to pass LAC, they've got to win against Orlando on Thursday and LAC has to drop both ends of this back-to-back @ATL and @NYN today and tomorrow. I think the Lakers have the tie-breaker against LAC for the 3.
"How bad are they?"
"They lost to the Wizards by 28."
Yup. They're pretty terrible. In my opinion, while Jordan deserves some blame, I think ESPN and the rest of the media is going overboard blaming him. He's not good, but this franchise was a train wreck before he arrived.
Nit pick - not a guard. If we want to redefine 1-3 to "wings", then yeah. But he was undoubtedly a SF his entire career. He handled the ball, and occasionally guarded PGs (famously Magic and Marc Jackson in the playoffs) all the way up to PFs. But he played next to MJ (SG; also Pete Meyers when MJ was baseballing) and one of Paxson/Armstrong/Kerr/Harper/etc (PG) the entire time.
"Man, the Charlotte Bobcats are bad."
I think it was Marc Stein that pointed out they're likely to finish the season on a 23 game losing streak.
8. Scottie Pippen
The Bulls homer alert in me is going off. This severely underrates his defense though. Not sure where I'd put him, but for one I know I'd take him over English and Dantley.
In my opinion, while Jordan deserves some blame, I think ESPN and the rest of the media is going overboard blaming him. He's not good, but this franchise was a train wreck before he arrived.
No, he's definitely to blame. His people have been running the team for some time now. Hopefully for their sake Cho turns it around; that might be the only good decision MJ's ever made as an executive (I challenge you to find another).
Except, per 36, Joe Johnson averages less pts, boards, assists, FTA, 3PA, steals, blocks and all the %'s. JJ is only better in TOV and fouls. I know comparing Manu to JJ helps your argument, but it's not exactly an apt comparison. I've seen nothing on here that proves Manu's %'s would fall off a cliff if he played extra minutes; which is what would have to happen for him to be Joe Johnson.
TS% JJ- .528 Manu- .591
eFG JJ- .493 Manu- .522
PER JJ- 16.4 Manu- 21.8
WS/48 JJ- .096 Manu- .216
Correct.
I do think that Dominique typically gets short shrift in these rankings. Yes, he wasn't a particularly good defender, and people point to that weakness and wave him off as merely a dunking machine. People forget just how overwhelming an offensive force 'Nique was, as good as anyone in NBA history at getting to the rim and finishing, and he was an elite offensive player for an extremely long time. Wlkins was awesome, awesome, awesome, a hurricane with the ball whose legacy is dimmed by having played in a conference dominated by three all-time great teams (Celtics, Pistons, Bulls).
I'm not sure why not being considered in the top 5 an insult to Pierce. Rick Barry didn't make the list! RICK BARRY! I am open to the argument that Pierce is better than Wilkins at this point, but I utterly reject the assertion that Pierce is so much better that he leaves no doubt. "I don't think there's any way in hell..."? I reject that completely.
Pippen I have a difficult time judging. Among all-time great SFs, he's the only one whose career defensive value is greater than his offensive value. That makes him utterly unique, and I could go high or low on him. Regardless, top 10.
I obviously counted Baylor a 3.
I think Cho was pretty explicit about wanting to stop taking on overpaid vets to remain respectable (I think the Maggette trade came before he signed on), to allow the team to bottom out, and try to build it from the ground up. Even if they didn't intend to get to these depths, I think they knew what they were getting into. If it ends up netting Anthony Davis, we won't be joking about them in a couple of years, and Jordan might look like a much more shrewd owner.
that's not the best of luck considering the playoffs are a week away.
I think Cho was pretty explicit about wanting to stop taking on overpaid vets to remain respectable (I think the Maggette trade came before he signed on), to allow the team to bottom out, and try to build it from the ground up. Even if they didn't intend to get to these depths, I think they knew what they were getting into. If it ends up netting Anthony Davis, we won't be joking about them in a couple of years, and Jordan might look like a much more shrewd owner.
Until they continue rounding out the rest of the roster with marginal prospects from Duke and UNC.
It would serve the Warriors right for how blatant and shamelessly they've been tanking if they just end up with a worse record because of it and still no first round pick for their "efforts."
From Hollinger's column today:
I felt really bad about that loss. If the Jazz are going to play their way into giving the Wolves a first rounder, the Wolves can at least try to show some good faith in return. It's not like the Wolves are tanking, unless the NBA really wants that New Orleans pick to be slightly higher (I think it's either locked into 9th or 10th barring a lotto leap now).
Yeah, it seemed like the least the Wolves could do to repay us for the pick we're going to be giving them if we win tonight. But I do give the Wolves props for still trying to win these last few weeks despite the injuries when most other teams in their situation aren't even pretending to try.
No, we're talking about two different picks. The Wolves get the Jazz's pick as part of the Jefferson trade if the Jazz make the playoffs. But the Jazz get the Warriors pick as part of a different trade unless the Warriors finish amongst the bottom 7 teams.
So since the Jazz might be giving Minny their pick by making the playoffs, I (semi-jokingly) thanked the Wolves for returning the favor by losing to the Warriors on Sunday, since the win bumped G.S. out of the bottom 7 and made it possible that the Jazz could still get that pick instead.
Edit: Oh, did you mean improve the Jazz's chances of getting the Warriors pick? Then yes, it did. I wasn't being sarcastic when I thanked the Wolves for losing. Sorry, it probably sounded like I was and thus the confusion. My bad.
I know, right? The lottery system helps for sure, but unfortunately I can't think of any way to prevent it from happening entirely, can you?
Full lottery for all teams that miss the playoffs. They each get the same chance of getting spots 1-14.
1. Reverse lottery where the last team eliminated from playoff contention gets the best odds of #1.
2. Just giving everyone an equal shot at #1.
Apologies if any of those were covered in the 6,987 articles on tanking I avoided over the last month.
Better, but in a deep draft or one with a super stud like Duncan or LeBron available, don't you think fringe playoff teams might still tank to avoid making the playoffs and keep their chances of a high pick alive? Basically, you might just be trading the bottom feeders tanking for the middle of the pack teams tanking.
2. Just giving everyone an equal shot at #1.
Everyone who didn't make the playoffs, or everyone period? I'd say absolutely no on the latter. What if the 1997 Bulls had won the lotto and added Tim Duncan to a team that already won 69 games and the championship the year before? That wouldn't even be fair; it'd be a waste of everyone's time to even bother playing out the 1998 season.
1. Reverse lottery where the last team eliminated from playoff contention gets the best odds of #1.
I like this one the best, but couldn't teams close to the playoffs still deliberately try not to make it in the last week of the season?
A few months ago the popular idea was the #1 draft pick is awarded to the team with the most wins after being eliminated from playoff contention.
Then they could do the reverse tanking thing and lose early to get eliminated from contention, and then all of a sudden their starters injuries magically heal and they play up to their potential in the last few weeks.
Some of these ideas were better than the current format, but none of them are flawless. When there's a possible franchise player available, I think it's inevitable that teams will come up with loopholes in whatever system is in place to try to increase their odds of landing him.
Believe Titus was Turner's roommate in college.
No, I don't think that a team with a chance to make the playoffs is going to tank for a 7% chance at someone. I don't think it makes sense for them to do, and I think their fans would revolt.
I feel like when Pippen and Kukoc are on the court at the same time, that Pippen is the SG and Kukoc the SF. Also, at least defensively, Pippen and Jordan were often interchangeable. Lastly, at the end of his career Pippen was undoubtedly playing PG with the Blazers. It's still a pretty picky nit and I'd put him at No. 4.
Wilkins was a stunning performer but I'm not even sure his offense matches up to Pierce. Just going by pure offense I'd put Dantley No. 1 on the SF list. Wilkins is better defensively than Dantley/English but that's not saying much.
I think the best option out there is equal weighting for all non-playoff teams. While it's possible you'd see a team blow a playoff spot for a 1 in 14 shot at Shaq Jr., that kind of tanking would go over much worse with the fanbase 13/14 of the time.
Maybe not. That said, the above proposal might eliminate tanking, but it also might end up screwing the legitimately bad teams by giving them even less of a chance to get better. The top picks could just as easily go to .500 teams that are barely missing the playoffs then to the truly bad teams that need the help the most.
The Wizards aren't tanking (as their 4 game winning streak shows); they're just bad. The Bobcats might be tanking now, but they're legitimately terrible and could use some help. If the Cats ended up with the 13th or 14th pick for a few years, we could easily be seeing the same kind of horror they've subjected us to this year for many years to come. Don't teams like the Wiz and the Cats deserve a better chance to improve than teams like the Rockets or the Suns/Jazz who aren't in nearly as bad of shape?
I like this one the best, but couldn't teams close to the playoffs still deliberately try not to make it in the last week of the season?
The other problem with this one that I forgot to mention was that it could turn the fringe playoff teams into contenders but the really bad teams could stay really bad for a long time.
This. A lot of the suggestions bandied about in the HoopIdeas discussion ignore the fact that the purpose of the draft lottery is long-term competitive balance, and that shifting the incentives too much risks creating a situation where genuinely bad teams have no good mechanism for becoming significantly better, while fringe playoff teams can land superstars and immediately launch into contention. (And, as noted farther above, I think in a draft with a Duncan or LeBron, a fringey playoff team might well tank to get a draft pick instead of the #8 seed or whatever.)
"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."
I think you could argue that the Rockets "deserve" Davis more than any other team since they have run their team pretty well, have no franchise fulcrum, and got screwed by Stern as a by-product of LeVeto.
But you can also argue that it is better for the NBA overall if a really bad team gets Davis.
FTO's point is correct as well. If every lottery team had an equal shot at Anthony Davis, I can't see the Bucks' or the Rockets' FOs and fanbases really wanting the teams to go hard for the 8th spot, as they did, although they both ultimately came up short.
I was not really aware that tanking was such a crisis until ESPN/Grantland started making a big deal about it. But given the impact that a superstar can have on a franchise in the NBA, I don't think there is any way to totally eliminate it.
This point doesn't fully engage with the way the incentives would change. The way truly bad teams start to get significantly better in this model of the the draft lottery is they start trying to build towards being a fringe playoff team. It seems quite clear to me that such goal is emminently achievable without having to win the lottery. Make good use of the mid-range first-rounders you get, don't just ship out every decent veteran you have just because they aren't good enough to make you a championship contender, take chances on players like Tony Allen who want to go somewhere they can start or play more minutes, make smart trades even if it isn't a home-run. Try to be a 20-25 win team next season or the season after instead of a 7 win team and then a 35-40 win team after that. Then win the lottery.
I don't necessarily endorse a reverse lottery because there are multiple interlocking incentive structures with the draft, the salary cap, etc, that I don't feel like thinking through. You could modify it to look at multiple seasons and lessen the chances that a team that has been very good or great recently wins it in their first mediocre season. Or any other number of changes. But the problem with such a system is not likely to be that the bad teams can't ever get better because they don't have a good chance of winning the lottery. They would do it the same way they do it now, which is to try to become a team that has a good chance of winning the lottery. At the moment that means becoming as bad as possible, so that is what teams do. If you changed the direction of the incentives, teams would be much more willing to start building the foundation of a good team even if they don't have the centerpiece yet.
There would certainly be teams with incompetent managment who execute the strategy poorly and never get good, but that is true now and is true in basically every sports league I am aware of, so I don't see how that is a unique disadvantage to this system.
Don't know, but my understanding is that he is the consensus #1 and the feeling is that he can be a serious defensive anchor for a decade. That is pretty big stuff--even if the guy is not a Shaq/Admiral/TD/LbJ kind of dude.
Adding Davis won't make the playoffs happen, but that's because the Washington media is overrating Wall, not Davis.
He does need to improve his FT% and his 3P% to be an elite point guard, though.
Sure, I don't disagree with any of that necessarily. I just think tanking, for all that it is an odious thing when it's obviously happening, isn't actually a major problem, and that monkeying with the draft is a much more delicate thing than the tanking discussion has presented it as being. I'm not necessarily saying the current construction is perfect or the best way to do things, but that I have yet to see a convincing argument that a)things actually need to change and b)there is a specific way to improve things that would improve more than it would hurt. I'm sure the argument could be made, and I would be interested to see it, but I haven't yet.
I actually don't care about tanking, at least not in the in-season sense like GSW and others are sort of doing now. I wasn't even necessarily arguing for a specific type of draft order. All I was countering in 1382 was what I see as a pretty weak objection to a reverse draft.
I do think you are underrating the impact on the league of letting the worst teams get the best shot at the best talent. The no-man's land in the NBA where GMs can hurt their team by putting a better product on the floor is a bad thing. I think there are changes that could be made that improved the talent return from building a good team organically instead of trying to suck until you hit a home-run in the lottery. And I don't particularly see the reason to so strongly favor the status quo. It's only basketball, it's not life or death. If they fiddled with the draft some and it didn't work, change it back. Or try some minor changes at the margin to improve the situation. The current lottery system is not holy writ.
I don't know that we really disagree too much here. I'm sort of overreacting because pretty much all of the discussion (elsewhere) about this hasn't engaged with the draft as shaping competitive balance in the league long-term, which I see as its major purpose. I'm not actually hostile to any specific changes, I just want to see them justified on that level, not just because they would stop tanking, which I'm not convinced is a huge problem. I err on the side of not fixing what ain't broke, but I would be fine with some change. I just think the TrueHoop discussion has been particularly misguided to date.
Edit: Huh, it's not necessarily coincidence that both the Wizards and the Bobcats are associated with Michael Jordan.
It depends who's doing the tanking. Boston tanking in 96-97 to get Duncan (and failing) = fine. Everybody else = crisis. My #1 team is the Warriors, so naturally I wonder why this year's tanking is so egregious when all of the other many, many tankjobs that have occurred in the NBA were merely chuckleworthy. It is clearly something the league should try and disencourage, but I don't however see why it is more of a problem than the reverse, where the bad teams could potentially be stuck in limbo forever because they both a) suck and b) can't get lucky in the lottery. That seems like a far, far worse solution to me than a couple teams tanking every year. Do Warriors fans, or Sonics fans, or Boston fans, or whoever's fans really care if the team wins 26 games rather than 20? No. It's just something for people to tear their hair about.
I'm coming around to some sort of reverse lottery idea. Putting a great player on a bad team will probably catapult that team right into the middle of the mediocrity treadmill (see Cleveland and LeBron James), needing to get lucky within 1-2 more drafts to add complementary pieces to that transcendent superstar.
For example, is anyone nearly so enamored with Kevin Durant and the Thunder, if they don't also snag Russell Westbrook with the 4 the next year? (To be fair, the Thunder have done a very good job personnel wise, and Durant + Harden would be a formidable team as well)
I can't see where you're going with this at all, unless I totally misunderstand what you mean by "reverse lottery."
For one thing, Cleveland went to the Finals and later won 60+ games in two different seasons. Hardly "the mediocrity treadmill."
Secondly, the reason the "mediocrity treadmill" exists is that if you're not bad enough to get a really high pick, it can be very hard to land the sort of superstar (like James, though obviously he's once in a generation) who can turn things around. So having a "reverse lottery" would just mean those really bad teams stay really bad forever, right?
Unless, like I said, I'm completely misunderstanding what a "reverse lottery" would be.
I thought the proposal from Sloan was pretty okay.
You get entered into a lottery, and your odds improve for every game you win after you are eliminated from playoff contention.
The idea being that generally speaking, the worst teams get the best chances, but it's not really worth gaming.
I thought it was a decent system. I'm sure there would be problems with it, too. not the best system in the world, but a potential improvement. I think the "anti-tanking" brigade gets itself tied up by having a lack of implementable solutions.
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