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What are the odds of getting THAT GUY via draft?

You need to question if a team is constantly angling to get a good draft pick but the Jazz have never been that team.

Guys like Simmons, Zion, Cade, Wiggins seemed way over hyped. I recall preferring Ja over Zion in the '19 draft.

Victor is just a totally different animal.
 
Great work. I like this line of thinking. Another question we should be asking ourselves is how many of THAT GUY have been traded AND what was the average trade package when that occurred?

I could be wrong, but it feels like they system is set up to trade star players vs. having them leave in free agency. With the money as big as it is, I don’t feel like you can have sustained Stockton and Malone success in the draft any more. I could be wrong, but it seems like you can build a solid team that way, but you have to trade for THAT guy to get over the championship hump.
 
Thought experiment: Imagine having a tanking team that signed 15 19 year olds who last played in high school. All 15 players are 5’9” and below in height. None have anywhere near professional level talent.



The team goes 0-82. Each game is pathetic, laughable. Layup drills for the opposition. Final scores of 200-0 most games.



True tankers might love the concept, but I think our thought experiment shows that even with tanking, it is best to have limits. The current practice of having GMs trade away all stars for future picks but then have the coaches direct motivated intriguing players, like our current Jazz team, seems reasonable. So I’m not sweating every game hoping for a loss, the surprise wins have been enjoyable.
 
The level of intrigue in this draft really only revolves around that guy and there is nobody else in the same tier or maybe within 3 tiers of him. But he has toothpicks for sticks and weighs less than 3 little nuggets that played the halftime game in Denver
 
HeatCheck said:
You need to question if a team is constantly angling to get a good draft pick but the Jazz have never been that team.

Guys like Simmons, Zion, Cade, Wiggins seemed way over hyped. I recall preferring Ja over Zion in the '19 draft.

Victor is just a totally different animal.
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How so?

I mean, we really can't say that. We've never seen this guy face his future peers in a sustained competitive environment. The French league more or less sucks compared to the highest level of the NCAA. And the physicality is like 20% of that of the NBA.

Luka Doncic was a Euroleague MVP at age 19. That's what a sure thing looks like.

Victor may become the most overhyped prospect ever.

People had no trouble saying Zion had tons of body-related red flags when he was at Duke, even though he was an absolute force of nature and proved without a shadow of a doubt he was ready for the NBA. Victor hasn't proved anything and has at least as many red flags, but people keep ignoring them because he's "built different" or something.
 
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idiot said:
You know the guy you have to have leading your team to be a serious contender for a title? And preferably you want more than one?

Since we're likely beginning to settle down to reality this season, I figured it's a good time to try to calculate the odds.

1st (worst record) =11.2%
2nd = 10.7%
3rd = 10.3%
4th = 9.6%
5th = 8.9%
6th = 8.0%
7th = 7.4%
8th = 6.8%
9th = 6.1%
10th = 5.3%
11th = 4.4%
12th = 4.1%
13th = 3.9%
14th = 3.6%
15th = 3.3%

This is for an average year, mind you, so take it with a grain of salt for this draft class (though keep in mind as well that the NBA is a zero-sum game; you can't have all years be above average). Interesting that the best average odds are really no better than 1 in 9 for getting THAT GUY with a league-worst finish.

I calculated these odds by figuring out how many THAT GUYs have been drafted in the 30 years up until the Luka draft (too soon to really call things after the Luka draft), figuring out where they were drafted and then combining that information with the current draft lottery odds.

I identified 36 THAT GUYs over the 30 years, so on average there's just a hair over one per draft. Every NBA finals participant (both winners and losers) had at least one of THAT GUY on their team. These are guys you can imagine being the most important player on a championship team if everything breaks right for that team. So a step up from what Donovan and Rudy were with the Jazz. I used primarily 1st and 2nd team all-NBA players to figure out who is a THAT GUY. But even many one- or two-time second-team All-NBA players didn't make the cut (Julius Randle, Demar Derozan, Gobert, etc). Even two one-time first teamers didn't (DeAndre Jordan, Joakim Noah). The following players were on the margins of making my THAT GUY category, just to give an indication: Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol, Paul George, Devin Booker, Amare Stoudamire, Chris Webber. I made Jimmy Butler an honorary THAT GUY because his playoff performances regularly exceed his regular season performances and the 2020 Heat would have been the only finals contender over the past 35+ years without a THAT GUY otherwise.

(By the way, if you get the #1 pick in the lottery, the odds for getting THAT GUY jump to 26.7% -- which of course means that even the #1 pick turns out to be THAT GUY only about once every four years.)
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I’m really intrigued by this line of thinking.

Just out of curiosity, who all are the THAT GUY that you identified?

I’d like to look at a couple of other things as well and see if there’s any other interesting trends. . .
 
HeatCheck said:
You need to question if a team is constantly angling to get a good draft pick but the Jazz have never been that team.

Guys like Simmons, Zion, Cade, Wiggins seemed way over hyped. I recall preferring Ja over Zion in the '19 draft.

Victor is just a totally different animal.
Click to expand...
The only player on there who was overhyped was Wiggins.

And with Wiggins there is a legitimate argument that his "failures" were more organizational.

Simmons/Zion/Cade have all been really good. Zion has been injured. Simmons seems like he got drafted to the worst possible fit both on the court and off the court. Calling Cade overhyped is weird at this point. Dude is averaging 23-6-5 so far in his 2nd season. Seems pretty good to me.
 
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