June 23, 2004

I disagree with this columnist. Look at teams that had consecutive top draft picks (Rockets: Sampson & Olajuwon, Nets: Derrick Coleman & Kenny Anderson, Magic: Shaq & Penny). None of those teams won an NBA title, and those players eventually didn't mesh. On the other hand, filling specific needs with the ultimate team in mind works. No one paid much attention when the Pistons drafted John Salley and Dennis Rodman in 1986 or the Bulls drafting of Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen in 1987, but those moves were specifically to improve the team's defense. And look at the results. This year's champion Pistons did the same thing with trades, acquiring the Wallace boys. Look at the flack that Detroit Pistons executive Joe Dumars received for selecting Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony in last year's draft. Dumars was ridiculed for saying that his team already had a similar player in Tayshaun Prince. In the finals against the Lakers, when Tayshaun Prince's defense on Kobe Bryant was obviously a factor in the Piston's rout of the Lakers, Dumars' detractors were the ones who looked ridiculous. Carmelo is a heck of a player, but he didn't fit in to where the Pistons were going.

posted by cg1001a at 09:01 PM on June 23, 2004

I think that seriously depends on the team's position and talent quality of the draft. Besides with the average age of the athletes dropping like my IQ on New Year's Eve predicting performance is getting harder than 1986 and 1987 when players games were more shaped by draft day.

posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 11:13 PM on June 23, 2004

I have to disagree with the word "always" lilnemo; there have to be a certain number of guys each decade you take whether they fill a need or not. Also, cg-- what does Tayshaun's defense have to do with not drafting Carmelo? Darko had 0 effect on the series and drafting Carmelo wouldn't have cost the Pistons Tayshaun Prince. It would have meant balancing some minutes and a different rotation, but I don't think that's a bad problem to have.

posted by yerfatma at 06:12 AM on June 24, 2004

each team's situation dictates whether they draft a role player to compliment their stars, or if they draft pure talent, in the hopes of eventually building a core around said talent, or what have you. If GMing were so black&white to always go for pure talent, I'd be doing it.

posted by garfield at 08:20 AM on June 24, 2004

I believe in the "draft for need" idea, EXCEPT when there is an OBVIOUS gap in talent between the best available player and your "need" player. You can always trade the "talent" for your "need" and get something more in return as well.

posted by grum@work at 10:05 AM on June 24, 2004

platocave: agreed-upon best-GM-of-all-time: Jerry West Not to sidetrack too much, but can't we at least get some consideration for Red Auerbach? During their first 9 championships with Russell, Auerbach was not only the coach but the effective GM in those days, picking and choosing most of his team out by hand. He then became actual GM from 66-84, for another 6 championships (including 2 more with Russell as player-coach), and was team president when the Celtics won their last and 16th in '86. That's gotta count for something... right?

posted by hincandenza at 10:49 AM on June 24, 2004

Thanks- we've grown rather fond of him. :)

posted by hincandenza at 11:00 AM on June 24, 2004

Chicobangs is right, and I'd like to expound on that. I'd say the real reason there are no Bill Jameses in basketball- or football or hockey for that matter- is that unlike the other major team sports, baseball is uniquely a lonely sport. The defense (with the sometime exception of the SS/2B, and during plays) rarely has two players within 60 feet of each other; the pitcher, the most pivotal player on the field, is the loneliest of all, isolated on his 10" high stage. The offense, likewise, is literally never within 90 feet of each other, and no hitter ever had the benefit of a good pick and roll executed by a teammate when facing a Clemens or a Randy Johnson or a Pedro Martinez. In short, baseball is a starkly black and white game. Every action is almost perfectly granular, perfectly isolated: each pitch, each swing, each play, can be broken down into discrete data points, collected, counted, analyzed. The result is that baseball, more than any other sport, is a game of almost excessive counting- of statistics and individual and separate contributions. Whereas a Jordan or Shaq can mostly carry a team on the court at times, regardless of their fellow players, a Rodriguez or Bonds is still only 1/9 of the offense, no more and no less. Therefore, when it comes to the risky business of evaluating future prospects, baseball is uniquely qualified to look at easily collected metrics and have a pretty good idea of not only how good a player likely will be, but in doing so have a reasonable idea of much they are going to contribute to your final win/loss numbers, with almost frightening accuracy. And while baseball not only allows but encourages in its very nature the tracking and evaluating of players- often with very good results- through sophisticated analysis, sports like basketball and football strongly resist such analysis. The effectiveness of Kobe depends in large part on the Shaqs, and the Shaqs on the Kobes; Jordan got better when he had Pippen to shoulder some of the load and attention of opposing defenses, much maligned players like Rodman not only contributed statistically with rebounding, but in uncounted values like setting most excellent picks and screens. No player can be evaluated in a vacuum- their effectiveness and value becomes highly dependent on the right teammates, the right coach, the right offensive and defensive systems and patterns, all out of their control. Those are contributions and factors that are either impossible in baseball, or when they are can still be very isolated and countable! One last key point: while the NCAA acts as a sort of minor leagues for the other pro sports, the disparity in conferences, etc, also makes evaluating talent difficult. Baseball drafts out of high school as much as college, but then commits its players to a costless (to the major league team's roster) time in the minors to be more closely evaluated and trained. The Bill Jameses realized long ago, and the best GMs have caught on, that when you're spending millions, it pays to have good metrics and analysis. But in the NBA, no matter how hard they try, it will always be a crap shoot- always.

posted by hincandenza at 01:46 PM on June 24, 2004

My 2 cents on Darko's effectiveness... Darko Milicic is the William Hung of the NBA. Seriously, the guy does not look like a basketball player when he goes out onto the court and yet he is cheered madly, even by opposing fans, every time he touches the ball. And, as Bill Simmons pointed out, everything he does seems to score highly on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. The godawful-looking tape over his ears from a horrible piercing job, the broken bone in his hand from 2 minutes of play? I know from reading an article in ESPNMag that Darko supposedly recorded an unbelievable time in an agility drill, and that's why JoeD took a chance on him - his "potential". But even William Hung has a nice voice, if you listen closely and don't pay attention to his interpretative dances. His voice has an agreeable pitch, smooth and mellifluous. But having a nice voice doesn't necessarily make you a good singer. And being extremely agile for a big guy doesn't necessarily make you a good basketball player. I just wonder if, when Darko demands playing time next season - and gets it because of JoeD - we won't start seeing a serious Darko backlash, similar to the anti-William Hung stuff we're seeing now. Currently, Darko's career seems to be akin to the beginning of the William Hung phenomenon, where he became wildly popular on the internet from a few clips. But overexposure and lack of skills next season may start the same booing for Darko that William Hung sees now. What do you think? Maybe I'm wrong. But, as the Chuckster says, I doubt it. P.S. What was Larry Brown's take when he was on David Letterman? “I have a 10-year-old son, and I think he's a lot more mature than Darko right now." Hmmm.

posted by platocave at 04:25 PM on June 24, 2004

I agree that the reason Bill James-style analysis of basketball (and to a lesser extent, football) rests on the interconnectedness of the players during the game, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some Moneyball-type undervaluing/overvaluing going on in basketball. I'm certain someone smarter than me could use stats to prove that, in general, taller players tend to get rated higher based solely on that. Smaller players are almost certainly undervalued, both at draft time and in the league. This is what leads the Bulls to trade Elton Brand for Tyson Chandler. And there are absolutely statheads in the NBA. The recent vogue of metrics like points-per-shot is evidence of this.

posted by filthyboy at 05:50 PM on June 24, 2004

I can't understand why teams still go for size when a 6-6 player (Jordan, Pippen, Kobe, Rip Hamilton) is just as if not more valuable. In the last 15 drafts Olowokandi, Joe Smith, and Pervis Ellison have been TOPs. NBA teams have gotten better over time at drafting, but there are always unknowns. Not even Shaq or Tim Duncan were considered 100% sure-shots for superstardom when they were drafted.

posted by cg1001a at 06:21 PM on June 24, 2004

Just going through the comments... To address the pitfalls of having consecutive top overall picks (cq1001a), the Hakeem/Sampson Rockets got to the NBA Finals -- running into the buzzsaw that was the '86 Celtics -- and so did the Penny/Shaq Magic. So it's not like nothing came from those picks, and who knows what might have happened if those teams handn't let Shaq and Sampson go. As for the Nets (did Kenny Anderson go No. 1?), they happened to land first-class headcases, otherwise they might have done some some things... People need to lay off the Bowie pick itself(Geekyguy/BobbyC), regardless of Drexler's presence on the Blazers at the time. Yup, Bowie wasn't that good. But how much can a big man develop when he suffers two severe leg injuries? I tend to put that into the bad luck bin along with Len Bias, Danny Manning, and etc., where you never really know. Finally, I'll bite a recent King Kaufman column where he advocates splitting NBA history into eras. Red Auerbach was phenonenal during the pre-1975 period, when you were playing no one, really. Since then, no one's really messing with Jerry West, who's put together eight championship teams with the Lakers during a more competitive era and seems to be getting it done in Memphis after starting from scratch.

posted by jackhererra at 11:48 AM on June 25, 2004

1) Very good point about Krause. The most admirable part was resisting the urge to pair a true star with Jordan, instead working with a B-level star in Pippen, and a lot of role players at various levels. (Obviously, Horace Grant wasn't an ham-and-egger.) 2) That said, Krause wasn't able to do much without Jordan. Didn't adjust terribly well after MJ's first retirement, and seemed more interested in being considered a genius than actually winning games. (See: Gutting team, hiring Tim Floyd. Whether drafting Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry falls into this pattern depends on your feelings about drafting high school kids. (I'm not bothered by it.))

posted by jackhererra at 02:46 PM on June 28, 2004