What's new
By:

Does Lauri Get Traded?

Does Lauri Get Dealt Before The Season Starts?

  • Total voters
    134
  • Poll closed .
jazznik said:
Of course it's true. Essentially, you are confirming that having a top-5 pick is by far the most certain way to drafting "a number 1 on a championship team". Because if the team decides to acquire such a player via free agency, trade, or drafting in the 6-30 range, the chances are going to be way, way lower than 12%.

In the last 15 years there were only 5 players "who have shown this type of talent" drafted in the rest of the first round (Curry, Leonard, Giannis, Jokic, SGA), 5/(25X15)=about 1% chance per pick. And only one, Jokic, was drafted in the second round - 0.2% chance. On average, you will have to draft for a century in the 6-30 range (1 pick per draft) to draft a championship player, and for 500 years - by using only a single second-round pick per year.

Most of these players remained with their own teams, with only SGA, Leonard, and Davis changing teams via trades. I will be generous and add to this the Paul-to-Clippers trade, which happened within the same timeframe. So, there were 4 chances to obtain that caliber of players in 15 years. Almost all of the teams would be ready to trade for such a player every year, so we will conservatively estimate the trade chances as 4/(25X15)=1%. Finally, here are the chances for a free agent signing ( LeBron in 2010, 2014 and 2018, Durant in 2016 and 2019, Kawhi in 2019) - 6 cases. Almost every team would gladly create space for such signing, so the conservative chances are 6/(25X15)=1.5%. And these are extremely generous estimates, assuming that a small-market team like the Jazz and the Lakers have the same chances of getting LeBron or Durant via trade or free agency.

So, trying to obtain "such a player" by securing a top 5 pick has the 12 times higher probability of success than through picking 6-30, 60 times higher chances than drafting in the second round, 12 times higher chances than getting him in a trade, and 9 times higher than signing him as a free agent.

In short, no other strategy comes even close to simply getting the top 5 pick.
Click to expand...
Good post.

No doubt the odds are much better with a top-5 pick. I have two responses. One might change the math a bit, though not the overall conclusion. The other is more philosophical.

First, I think you were being rather more stringent with your list than I was with mine. If I followed my original way of thinking, I might add players like Butler, Booker, Mitchell, Brunson, maybe even Haliburton and others to your list (players that haven't achieved the pinnacle, but appear to be the key pieces on contenders or near contenders if they can get the right teammates around them). Another reason I think you may have been a bit more picky with your list is that my list of top-5 players drafted in the past 15 years is accountable for one actual championship where the named player was clearly the team's best player over the course of the season. Your list of non top-five choices accounts for 8 championships (actually 4 if we exclude Curry who was drafted more than 15 years ago).

But, in any event, my larger point is more about the futility of relying on any single strategy, and maybe even questioning whether "strategy" is the right word to describe what's going on. The point is that luck is a much bigger factor than strategy in any of this. You might have a strategy of trying to maximize the odds that you'll be lucky, but the odds are going to be quite low in whatever direction you take. I'm more responding to the sentiment that the path to success is necessarily through a "real tank". Yeah, you might get lucky in that type of tank by getting a true champion-level #1, but odds are pretty heavy that you won't in any sort of reasonable timeline.

I'm not a dogmatic anti-tanker, but I think I'm wise enough to acknowledge that any success from tanking requires not only (maybe not even) "going all in" and making wise choices, but also a whole lot of luck that is beyond any one team's control. Tearing it down to the studs and trying to build back up could lead to years at the bottom, to growing back to a mediocre team, to getting a good but not great team, or (only least likely I think) to true championship contention.

If the odds of even going full-Hinkie are not really on your side, I'm not going to lose any sleep over keeping Laurie this year.
 
Also something that gets lost in translation is that even Hinkie who is the only gm to truely min/max the art of tanking did it in an era where worst record gave you 25% of the lottery balls.

I can guarantee you even he wouldnt do it for 14%.
 
HermanG said:
Also something that gets lost in translation is that even Hinkie who is the only gm to truely min/max the art of tanking did it in an era where worst record gave you 25% of the lottery balls.

I can guarantee you even he wouldnt do it for 14%.
Click to expand...
He would. Because even at 14%(at the no. 1 pick exclusively... you still get great odds at top 5 pick - guaranteed if you are the worst team), this is still the best way to get "the guy" type of player.

Ideally, we can tank with Lauri on the team, because once the tank is over and we have our guy(s), a player like Lauri is going to be super valuable in our roster build. The question is - does he make us too good to tank?

I personally can understand the FO going either way. But some other moves would need to be made if we are keeping Lauri IMO.
 
HermanG said:
Also something that gets lost in translation is that even Hinkie who is the only gm to truely min/max the art of tanking did it in an era where worst record gave you 25% of the lottery balls.

I can guarantee you even he wouldnt do it for 14%.
Click to expand...
I can guarantee he would.
 
OKC also tanked… but they did it while gathering a war chest of assets… they are setup for current contention and long term success. I know SGA… there are different versions on the same theme. It’s a legit pathway to take. Not sure why anti-tankers are hell bent on invalidating it. And yes like ANY pathway it can be unsuccessful.
 
JimLes said:
I'm sorry, but this is borderline trolling now. You list guys who aren't even All-NBA types(you know, top 15 in the league in a given year) and who have struggled to lead teams to even just a playoff berth as #1 options as players you could build a title winner around?

I get you have a boner for the idea of trading Markkanen for any offer that comes in, but this is just stupid.
Click to expand...
Sure buddy. His list has Morant, Zion and Jaylen yet Kyrie, Trae, KAT and Beal couldn't be in the conversation. That is just stupid. By the way you should actually do a little research before talking **** and saying guys aren't even all nba types. Kyrie had been all nba 2nd team once and third team twice. KAT has been all nba third team twice. Trae has been all nba 3rd team once. Beal had been all nba 3rd team once.
 
Last edited:
Handlogten's Heros said:
OKC also tanked… but they did it while gathering a war chest of assets… they are setup for current contention and long term success. I know SGA… there are different versions on the same theme. It’s a legit pathway to take. Not sure why anti-tankers are hell bent on invalidating it. And yes like ANY pathway it can be unsuccessful.
Click to expand...
BTW, lets remember what OKC did with SGA for 2 years in a row to secure their tank. There were legit conversations about whether they need to trade him because he wouldn't want to spend another year missing the last 2 months of the season because of their tank.
 
stitches said:
BTW, lets remember what OKC did with SGA for 2 years in a row to secure their tank. There were legit conversations about whether they need to trade him because he wouldn't want to spend another year missing the last 2 months of the season because of their tank.
Click to expand...
SA also did the half *** rebuild on the fly for a couple years before actually going into the tank. At this point I think Ryan needs to be real with himself and embrace it one way or another.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
SA also did the half *** rebuild on the fly for a couple years before actually going into the tank. At this point I think Ryan needs to be real with himself and embrace it one way or another.
Click to expand...
Hopefully what we have seen so far this offseason is a clear sign that we are buying into the tank this year. The rest of the west is getting better while we are setting up to be extremely young and inexperienced outside of Lauri, Sexton, Collins and Clarkson.
 
jazznik said:
Of course it's true. Essentially, you are confirming that having a top-5 pick is by far the most certain way to drafting "a number 1 on a championship team". Because if the team decides to acquire such a player via free agency, trade, or drafting in the 6-30 range, the chances are going to be way, way lower than 12%.

In the last 15 years there were only 5 players "who have shown this type of talent" drafted in the rest of the first round (Curry, Leonard, Giannis, Jokic, SGA), 5/(25X15)=about 1% chance per pick. And only one, Jokic, was drafted in the second round - 0.2% chance. On average, you will have to draft for a century in the 6-30 range (1 pick per draft) to draft a championship player, and for 500 years - by using only a single second-round pick per year.

Most of these players remained with their own teams, with only SGA, Leonard, and Davis changing teams via trades. I will be generous and add to this the Paul-to-Clippers trade, which happened within the same timeframe. So, there were 4 chances to obtain that caliber of players in 15 years. Almost all of the teams would be ready to trade for such a player every year, so we will conservatively estimate the trade chances as 4/(25X15)=1%. Finally, here are the chances for a free agent signing ( LeBron in 2010, 2014 and 2018, Durant in 2016 and 2019, Kawhi in 2019) - 6 cases. Almost every team would gladly create space for such signing, so the conservative chances are 6/(25X15)=1.5%. And these are extremely generous estimates, assuming that a small-market team like the Jazz and the Lakers have the same chances of getting LeBron or Durant via trade or free agency.

So, trying to obtain "such a player" by securing a top 5 pick has the 12 times higher probability of success than through picking 6-30, 60 times higher chances than drafting in the second round, 12 times higher chances than getting him in a trade, and 9 times higher than signing him as a free agent.

In short, no other strategy comes even close to simply getting the top 5 pick.
Click to expand...
Good post

Sent from my CPH2451 using Tapatalk
 
Ferguson_Mellochill said:
Honestly, I wouldn't trade Lauri. How easy is it to find a 7-ft, 50-40-88 guy who's athletic and likes living in the mountains? Jazz should hold their cards for now.
Click to expand...
Agree. Lauri is young enough to play at high level for the next 5 years. And with the draft assets we have and the young players developing, anything could happen in those years. Plus we would be a contender much sooner than with a complete rebuilt.
 
idiot said:
First, I think you were being rather more stringent with your list than I was with mine. If I followed my original way of thinking, I might add players like Butler, Booker, Mitchell, Brunson, maybe even Haliburton and others to your list (players that haven't achieved the pinnacle, but appear to be the key pieces on contenders or near contenders if they can get the right teammates around them). Another reason I think you may have been a bit more picky with your list is that my list of top-5 players drafted in the past 15 years is accountable for one actual championship where the named player was clearly the team's best player over the course of the season. Your list of non top-five choices accounts for 8 championships (actually 4 if we exclude Curry who was drafted more than 15 years ago).
Click to expand...
Well, I tried to take your lead: you mentioned the last 15 years but your list did not include Harden (drafted 3rd in 2009). I thought about that and realized that you are right and that there is another tier of players, mostly guards - Harden, Lillard, Mitchell, Brunson, Kyrie, Butler - who can be the best player on a perennially good playoff team but they are not good enough to be a true alpha on a championship contender. They are a perfect number two on a championship team though. It is hard to differentiate them from true championship leaders though, since they are tremendous floor-raisers, but again, a guard must be truly remarkable (in the mold of Curry or SGA) to be on par with the two-way larger players like Jokic, AD or Giannis. By the way, following this logic I would exclude Morant from your list: I have a hard time seeing MEM with Morant as their best players in the NBA Finals with a decent chance of winning, he will probably turn out similar to Lillard and Mitchell in the level of impact.

For your second point: it is a bit hard to count championships since many of the guys you listed are still very young and their championships are still ahead of them. For that metric we will need to count the championships of players drafted in 1995-2010, and that list will be very heavy with top 5 picks (Duncan, Durant, LeBron...even Billups was the 3rd pick). I don't think the math will be very different, to be honest.
 
NUMBERICA said:
You should apologize for how wrong/bad this is.
Click to expand...
I think what I will do instead is I will challenge all of you at the same time. You can go first, and @Handlogten's Heros and @stitches can help you all they want.

Dont chicken out.

Tell us how Jazz can implement a tank that is successful, by mirroring ANY historical tanking job as an example. Only rule is that our starting position and situation has to be better or equal to that teams.
 
HermanG said:
I think what I will do instead is I will challenge all of you at the same time. You can go first, and @Handlogten's Heros and @stitches can help you all they want.

Dont chicken out.

Tell us how Jazz can implement a tank that is successful, by mirroring ANY historical tanking job as an example. Only rule is that our starting position and situation has to be better or equal to that teams.
Click to expand...
Yes I should do a strawman homework report because you said something completely wrong. no. sorry.

The Hinkie guarantee is what I am completely opposed to here. If you paid attention to him you'd know how ridiculous that is. If you don't want to tank that's fine. Plenty of arguments against it. Stating that the man who took it further than any other person did and did so unapologetically wouldn't do it because a couple variables in the equation changed is ridiculous... sorry.

Everyone knows the successful tank jobs. Saying one variable or another isn't exactly the same so it invalidates the example is something I am not going to do. There are no two builds or rebuilds that are exactly alike. All the successful tanks hinge on delivering an all star talent to the tanker. All teams that tank can have that happen.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
Yes I should do a strawman homework report because you said something completely wrong. no. sorry.

The Hinkie guarantee is what I am completely opposed to here. If you paid attention to him you'd know how ridiculous that is. If you don't want to tank that's fine. Plenty of arguments against it. Stating that the man who took it further than any other person did and did so unapologetically wouldn't do it because a couple variables in the equation changed is ridiculous... sorry.

Everyone knows the successful tank jobs. Saying one variable or another isn't exactly the same so it invalidates the example is something I am not going to do. There are no two builds or rebuilds that are exactly alike. All the successful tanks hinge on delivering an all star talent to the tanker. All teams that tank can have that happen.
Click to expand...
I didnt mean he wouldnt tank. I said he wouldnt min/max about it for the 14% odds at #1. Maybe that was unclear.

Also I didnt ask for a completely equal example. Just any one that is somewhat achievable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page
Back
Top