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The value of finishing in the bottom 5

NUMBERICA said:
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.
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I'm glad you're responding with real (and good) data.

I do think more recent data matters more than older data. It's a different league in many ways than it was for the generation drafted in the 20th century. But we'll have to wait 20 more years to see if the tide turns once again more toward needing a top 5 player.
 
NUMBERICA said:
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.
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When the age of draft picks lowered, it became much more difficult to predict who the top end talent was and also less likely that they would still be with the team that drafted them by the time they were ready to contend.

I agree with your main points, that's just an aside.
 
idiot said:
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.
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I think it's a much smaller percentage of fans who don't really get it than you seem to imply. Maybe I'm just assuming the best, but I would also remind you that being a fan is irrational and sometimes you just want to cheer for your team to be the best at something, even if it's the best at working the system.
 
NUMBERICA said:
This “of the team that picked them” is cherry-picking to fit your narrative.
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It's cherry picking in a sense, of course. But it's cherry picking because I think it's the exact pattern most of us (me included) hope to obtain with this tank. Isn't it worth knowing how things have gone recently in producing this pattern?

We're not out here talking much about how we can obtain top-five picks in any other way, even though that does happen occasionally (such as Gordon in Denver). Maybe we should be.

But instead, we seem resigned to the (non-) fact that the tank is the only path that can work for Utah. Or, if I'm exaggerating too much with that statement, we seem resigned to the (non-) fact that tanking is necessarily the most important part of the rebuild. (It might be. I hope we end up with Flagg and he turns into a superstar). But putting your eggs all into one (bottom-5 finish) basket usually doesn't work out much better than what the Jazz have been able to do in the past without much tanking.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
When the age of draft picks lowered, it became much more difficult to predict who the top end talent was and also less likely that they would still be with the team that drafted them by the time they were ready to contend.

I agree with your main points, that's just an aside.
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I think your point is correct. I think it's more than this, as well -- perhaps the way skill sets are used in the NBA, or maybe also a bigger pool of players that are competing for limited NBA spots -- that lead to this change.

I have done a small study on how the value of higher picks compared to lower picks has changed over the past 50 years in the NBA. I think the data show that there's been movement toward convergence over time. But I haven't tried to show the results here because there are fairly insoluble data problems regarding the most recent decade or so (namely, those players haven't played out their whole careers yet) that don't allow me to be fully confident in it.
 
idiot said:
I think your point is correct. I think it's more than this, as well -- perhaps the way skill sets are used in the NBA, or maybe also a bigger pool of players that are competing for limited NBA spots -- that lead to this change.
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And we haven't even mentioned how the changed lotto odds impact the results obtained from bottom-5 finishes. Or how CBA changes have made it more difficult to consolidate power at the top. Or how having more teams in the league may impact things.

I guess my point is that there's a real argument to make that the NBA landscape has changed enough that comparisons to the 20th century on these issues may not not be fully applicable in 2025.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
I think it's a much smaller percentage of fans who don't really get it than you seem to imply. Maybe I'm just assuming the best, but I would also remind you that being a fan is irrational and sometimes you just want to cheer for your team to be the best at something, even if it's the best at working the system.
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This.
It's mostly an argument made of straw. I have been hard core team tank but I understand how unlikely it is to work.
When someone says we should have kept Rudy or Donovan or both and kept trying to win I say I would have been down with that plan as well understanding that it would have been unlikely to yield a championship.
I think most people feel this way.
I don't see these extremists that are supposedly everywhere saying that tanking is the only thing that makes sense ever and the only thing any team should ever do to win a title.
 
Douchebag K said:
**** me your criteria said 100 % mate Don't they teach you logic in 'murrica ???

Obviously the younger non broken down version

Must i explain everything to you ?
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100% of kawhi is 1/3 of a season. It's been that way for him for years. It isn't new. Do you pay attention to anything besides dog butts?
 
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