The value of finishing in the bottom 5

[fishonjazz]

So what are the comps for Flag, what does he project to turn into, just assuming that he turns into 100% of his potential, what then?

LeBron?

 

[Megadoo1]

 

[HermanG]

We're hoping that a bottom-5 finish allows us to draft up a player who can eventually become the top player on a championship team for us. Though it's hard to think soberly about this with the narrative that tanking is self-evidently the best path to a championship (or only path for small markets?), it might be worth a reminder of how unlikely this is (having a drafted player from a bottom-5 finish lead the team he is drafted on and had that bottom-5 finish to a championship -- without returning in free agency, like Lebron).

Let's take a look at what bottom-5 finishes have given to teams over the past 25 years (since the 2000 draft). This encompasses about 128 bottom-5 finishes (since there were a few ties for 5th in that period). It also encompasses 60 "episodes" of bottom 5 finishes (which could include a single year, or multiple years in close succession finishing bottom-5):

• 1 player drafted because of the bottom-5 finish led his team to (just a single) championship as the best player on the team (D. Wade -- drafted 22 years ago; it hasn't happened since, though maybe Wemby has the best chance among those who still fit the criteria)
• 4 players drafted became the best player on a Finals-losing team (Luka, Lebron, Durant, Dwight -- only one of them drafted in the past 17 years)
• 2 players were the 2nd-best player on Finals winners (Kyrie, D. Wade in the Heattles era)
• 5 additional players became the best player on a conference finals loser (including Deron Williams)
• Only 22 total became the best player on a playoff team of any kind with the team that drafted them (about 17%)
• Out of the 60 bottom-5 episodes, in 19 of these (or nearly 1/3 of all such episodes) no player(s) drafted even went to the playoffs with the team that drafted them

We can enjoy the tank race all we want, but it might be better for our sanity if we don't have unrealistic expectations for what it will produce.

I think you are overlooking the fact that acquiring top end talent is just one part of rebuilding. Tanking is perfectly valid strategy in achieving that goal.

I think the main reason tanking usually doesnt lead to great success is actually because building up (and around) that talent is much harder than people acknowledge. You also dont really know if "your guy" (the blue chip guy you decided to build around) is good enough until he is in the spotlight and has to prove it.

Im not a fan of the concept, but at least our FO is doing it while holding onto some pretty good players. That gives us a shorter path to building up.

 

[idiot]

Does this bit of data help you all feel better? I wouldn't want anyone to lose faith in the prevailing (mostly data-free, beyond that it's better in a vacuum to have higher odds and higher picks) narrative about the value of tanking:

Out of the past 25 NBA champions, 8 of the teams (nearly 1/3) had a player that the team itself drafted top 5 as one of their top-3 players. (This represents just three players who happened to be part of multiple championships, however: Duncan, Wade, Irving).

Two more champions (arguably) were benefitted substantially by trading top-5 picks for another player key to their championships (Valanciunas for Gasol, Ingram & company for AD). If you really want to stretch things, then you could argue that losing a top 5 draftee (Lebron) set the stage for the Cavs to pick another (Kyrie), contributing to their championship.

And, if you have faith in OKC and/or Cleveland, there's a good likelihood that this year's champion will have obtained their second-best player because of a bottom-five finish.

 

[HadAnEffectHere]

Teams with top 5 picks rarely win titles because they're either forced into tanking because they're in an unappealing situation or because they're a terrible organization that isn't actually tanking, they're just consistently bad.

A big issue with the Jazz, of course, is that it's going to be incredibly difficult to build a team around Flagg or Peterson (even if the Jazz luck into one of them) unless they're top 20 players of all time as it's going to be difficult to trade for players to come to Utah and it's not clear at all whether Ryan Smith will go deep into the tax.

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

Drafting one player does not singlehandedly change the fate of a franchise. To make the playoffs and advance requires solid team building across the board, plus some coaching. Hence, I wouldn't use team success as a barometer for the value of drafting in the top 5.

 

[idiot]

I think you are overlooking the fact that acquiring top end talent is just one part of rebuilding. Tanking is perfectly valid strategy in achieving that goal.

I think the main reason tanking usually doesnt lead to great success is actually because building up (and around) that talent is much harder than people acknowledge. You also dont really know if "your guy" (the blue chip guy you decided to build around) is good enough until he is in the spotlight and has to prove it.

Im not a fan of the concept, but at least our FO is doing it while holding onto some pretty good players. That gives us a shorter path to building up.

I don't think I'm overlooking anything. I don't disagree with anything you say here.

I'm actually totally with you and others like @SoberasHotRod and @KqWIN (though I clearly annoy him and others). I think you guys perfectly understand what's at stake. Tanking is a valid tool, one that's probably appropriate for where we are in the franchise now. But it's just one of so many other needed tools for us to get back to championship contention. It may turn out to be the most important tool, but there's a greater likelihood that it won't be the most important one.

So it's not you I'm trying to persuade (though I'm a little surprised how annoying people find it to have facts (historical outcomes, for example) brought into the conversation, given how infrequently they're part of the discussions here).

It's more just the prevailing narrative that tanking is the necessary/best/only/easy path to a championship that I'm going after. The kind of narrative that told us that the Jazz were/are forever doomed to mediocrity without bottoming out -- that we are in a far better place as a franchise now than we were with Mitchell/Gobert in their good years (I'm not trying to argue that we should have kept that sinking ship afloat, once it was clear that it had taken on too much water). The kind of narrative that is leading us to live and die emotionally based on whether we pull off another loss or that is furious that the Jazz didn't succeed in bottoming out the past two years.

 

[fishonjazz]

Teams with top 5 picks rarely win titles because they're either forced into tanking because they're in an unappealing situation or because they're a terrible organization that isn't actually tanking, they're just consistently bad.

A big issue with the Jazz, of course, is that it's going to be incredibly difficult to build a team around Flagg or Peterson (even if the Jazz luck into one of them) unless they're top 20 players of all time as it's going to be difficult to trade for players to come to Utah and it's not clear at all whether Ryan Smith will go deep into the tax.

Peterson?

 

[KqWIN]

I don't think I'm overlooking anything. I don't disagree with anything you say here.

I'm actually totally with you and others like @SoberasHotRod and @KqWIN (though I clearly annoy him and others). I think you guys perfectly understand what's at stake. Tanking is a valid tool, one that's probably appropriate for where we are in the franchise now. But it's just one of so many other needed tools for us to get back to championship contention. It may turn out to be the most important tool, but there's a greater likelihood that it won't be the most important one.

So it's not you I'm trying to persuade (though I'm a little surprised how annoying people find it to have facts (historical outcomes, for example) brought into the conversation, given how infrequently they're part of the discussions here).

It's more just the prevailing narrative that tanking is the necessary/best/only/easy path to a championship that I'm going after. The kind of narrative that told us that the Jazz were/are forever doomed to mediocrity without bottoming out -- that we were in a far better place as a franchise than we were with them in their good years (I'm not trying to argue that we should have kept that sinking ship afloat, once it was clear that it had taken on too much water). The kind of narrative that is leading us to live and die emotionally based on whether we pull off another loss.

I think any discussion in either direction that does not consider alternatives is just pointless. The reason why I find that the tank crowd can often be annoying is because they give no consideration to the other route of not tanking. To me this is the same thing, there is no consideration of the other path besides tanking. It focuses on one side of the equation. You can go on and on about how tanking is not really that valuable, it's meaningless and beating a dead horse until you weigh it versus something else. Like if you're upset that people get excited at a loss, it doesn't mean anything if you say that loss isn't worth much. It's only meaningful when you weigh the L versus the alternative, which would be a W. It isn't necessary to have high expectations for an L to still want that L. It just has to be more than what the W would give you.

Depending on your perspective, these odds might actually look very good. You can only find that perspective by considering the alternatives. That's a real discussion that can have back and forth. I think these odds look great compared to paths we could have taken (tried to take) this off season. I'm over the moon with those likelihoods if you're comparing it to a hypothetical Jazz team where we dumped everything for Bridges and George. I'm not joking, what you presented is a godsend compared to what could have been. It's a different conversation, however, if you're comparing it to having Don+Rudy locked into long term deals. You need to have that perspective to have a real conversation, otherwise what are you really accomplishing....countering a narrative that was insane in the first place? I don't think that's necessarily unimportant....but man dragging it out over and over can get tiring.

The annoying part isn't the facts themselves. The annoying part is that we know that any course is extremely unlikely to lead to a championship so you're not really doing anything by saying something is unlikely to work. At best, you are simply making a counter argument to someone being extremely hyperbolic or who has extremely unreasonable expectations. I try to have a grounded perspective, and this is what makes these things annoying to me. It's a fact that a #1 pick is more likely to be a superstar than the #30 pick, but if I just kept regurgitating that over and over it would get annoying and it doesn't accomplish anything except for tearing down the extreme narratives.

Maybe I'm just jaded at this point, but fighting with the argument that tanking is 100% effective just feels like fighting with a boogeyman that doesn't exist. If they do exist, not even a conversation worth having because that perspective is insane. I think there is always a tank vs no tank covnersation to be had, but I really hate how it's always these one sided conversations that don't actually address all the potential decisions. Tanking sucks, not tanking also sucks.

 

[FalseFlagg K]

So what are the comps for Flag, what does he project to turn into, just assuming that he turns into 100% of his potential, what then?

a taller Kawhi Leonard

 

[NUMBERICA]

This “of the team that picked them” is cherry-picking to fit your narrative.

Using 25 years is cherry-picking to fit your narrative.

Counting in terms of players or teams. rather than incidences is cherry-picking to fit your narrative; MJ, Shaq, Duncan, and Hakeem account for every championship in a 13-year window, perhaps hitting should have any weight. This has been a league that traditionally produces dynasties and hasn’t traditionally produced a high number of champions over a given period. Things appear to be changing, but in a given decade, a team used to need a perennial top-5 player to even hope to win a championship, and those tend to be found at the top of the draft.

 

[NUMBERICA]

This “of the team that picked them” is cherry-picking to fit your narrative.

Using 25 years is cherry-picking to fit your narrative.

Counting in terms of players or teams. rather than incidences is cherry-picking to fit your narrative; MJ, Shaq, Duncan, and Hakeem account for every championship in a 13-year window, perhaps hitting should have any weight. This has been a league that traditionally produces dynasties and hasn’t traditionally produced a high number of champions over a given period. Things appear to be changing, but in a given decade, a team used to need a perennial top-5 player to even hope to win a championship, and those tend to be found at the top of the draft.

In 28 NBA Finals (1980-2007), 26 champions were led by at least one (but often multiple) top-6 picks:
-Lakers won 8: Magic (1), Worthy (1), Kareem (1), Shaq (1)
-Celtics won 3: Bird (6), McHale (3)
-Pistons won 2: Isiah (2)
-Bulls won 6: MJ (3), Pippen (5)
-Rockets won 2: Hakeem (1)
-Spurs won 4: Duncan (1), Robinson (1)

Now, I’m not saying you HAVE to have a top-6 pick, I am demonstrating that there is massive precedent that blue-chip talent matters but also how cherry-picking works.