June 23, 2004

Take the best player: This SI.com columnist claims that NBA teams should draft the best player rather than fill a specific need.

posted by cg1001a to basketball at 08:58 PM - 25 comments

I disagree with this columnist. Look at teams that had consecutive top draft picks (Rockets: Sampson & Olajuwon, Nets: Derrick Coleman & Kenny Anderson, Magic: Shaq & Penny). None of those teams won an NBA title, and those players eventually didn't mesh. On the other hand, filling specific needs with the ultimate team in mind works. No one paid much attention when the Pistons drafted John Salley and Dennis Rodman in 1986 or the Bulls drafting of Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen in 1987, but those moves were specifically to improve the team's defense. And look at the results. This year's champion Pistons did the same thing with trades, acquiring the Wallace boys. Look at the flack that Detroit Pistons executive Joe Dumars received for selecting Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony in last year's draft. Dumars was ridiculed for saying that his team already had a similar player in Tayshaun Prince. In the finals against the Lakers, when Tayshaun Prince's defense on Kobe Bryant was obviously a factor in the Piston's rout of the Lakers, Dumars' detractors were the ones who looked ridiculous. Carmelo is a heck of a player, but he didn't fit in to where the Pistons were going.

posted by cg1001a at 09:01 PM on June 23, 2004

Preach it cg! Always draft for need over "the best player".

posted by lilnemo at 09:14 PM on June 23, 2004

I think that seriously depends on the team's position and talent quality of the draft. Besides with the average age of the athletes dropping like my IQ on New Year's Eve predicting performance is getting harder than 1986 and 1987 when players games were more shaped by draft day.

posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 11:13 PM on June 23, 2004

Yeah, so you are the Blazers and you don't draft Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft because you already have a shooting guard. Seriously? Sam Bowie?

posted by geekyguy at 12:07 AM on June 24, 2004

I have to disagree with the word "always" lilnemo; there have to be a certain number of guys each decade you take whether they fill a need or not. Also, cg-- what does Tayshaun's defense have to do with not drafting Carmelo? Darko had 0 effect on the series and drafting Carmelo wouldn't have cost the Pistons Tayshaun Prince. It would have meant balancing some minutes and a different rotation, but I don't think that's a bad problem to have.

posted by yerfatma at 06:12 AM on June 24, 2004

Sam Bowie is always trotted out as the bad choice. He was a bad choice. But the Blazers could have said "OK. We don't need this Jordan guy because we have Drexler. Let's draft the most talented player in the draft besides Jordan." What if they had taken Barkley for instance? Their decision to draft based on need wouldn't have looked so bad. I think the draft for height looks worse and worse every year. Someone is going to take Pavel Podkolzine and it ain't gonna be pretty. Joe D might not have drafted Carmelo also because of his propensity for tantrums. Sure Carmelo looks like he might have helped the Detroit offense, but their offense wasn't as bad as people claimed. It looked bad when you put them up against a similar defensive team, but their offense looked incredible at times against the Lakers.

posted by BobbyC at 07:15 AM on June 24, 2004

each team's situation dictates whether they draft a role player to compliment their stars, or if they draft pure talent, in the hopes of eventually building a core around said talent, or what have you. If GMing were so black&white to always go for pure talent, I'd be doing it.

posted by garfield at 08:20 AM on June 24, 2004

I'll have to agree more with John Hollinger on this one than cg. Melo would have been a better draft choice for the Pistons than Darko; DWade would have been even better. If you don't think either of those two would have helped more than Darko in this year's playoffs, then you didn't watch them play. But the reason DWade would have been a better choice is because he wouldn't have taken precious chunks out of Prince's PT like Melo would have, so I do agree that need is a factor. It's just not as big as talent. For further argumentation, take a look at the draft choices of the agreed-upon best-GM-of-all-time: Jerry West. He always drafts talent over need, and that's why his roster is always stacked, even in Memphis. They can go 10-deep because they don't have a single bad player. They don't have GREAT players, but that's mostly because West didn't have much to work with when he started and hasn't had a high draft pick yet. But West seems to follow Hollinger's analysis to a tee - confounding analysts with his drafting choices because he already has similar guys, and then swinging trades during the regular season for needs and more talent. In only two years, the Grizzlies are a team on the rise because of it.

posted by platocave at 08:40 AM on June 24, 2004

I believe in the "draft for need" idea, EXCEPT when there is an OBVIOUS gap in talent between the best available player and your "need" player. You can always trade the "talent" for your "need" and get something more in return as well.

posted by grum@work at 10:05 AM on June 24, 2004

Drafting for the best player assumes you know who the best player is. You can usually see the very best. Maybe the best three or four. After that, things get more dubious. Looking at old drafts with 20-20 hindsight is irrelevent to the question at hand.

posted by dzot at 10:35 AM on June 24, 2004

platocave: agreed-upon best-GM-of-all-time: Jerry West Not to sidetrack too much, but can't we at least get some consideration for Red Auerbach? During their first 9 championships with Russell, Auerbach was not only the coach but the effective GM in those days, picking and choosing most of his team out by hand. He then became actual GM from 66-84, for another 6 championships (including 2 more with Russell as player-coach), and was team president when the Celtics won their last and 16th in '86. That's gotta count for something... right?

posted by hincandenza at 10:49 AM on June 24, 2004

Alright, I've give you Red...

posted by platocave at 10:56 AM on June 24, 2004

Thanks- we've grown rather fond of him. :)

posted by hincandenza at 11:00 AM on June 24, 2004

True; If the Grizz start winning championships, then that'll the time we start having the West-vs.-Auerbach argument in earnest. Not to diminish the place in basketball history of either one. There can't be an always or a never with drafting for talent over need. There's a reason there are no Bill Jameses in Basketball. And Sam Bowie looked damn good on draft day '84. Obviously.

posted by chicobangs at 12:25 PM on June 24, 2004

Chicobangs is right, and I'd like to expound on that. I'd say the real reason there are no Bill Jameses in basketball- or football or hockey for that matter- is that unlike the other major team sports, baseball is uniquely a lonely sport. The defense (with the sometime exception of the SS/2B, and during plays) rarely has two players within 60 feet of each other; the pitcher, the most pivotal player on the field, is the loneliest of all, isolated on his 10" high stage. The offense, likewise, is literally never within 90 feet of each other, and no hitter ever had the benefit of a good pick and roll executed by a teammate when facing a Clemens or a Randy Johnson or a Pedro Martinez. In short, baseball is a starkly black and white game. Every action is almost perfectly granular, perfectly isolated: each pitch, each swing, each play, can be broken down into discrete data points, collected, counted, analyzed. The result is that baseball, more than any other sport, is a game of almost excessive counting- of statistics and individual and separate contributions. Whereas a Jordan or Shaq can mostly carry a team on the court at times, regardless of their fellow players, a Rodriguez or Bonds is still only 1/9 of the offense, no more and no less. Therefore, when it comes to the risky business of evaluating future prospects, baseball is uniquely qualified to look at easily collected metrics and have a pretty good idea of not only how good a player likely will be, but in doing so have a reasonable idea of much they are going to contribute to your final win/loss numbers, with almost frightening accuracy. And while baseball not only allows but encourages in its very nature the tracking and evaluating of players- often with very good results- through sophisticated analysis, sports like basketball and football strongly resist such analysis. The effectiveness of Kobe depends in large part on the Shaqs, and the Shaqs on the Kobes; Jordan got better when he had Pippen to shoulder some of the load and attention of opposing defenses, much maligned players like Rodman not only contributed statistically with rebounding, but in uncounted values like setting most excellent picks and screens. No player can be evaluated in a vacuum- their effectiveness and value becomes highly dependent on the right teammates, the right coach, the right offensive and defensive systems and patterns, all out of their control. Those are contributions and factors that are either impossible in baseball, or when they are can still be very isolated and countable! One last key point: while the NCAA acts as a sort of minor leagues for the other pro sports, the disparity in conferences, etc, also makes evaluating talent difficult. Baseball drafts out of high school as much as college, but then commits its players to a costless (to the major league team's roster) time in the minors to be more closely evaluated and trained. The Bill Jameses realized long ago, and the best GMs have caught on, that when you're spending millions, it pays to have good metrics and analysis. But in the NBA, no matter how hard they try, it will always be a crap shoot- always.

posted by hincandenza at 01:46 PM on June 24, 2004

My 2 cents on the Darko/Melo debate... The Pistons are a defense-first team...period. They are molded in Joe D's image...play your ass off on defense, take the offense that you get from that defense, and shut the hell up and play. They don't *need* anything right now...every role was filled before the draft, or was in the works then...Dumars has said he'd tried to work out a trade with Portland for Rasheed all off-season. But, they know they'll need a good big man in the middle in a few years. That's Darko...or will be him in 5 years or so, if Joe is right. Carmelo, on the other hand, does not fit into this team. Imagine if the Pistons drafted him, then he sat and watched the season and playoffs from the best seat in the Palace...because he would have done just that...whining all the while, yet still being a "scorer" that is iffy on defense. The Pistons proved something to the world that they don't want to admit...you can win without big names...you don't need the guy you drafted 2nd to make an immediate impact for you to be successful...and you don't need to pick the second most talented player in the draft to look like a genius. I have my own reservations about Darko, based on what I've seen of him this season, but I also have yet to see Joe Dumars make a bad decision, so I'm not going to deride him about Darko unless he doesn't pan out when he needs to...5 years down the road...

posted by MeatSaber at 02:39 PM on June 24, 2004

My 2 cents on Darko's effectiveness... Darko Milicic is the William Hung of the NBA. Seriously, the guy does not look like a basketball player when he goes out onto the court and yet he is cheered madly, even by opposing fans, every time he touches the ball. And, as Bill Simmons pointed out, everything he does seems to score highly on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. The godawful-looking tape over his ears from a horrible piercing job, the broken bone in his hand from 2 minutes of play? I know from reading an article in ESPNMag that Darko supposedly recorded an unbelievable time in an agility drill, and that's why JoeD took a chance on him - his "potential". But even William Hung has a nice voice, if you listen closely and don't pay attention to his interpretative dances. His voice has an agreeable pitch, smooth and mellifluous. But having a nice voice doesn't necessarily make you a good singer. And being extremely agile for a big guy doesn't necessarily make you a good basketball player. I just wonder if, when Darko demands playing time next season - and gets it because of JoeD - we won't start seeing a serious Darko backlash, similar to the anti-William Hung stuff we're seeing now. Currently, Darko's career seems to be akin to the beginning of the William Hung phenomenon, where he became wildly popular on the internet from a few clips. But overexposure and lack of skills next season may start the same booing for Darko that William Hung sees now. What do you think? Maybe I'm wrong. But, as the Chuckster says, I doubt it. P.S. What was Larry Brown's take when he was on David Letterman? “I have a 10-year-old son, and I think he's a lot more mature than Darko right now." Hmmm.

posted by platocave at 04:25 PM on June 24, 2004

Draft Party in the locker room!

posted by lilnemo at 05:16 PM on June 24, 2004

I agree that the reason Bill James-style analysis of basketball (and to a lesser extent, football) rests on the interconnectedness of the players during the game, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some Moneyball-type undervaluing/overvaluing going on in basketball. I'm certain someone smarter than me could use stats to prove that, in general, taller players tend to get rated higher based solely on that. Smaller players are almost certainly undervalued, both at draft time and in the league. This is what leads the Bulls to trade Elton Brand for Tyson Chandler. And there are absolutely statheads in the NBA. The recent vogue of metrics like points-per-shot is evidence of this.

posted by filthyboy at 05:50 PM on June 24, 2004

Smaller players are almost certainly undervalued, both at draft time and in the league. Case in point: Michael Olowokandi over Mike Bibby.

posted by lilnemo at 05:55 PM on June 24, 2004

I can't understand why teams still go for size when a 6-6 player (Jordan, Pippen, Kobe, Rip Hamilton) is just as if not more valuable. In the last 15 drafts Olowokandi, Joe Smith, and Pervis Ellison have been TOPs. NBA teams have gotten better over time at drafting, but there are always unknowns. Not even Shaq or Tim Duncan were considered 100% sure-shots for superstardom when they were drafted.

posted by cg1001a at 06:21 PM on June 24, 2004

man, I saw duncan in college... if he wasn't a sure thing as a post player i don't know what is

posted by chmurray at 10:15 PM on June 24, 2004

Just going through the comments... To address the pitfalls of having consecutive top overall picks (cq1001a), the Hakeem/Sampson Rockets got to the NBA Finals -- running into the buzzsaw that was the '86 Celtics -- and so did the Penny/Shaq Magic. So it's not like nothing came from those picks, and who knows what might have happened if those teams handn't let Shaq and Sampson go. As for the Nets (did Kenny Anderson go No. 1?), they happened to land first-class headcases, otherwise they might have done some some things... People need to lay off the Bowie pick itself(Geekyguy/BobbyC), regardless of Drexler's presence on the Blazers at the time. Yup, Bowie wasn't that good. But how much can a big man develop when he suffers two severe leg injuries? I tend to put that into the bad luck bin along with Len Bias, Danny Manning, and etc., where you never really know. Finally, I'll bite a recent King Kaufman column where he advocates splitting NBA history into eras. Red Auerbach was phenonenal during the pre-1975 period, when you were playing no one, really. Since then, no one's really messing with Jerry West, who's put together eight championship teams with the Lakers during a more competitive era and seems to be getting it done in Memphis after starting from scratch.

posted by jackhererra at 11:48 AM on June 25, 2004

Good point, jackhererra, but I would rate Bulls GM Jerry Krause up there with Jerry West. Because West's team was in L.A., both KAJ and Shaq wanted to play for the Lakers. That's your eight championships right there. The Chicago Bulls, on the other hand, had no tradition, had to create a championship aura from scratch.

posted by cg1001a at 07:47 PM on June 25, 2004

1) Very good point about Krause. The most admirable part was resisting the urge to pair a true star with Jordan, instead working with a B-level star in Pippen, and a lot of role players at various levels. (Obviously, Horace Grant wasn't an ham-and-egger.) 2) That said, Krause wasn't able to do much without Jordan. Didn't adjust terribly well after MJ's first retirement, and seemed more interested in being considered a genius than actually winning games. (See: Gutting team, hiring Tim Floyd. Whether drafting Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry falls into this pattern depends on your feelings about drafting high school kids. (I'm not bothered by it.))

posted by jackhererra at 02:46 PM on June 28, 2004

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