How long does a SUCCESSFUL tank need to be?

[jazznik]

Don’t know how many times I have to say it but this **** is predicated on luck. The draft has almost nothing to do with skill, and mostly making a lucky or unlucky pick.

That is true in general, but there are franchises that consistently draft good players with low picks and that is hard to explain by sheer luck. The success of the Spurs has been often ascribed to getting lucky and drafting Duncan. But they became the force in the next 15 years not due to that but because they managed to assemble a great supporting cast around him by repeatedly hitting on very low picks.

 

[idiot]

Until you draft the guy who is obviously the guy and that guy becomes too good to tank with.

With this definition, I'm curious as to which tanks you regard as successful. By my accounting that's maybe about 5 guys in the last 15 years -- or about one every 3 years? If you assume 4 teams tanking per year, that should take about 12 years on average?

Or maybe you're more generous than I am as to who constitutes that guy?

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

With this definition, I'm curious as to which tanks you regard as successful. By my accounting that's maybe about 5 guys in the last 15 years -- or about one every 3 years? If you assume 4 teams tanking per year, that should take about 12 years on average?

Or maybe you're more generous than I am as to who constitutes that guy?

Yeah, you are probably right. It's a ton of luck and most teams will eventually call it when they get someone who is close enough to build around and be a promising team. Kind of like what the Pistons are doing now. They probably dont have "the guy" but they've gotten enough promising young talent and Cade is close enough to where you can have a fun playoff team and just cross your fingers someone else breaks into an all-star.

 

[idiot]

And, more specifically, the exercise that started this topic somehow assumes that the only way to get a franchise cornerstone is via the top pick. And, historically, in the last 15 years it was quite the opposite: players like SGA, Jokic, Giannis and Mitchell were obtained with unsexy low picks. There has been lately too much emphasis on the successful tank vs. the successful rebuild. Guess what, the Jazz somehow successfully rebuilt their team multiple times without the multi-year "successful tanking".

You're right in that this post was playing with the argument that tanking by itself is THE path to contention. But that is not an argument I believe in myself. Part of why I did this is to be more realistic about how long it takes for a tank-primary strategy to pay off.

I totally agree with you that we should have more emphasis on rebuilding rather than tanking. But it's hard to get there when the idea that tanking (at least for small markets) is the only real strategy for rebuilding has become an article of faith. We need to loosen up this belief a little bit before we're ready for a broader conversation.

 

[idiot]

Yeah, you are probably right. It's a ton of luck and most teams will eventually call it when they get someone who is close enough to build around and be a promising team. Kind of like what the Pistons are doing now. They probably dont have "the guy" but they've gotten enough promising young talent and Cade is close enough to where you can have a fun playoff team and just cross your fingers someone else breaks into an all-star.

Yeah, it's not easy. Franchises can't keep rolling the dice year after year until they get snake eyes. Just not enough patience in the market for that.

 

[underdog]

The logic is simple: many people here talk about specific players (Harper, Boozer etc.) as though if the Jazz got them with a high pick then the team would get a franchise player. But in reality, the rate of busts/disappointments is very high in the NBA drafting. Even teams with the 1st picks have been typically really disappointed with the players they had drafted.

And, more specifically, the exercise that started this topic somehow assumes that the only way to get a franchise cornerstone is via the top pick. And, historically, in the last 15 years it was quite the opposite: players like SGA, Jokic, Giannis and Mitchell were obtained with unsexy low picks. There has been lately too much emphasis on the successful tank vs. the successful rebuild. Guess what, the Jazz somehow successfully rebuilt their team multiple times without the multi-year "successful tanking".

Looks like you still don’t get it. It makes no sense to say that a team shouldn’t tank because this and that player has been selected with a low pick before. You compare apples and oranges. If we don't tank, it doesn’t mean we get all the picks outside the top 5.

 

[jazznik]

Looks like you still don’t get it. It makes no sense to say that a team shouldn’t tank because this and that player has been selected with a low pick before. You compare apples and oranges. If we don't tank, it doesn’t mean we get all the picks outside the top 5.

You are hyper-fixated only on the picks as the only road to success. If we don't tank we can make many other moves that help building a successful team: we can instill the culture where everyone plays hard everyday because the result matters and everybody is accountable. We can make sure that we have enough veterans to fill out the roster. We can ensure that everybody is playing consistent minutes and that the lineups are stable. When the team is tanking they do not simply collects the rewards in the form of picks: there are also many losses.

For example, the development of Keyonte on a strong team with a winning culture could have been shaped very differently.

 

[David Hume]

MVP Winners, position drafted

1. Bob Petit 2
2. Bob Cousy 3
3. Bill Russell 2
4. Bob Petit 2
5. Wilt Chamberlain TP
6. Bill Russell 2
7. Bill Russell 2
8. Bill Russell 2
9. Oscar Robertson TP
10. Bill Russell 2
11. Wilt Chamberlain TP
12. Wilt Chamberlain TP
13. Wilt Chamberlain TP
14. Wes Unseld 2
15. Willis Reed 8
16. Kareem 1
17. Kareem 1
18. Dave Cowens 4
19. Kareem 1
20. Bob McAdoo 2
21. Kareem 1
22. Kareem 1
23. Bill Walton 1
24. Moses Malone ABA Disp 5
25. Kareem 1
26. Julius Erving 12
27. Julius Erving 12
28. Moses Malone 5 ABA Disp.
29. Moses Malone 5 ABA Disp
30. Larry Bird 6
31. Larry Bird 6
32. Larry Bird 6
33. Magic Johnson 1
34. Michael Jordan 3
35. Magic Johnson 1
36. Magic Johnson 1
37. Michael Jordan 3
38. Michael Jordan 3
39. Charles Barkley 5
40. Hakeem Olajuwon 1
41. David Robinson 1
42. Mchael Jordan 3
43. Karl Malone 13
44. Michael Jordan 3
45. Karl Malone 13
46. Shaq 1
47. Allan Iverson 1
48. Tim Duncan 1
49. Tim Duncan 1
50. Kevin Garnett 5
51. Steve Nash 15
52. Steve Nash 15
53. Dirk Nowitzki 9
54. Kobe 13
55. LeBron 1
56. LeBron 1
57. Derrick Rose 1
58. LeBron 1
59. LeBron 1
60. Durant 2
61. Steph 7
62. Steph 7
63. Russell Westbrook 4
64. James Harden 3
65. Greek Freak 15
66. Greek Freak 15
67. Jokic 41
68. Jokic 41
69. Embiid 3
70. Jokic 41

MVPs by position drafted and number of times winning award.



1: 21

2: 10

3: 8

4: 2

5: 2

6: 3

7: 2

8: 1

9: 1

12: 2

13: 3

15: 4

41: 3

ABA Dispersal Draft 5: 3

Territorial Pick: 5

All other: 0

 

[underdog]

You are hyper-fixated only on the picks as the only road to success. If we don't tank we can make many other moves that help building a successful team: we can instill the culture where everyone plays hard everyday because the result matters and everybody is accountable. We can make sure that we have enough veterans to fill out the roster. We can ensure that everybody is playing consistent minutes and that the lineups are stable. When the team is tanking they do not simply collects the rewards in the form of picks: there are also many losses.

For example, the development of Keyonte on a strong team with a winning culture could have been shaped very differently.

I'm not "hyper-fixated" on anything. I've seen this same discussion so many times over the years that it's become tiresome. I'll move on.

 

[oldtimer]

it takes as long as it takes

 

[jazznik]

MVP Winners, position drafted

I would expect such thorough empiricist as Davide Hume to be way more attentive to easily measurable differences in the draft process over that time before aggregating the results.

It is absolutely useless to look at the draft results of the 60s and 80s looking for the insights for the modern drafting. Back then they were drafting exclusively American players and (almost exclusively) only after they finished college, so the prospects typically were 22. Now most talented drafted players are drafted when they are 18 or 19 and a lot of them have never played in America but come from all kind of countries and playing experience. It is really hard to identify future superstars at that age and we can see that about 20 years ago the number of MVPs selected at the very top of the draft took a huge nosedive with the exception of an athletic freak LeBron, whose athletic dominance was evident way before 18.

Of course, Garnett, Kobe and Giannis would have gone 1st if they were drafted at the age of 22.

 

[The Midnight]

A couple days ago @midnight_hwy made the point that it's important to tank for multiple years. He's obviously right that the odds aren't on your side in any single-year tank to get what you need out of it. But I wondered how much tanking might be typically needed to accomplish a team's objectives (which, I take it, are to get the player(s) that can lead you to championship contention). So I've tried to devise a rough method to make a good estimate. The answer?: about 5 years on average (of course luck could make it longer or shorter).

Here's how I came to that conclusion:

• I used a bottom-4 finish as the measure of true tanking. Given how the league works these days, it's an achievement to finish bottom-4 in any given year, so I consider a bottom-4 finish a tank done well. And even more, it's no simple feat to finish bottom-4 multiple years in a row.
• I looked at the 7 top draft choices over the past 15 drafts. I used 7 because the bottom 4 records are almost guaranteed a top-7 pick. And given the lotto odds, you can't really expect more than a top-7 pick from a strong tank. We all want a top-5 pick when tanking, but that's not realistic in today's NBA.
• I gave each of these picks a value from 0 to 100. 0 represents a role player or worse (since you don't need to tank to find a role player in today's NBA). 30 is a good, strong starter who can be a key player on a winning team, at least in theory (Markkanen, Aaron Gordon, Porzingis, for example). 50 is a player that if you had two of that quality you'd be on your way to contention (Chet Holmgren, Jaren Jackson Jr, Paulo Banchero). 100 means that this single player himself is virtually a path to contention (I only gave 100 to Wemby; though 95 to Doncic). A couple more examples to help give a feel for what I did: I gave Anthony Edwards a 65, Jaylen Brown a 40, and Brandon Ingram a 22.
• Basically the idea is that you want to be able to get players that add up to 100 in any successful tank so that you're on a clear path to championship contention.
• If you assume that after a year of solid-tanking you could get a draft choice anywhere from 1-7, then it follows that you can average the values of the players drafted 1-7 to see how many years of serious tanking (on average) it will take to equal 100.

It turns out the average player value of picks 1-7 is 21.1 (median 20). This means that on average (average lottery luck, average pick luck), it will take nearly 5 years of bottom-4 finishes to obtain players that equal 100 in tanking value.

(If anyone's curious what my valuations were for each player, let me know and I'll post them. I think I was more generous than stingy in my assessments, and so I may be a bit too optimistic for how short an average successful tank needs to be).

Any thoughts? Disagree with my assumptions/method? Let me know.

I thought i had made the comment re multiple year tank.