Drawing for That Number One Spot

There is a kind of sporting law akin to the laws of physics, common sense, or the instincts of animals foraging for food and caring for their young: High draft picks go to losers. American sports fans are used to turning to the draft for comfort when their team racks up L after L after L: At least we’ll pick high in the draft.

And everyone’s fine with that. Except Malcolm Gladwell. And now me.

I recently read an email conversation between Gladwell and Bill Simmons on ESPN.com. At one point, the discussion winds its way to the concept of moral hazard in sports - the same concept of moral hazard that lead to the current economic crisis - and Gladwell points out that we make it comfortable for teams to lose by rewarding them with high draft picks. He states that everyone’s understanding of how the draft should function keeps us believing “that access to top picks is the primary determinant of competitiveness in pro sports.”

That’s not true. Look at basketball in Los Angeles. The Clippers have picked in the lottery twenty times since the NBA started the draft lottery in 1985. Those top picks have amounted to three first round exits and a near-upset of second-seeded Phoenix in the second round in 2006. In that same time span, the Lakers have picked in the lottery three times. The Clippers will make their twenty-first lottery pick in June while the Lakers just wrapped up the parade for their sixth championship in the lottery era.

Teams like the Clippers, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the Minnesota Timberwolves keep showing up in the lottery - the opposite effect of the current draft setup. Ideally, the league should be cyclical. Bad teams should lose but gain good young players. Good teams should win but pick later, when the players aren’t as highly regarded. Bad teams should build a nucleus of young talent and begin to knock off aging champions. It doesn’t work like this. The draft is one of many pieces of an organization, but bad teams rely too much on it and the potential of having their ping pong ball come up when the next superstar is ready to leave school and carry their team to glory, banners, headlines and draft picks nearer the end of the first round.

Gladwell’s idea is that “the only way around the problem [of moral hazard] is to put every team in the lottery.” When the guarantee of a top pick is removed, as the losses add up, teams wouldn’t be able to fall back on waiting till next year, on the potential of draft picks to lift the organization out of the lottery and into the playoffs.

I was intrigued by the idea of taking the safety net away from perpetually bad franchises, so Gladwell’s words - “Every team’s name gets put in a hat, and you get assigned your draft position by chance” - turned into my actions: I printed out every NBA team’s name, put them in my 1984 Padres hat, and had my own equal-odds NBA Draft Lottery.

Actually, I had four. I drew a complete draft order four times. Each time, every NBA team, whether they made The Finals or failed to win 20 games, received their draft position by the same equal chance as every other team.

Here are the four different top fives this system produced:

Lottery 1
1. Washington (19-63)
2. New Jersey (34-48)
3. San Antonio (54-28)
4. Philadelphia (41-41)
5. Portland (54-28)

Lottery 2
1. Toronto (32-49)
2. Houston (53-29)
3. LA Clippers (19-63)
4. Atlanta (47-35)
5. Oklahoma City (23-59)

Lottery 3
1. Chicago (41-41)
2. San Antonio (54-28)
3. Golden State (29-53)
4. New York (32-50)
5. Charlotte (35-47)

Lottery 4
1. Phoenix (46-36)
2. Milwaukee (34-48)
3. LA Clippers (19-63)
4. Golden State (29-53)
5. Orlando (59-23)

Looking at the top fives shows how different draft day, and the league, could be if the winners are allowed in the lottery (I want to focus mainly on the top fives because that’s where most of fans’ general attention to the draft goes). Seeing 30-, 40-, and 50-win teams picking in the top five might feel odd at first, but it expands what the draft can do for all teams, not just the losers. I won’t list all 120 picks here, but they are evenly dispersed with championship-caliber, mid-level, and lowest-tier teams dispersed throughout the draft orders.

Based on the results of the draft orders, the equal-odds lottery produced the NBA Draft has the potential to:

1. Give a Loser a Chance
This system would not forget the have-nots. The first team I plucked from my hat was Washington. Hello, Blake Griffin. Welcome back, Gilbert Arenas. Those two plus Caron Butler give the Wizards three building blocks to try and return to the playoffs. Washington fans could nickname Griffin “The Big Bailout”.

This situation was highly probable this year. The Wizards had the third highest chance at the number one pick. I wonder if a low-win team would possibly feel more fortunate for winning the lottery and bringing in a player like Griffin in an equal-odds lottery than in a weighted system.

Would the fans and the team treat him less as yet another potential savior and more of a prize to be developed and supported because there is no guarantee of another top pick next year if the team continues to lose? Would they be more willing to fire a losing coach and seek out a winner now that the top prize falls to them? Would they swing a trade to swap quality veterans for younger stars who could grow alongside their new weapon?

Three of my four equal-odds lotteries gave a top-five pick to a team with fewer than twenty wins. Even if those teams didn’t get the first pick but snagged the third (like the Clippers did in half my lotteries), they would have a chance at Ricky Rubio or Hasheem Thabeet this year, or someone like Deron Williams, Carmelo Anthony, Dominique Wilkins, or even Michael Jordan, as teams choosing third have had in past drafts.

2. Discourage Tanking
No league wants teams alienating fans, dropping attendance, and becoming the butt of Bill Simmons’ jokes (or the object of his attempts to become a real-life NBA general manager) by intentionally giving away games. In current system, if teams tank, they don’t guarantee the top spot; they merely increase their chances. If the prize is worth it, a la Oden v. Durant in 2007, bad teams might just say screw it and become horrendous teams for the sake of all those Next Years with a superstar on their roster.

An equal-odds system protects the sanctity of the regular season. Teams would be free to focus on winning, teaching young players to master strategies and game situations, instead of giving up before the opening tip.

This cannot be bad. If wins and losses don’t effect draft position, games would be more entertaining for the fans who pay to be there, players would not develop losing habits, and teams would fight against traditions of losing instead of embracing the identity of a league-wide punching bag for the sake of a more ping pong balls in the hopper.

3. Give Back Momentum
My four lotteries produced seven different scenarios where a middle-ground team that has recently deflated possibly gets some wind back through the draft: Toronto picking first; Phoenix picking first; Philadelphia picking fourth; Golden State picking third in one lottery and fourth in another; and the two third picks for the Clippers.

Toronto has slipped from the Eastern Conference third seed to out of the playoffs in two years. Phoenix was the most entertaining team in the league for a good part of this decade. Now the organization is old and confused and desperate. The blessing of a top pick could give either organization some swagger and fan support back.

Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Golden State could use all use the good publicity of a top pick to recover quickly from the very messy and very public Elton Brand/Baron Davis/Cory Maggette fiasco.

The key here is that if any of these teams were to land top picks, it would be result of chance, not a direct consequence of being a bad basketball team. Experts and analysts wouldn’t need to focus on how bad the team is. Instead, they could focus on what using this pick well could do for a team that has performed well in recent history, but is staggering a bit.

4. Catapult Good Towards Great
Portland, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago are all rising teams who exited the playoffs in the first two rounds. They all have an ethos of excitement. All the cool kids follow the Blazers on the Internet. The Rockets have a stat-crunching GM and nearly beat the Lakers without their two big-name stars. The Hawks took Boston to seven games last year as an eight seed and made the second round this year. Chicago is full of former NCAA tournament stars, has a #1 draft pick/Rookie of the Year starting at the point, and just played arguably the most exciting first round series in the history of basketball against the defending champs.

Frequent Bill Simmons readers will know that The Sports Guy holds to the idea that the NBA is best when there is a clear group of heavyweights. An equal-odds lottery could help one of these teams, already brimming with excitement and potential, move into that heavyweight division. They have histories of making decent to excellent roster moves; give them good draft position to keep stocking their rosters and they could quickly advance from the first two rounds to being a factor in the conference and league finals.

5. Reward a Well-Run Winner
The Spurs, a team with ten consecutive 50-win seasons (two 60-win campaigns in that stretch) and four of the last eleven championships, show up at number three in my first lottery and number two in my third.

Instinct says that’s not fair. They shouldn’t have a shot at Thabeet and an opportunity to groom a third dominant big man. They shouldn’t get to pick up Rubio and add yet another star international guard.

They should. They are a smart organization. Yes, they’ve had timely number one picks with David Robinson and Tim Duncan, but they picked Tony Parker at the end of the first round and Manu Ginobili was a second-rounder. They consistently go after role players that fit their team needs: Steve Kerr, Robert Horry, Bruce Bowen, Brent Barry, and Michael Finley. They are well-coached and play good defense. Teams don’t win consistently if they aren’t well-run.

If we don’t seem to have a problem with the current draft system allowing poorly-run teams to continue losing, I don’t have a problem with setting up the draft to allow well-run teams to keep winning. The only reasons to say no are: a) the incorrect belief that high draft picks equal continued success; and b) championship envy. (If you think they should have no shot at the top pick, stop and ask: if I was discussing your team here instead of the Spurs, would you have a problem? If you have developed a dislike for San Antonio, what about a team you are fairly indifferent towards? Would you be okay with it then?)

6. Stack a Champion
The only team from this season’s conference finals in the top five of my lotteries is Orlando. The Magic raise the possibility that a championship team could finish their parade and make an early draft selection in the same month.

This year, the fifth pick I drew for them isn’t expected to be a future great, but you just never know. Dwyane Wade was a fifth pick. So were Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Scottie Pippen, and Charles Barkley. If the fifth pick fell to Orlando, Magic fans would be ecstatic that their team just took out the Celtics, upset the Cavaliers, and captured the first Finals win in franchise history - and would currently be convincing themselves that James Harden is the next Wade or Jordan Hill turns into Round Mound of Rebound II.

This could also have ripple effect on the other top teams in the league. Maybe Cleveland sees the team they just lost to with a top pick on the horizon, as well as LeBron’s to-NY-or-not-NY situation in 2010, and they decide to amp up their roster with significant trades and free agent signings in the offseason to beat their new rival and keep LeBron at home by proving they can win in Cleveland. We’d already be talking about their imminent collision next season.

7. Remind Teams the Draft Doesn’t Fix Everything
The oddest occurrence in my four lotteries came outside of the top fives printed above. In the third lottery, 17-win Sacramento fell to the thirtieth pick: the team with the most losses picking last.

(Okay, technically, they also fell to the floor. I pulled twenty-nine teams from my hat. When I reached for number thirty, my hat was empty. There, on the floor, was a folded piece of paper: poor Sacramento. The NBA system would be safe from such miscues since they would use their sophisticated ping pong ball machine, but in an equal-odds lottery, the worst team has an equal chance at all thirty picks, so I skipped a redraw and stuck with the strange scenario.)

I have no problem with this. This situation is where ingenuity comes in. Sacramento’s decision-makers would be forced to look at other ways to improve their win total - they couldn’t sit back with their current roster and coaching staff and just wait for next year’s big man on campus because they could easily be picking low again come June 2010.

First, they would scour the unheralded prospects for sleeper potential. Last year, Mario Chalmers was still on the board at thirty and he started alongside Wade in Miami and set a Heat record for steals in a game. Two years ago, Carl Landry, Glen Davis, and Marc Gasol were all second rounders and they’ve grown into contributors for their teams.

None of these players would be a franchise savior, but that might not be what Sacramento needs. High picks bring the baggage of expectations, whether they live up to them or not, and they might leave as soon as their rookie contract runs out if the situation doesn’t improve. Picking and developing a Chalmers or Davis would help Sacramento build a team based on a system and playing together instead of just hoping the talent of a young star could bring them back to the top of the conference.

Sacramento might also entertain something like bringing in Rick Pitino to put together an all-full-court-press unit, like Gladwell and Simmons discussed. They could maximize their roster and build a specific unit to run intense pressure for certain parts of games. Instead of being a bad team, they could at least be a bad team trying to grow into a good team by using their roster 1-12, and a bad team with a fan following and media exposure because of their radical strategy.

This system could force innovation in other areas of NBA organizations. There could be leaps in the use of statistical analysis in building a basketball team; more risks taken in drafting, trading, and signing players; or an intensified focus on the effectiveness and ingenuity of coaching staffs. Maybe one team creates a position focused on finding creative basketball strategies, spawning a rash of copycat positions and new ideas in the sport that we have yet to conceive.

Instead of bad teams putting much of their hope in the potential of a high draft pick to develop into a franchise player, they would see those young stars as a piece of a larger puzzle. Maybe an equal-odds lottery would eventually lead to fewer poorly-run teams, more diverse team strategies and identities, and fans who aren’t content to let their teams fold during a dismal season, take L after L after L, and wait till next year.

Posted on June 22, 2009 9:01 AM