Cody Zeller, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kemba Walker, Gerald
Henderson, DJ Augustin, Brandan Wright, Adam Morrison, Sean May, Raymond
Felton, and Emeka Okafor. What do they
all have in common? That is a list of every single lottery pick the Charlotte
Bobcats have ever made.
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| CBSSports.com Stan Van Gundy says the draft should be eliminated. His Magic team that went to the NBA Finals in 2009 was built around Dwight Howard, a number one overall selection. |
Much has been made recently about teams with little to no
incentive to win games in the NBA and building their rosters to lose lots of
games and accumulate ping-pong balls for the NBA Draft Lottery. Tanking, as it’s commonly referred to, can be
the only way towards the top of the NBA for some teams. Some feel the need to change the way NBA
Draft is structured in a way that doesn’t reward losing since the lottery is a
weighted system and the teams with more losses have a higher percentage chance
of getting the first overall pick. Former NBA head coach Stan Van Gundy went as
far as to say the NBA should eliminate the draft and allow rookies to enter the Association through free agency. I’m
writing this to say not so fast.
In most NBA Drafts, there are usually only one or two players
whose ceiling is a superstar, face of the franchise kind of player. In some cases there aren’t any players that
fit this description. So I feel as if
the recent talk of modifying the NBA Draft to discourage tanking is rather
unwarranted. If a team is going to throw
a whole season away, actively make their team worse during that season, for a
25% chance at getting the first overall pick in the NBA Draft why should anyone
stop them? Mathematically they’re throwing a season for a 75% chance to not get
the first pick in the draft. For a team
to tank and try so hard to get the first pick, those odds don’t seem too
favorable.
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| NBA.com One team will get lucky on lottery night. Some years, the draft isn't deep enough and teams that don't get lucky have to hope they get lucky in the lottery in the future. |
Look at all those Bobcats lottery picks. One specifically worth highlighting is Michael
Kidd-Gilchrist. Kidd-Gilchrist clearly
is not the biggest bust on that list.
But in the 2011-2012 season, a shortened one due to the lockout, the
Charlotte Bobcats went 7-59 en route to the worst winning percentage in a
single season in NBA history. Charlotte
entered the lottery with the 25% chance at the first pick in 2012, did not get
the first pick, and missed out on perhaps the only player who has a superstar
ceiling from that draft as they saw New Orleans select Anthony Davis first
overall. So Charlotte had a historically
bad season and did not get a superstar player out of it.
In 2006, Charlotte selected Adam Morrison third
overall. If you look back at the 2006
draft by no means was it rife with superstars but Rudy Gay, Rajon Rondo, and Kyle Lowry were all taken after Morrison
and all have proved themselves to be viable NBA starters.
The point is if teams want to tank, they better draft well. In setting up for a horrific season by
blowing up the roster, odds come lottery night are not going to be favorable regardless
of how horrendous the past season was.
Then, even if it works out teams picking in the top three better find
the right player, or they’ll find themselves right back in the top three the
following season.
The 2006 and 2012 drafts for Charlotte are good examples of
different flaws that lie within tanking.
In both drafts, they had a high pick, and both times came out without a
superstar player. In 2006, they were the
third worst team in the NBA and picked in that third slot accordingly but
drafted a bust. In 2012, they were
historically bad and did not get the first pick and wound up missing out on
Davis, who might be the only sure thing from that draft.
So if a team is going to position themselves to lose as many
games as possible why should anyone stop them? Sure there is a reward at the
end of it all but it’s easy to just assume that the process is going to
work. Teams need luck in the lottery,
and good talent evaluators in the front office to make the right picks for tanking
to work neither of which is a guarantee.
So if tanking isn’t even a guarantee to improve a team long term, again,
why stop it?
Look at last year’s draft.
Four of the top five picks are averaging significantly less than 20
minutes a game for their respective teams this year. First overall pick Anthony Bennett averages
12.8 minutes a game for Cleveland. The
third pick, Otto Porter, averages 9.3 minutes a game for Washington. Cody Zeller, Charlotte’s pick at fourth
overall, plays 16.8 minutes a game and lastly Phoenix selected Alex Len fifth
overall who averages 9.1 minutes per game this season.
Now all four players are rookies and maybe just need time to
develop but drafted that highly should be making more of an immediate
impact. Take a look at the fifth player
in the top five from last year’s draft, Victor Oladipo. He’s playing 32 minutes a game for Orlando
and could win the Rookie of the Year award this year. Oladipo is the only player in last year’s top
five that is playing like a top five pick.
If last year’s draft is every reason not to tank, then this
year’s draft is every reason to tank. A
draft loaded with depth and maybe more than just one or two superstars is
perhaps the reason why all the tanking talk is so rampant this time of year as
the regular season begins to unwind. But
the suggestions that the current model needs to be changed aren’t really
suggestions as much as they are exaggerations.
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| sloansportsconference.com Adam Silver should not crumble under the pressure of changing the format of the NBA Draft. |
The classic example
of a successful tank job is the Oklahoma City Thunder/Seattle SuperSonics who
drafted Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden in three consecutive
drafts. Yes, a lot of losing went into
drafting these three players. But there
was also a lot of luck through the lottery and the Oklahoma City/Seattle brass
had to pick the right players for what they were trying to do and it happened
to work out and so kudos to them for pulling it off because it’s easier said
than done.
GMs prioritizing losing and a drop in attendance were some
of the issues put in front of Adam Silver at the Sloan Sports Analytics
Conference regarding tanking. The drop
in attendance is really irrelevant. It’s
not like a team’s attendance was great prior to tanking and all of sudden their
tank is ruining their high attendance marks. The Sixers are a good example of that. They are a team in full tank mode this season
that draws terrible crowds, but hasn’t really consistently drawn good crowds
since the Allen Iverson era.
Maybe the fact that GMs prioritize losing is concerning
for someone like Silver who just took over as NBA commissioner last month, but
if I’m Silver, I’m saying go ahead and tank.
Charlotte got so tired of the lottery they went out and overpaid for Al
Jefferson last summer and now may be a playoff team this year. They went from terrible to now mediocre and
will never be elite.
Tanking is risky a proposition. It’s high risk-high reward. The high reward part is getting the better of
lots of GMs this season because of the depth of this year’s draft class. But let’s not overlook the high risk
part. Sure, you might become the
Oklahoma City Thunder. But you might
also become the Charlotte Bobcats.
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