NBA Teams that Suck at Sucking
By Phil Daniels
As NBA General Managers are actively exploring new and ingenious ways for their teams to intentionally lose in order to have a better chance at drafting the likes of Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Julius Randle, Dante Exum, and Aaron Gordon, one cannot help but question the logic of this institutionalized defeatism. By effectively throwing away the chance at being competitive for an entire season, a tanking general manager is gambling on two different yet equally important assumptions being true: (1) that the player drafted is worth the unapologetic losing season it cost the team to acquire him; and (2) that the organization drafting the player has the ability to develop him into an all star. While the sheer talent of the 2014 NBA Draft class makes the former assumption almost a formality, given the recent history of less-than-stellar player development in the NBA, the truth of the latter assumption remains to be seen.
When discussing NBA front office strategy, it is imperative to explicitly outline the presumptions being relied upon in your analysis. And when specifically questioning the collective rookie development prowess of the National Basketball Association, one should presuppose (1) that the goal of owning an NBA franchise is to win a title; and (2) that conventional business strategies relating to profit maximization do not wholly apply to professional basketball team ownership.
With regard to the first presupposition, the goal of any NBA team should be to win the Larry O’Brien Trophy—not to merely feign competitiveness and qualify for the playoffs as an 8th seed year after year. Admittedly, it is fair to say that some ownership groups seem to prefer perpetual mediocrity as opposed to sporadic championship contention.
This leads to the second presupposition: as Malcolm Gladwell has previously explained, owning an NBA team is not the surest investment if one’s goal is to make a lot of money off of that specific investment. As a result, owners who demand regular season wins and the profits that they fetch over a tactical losing season and the high draft pick which can turn a team into a contender that such a losing season brings are not typically the most competent of owners. To be sure, the Houston Rockets post-Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming under owner Leslie Alexander and general manager Daryl Morey proved that a team can successfully rebuild without intentionally losing, but at this stage in modern NBA history, such an achievement is remarkable and incredibly difficult to replicate.
With the prior assumptions in mind, a team without hopes for NBA title contention wishing to behave rationally should embrace the NBA draft lottery format by losing intentionally as a means of securing the best possible chance at the highest possible draft choice. Losing intentionally, however, is not as easy as many writers make it out to be. Professional basketball players are incentivized to succeed now in order to maximize the potential for their next lucrative employment contracts, and losing games on purpose does not make sense from a player’s perspective. As a result, general managers desiring to lose are tasked with building uncompetitive—often young—rosters, and coaches should be choosing to give their young, unproven, currently uncompetitive players ample playing time. But as recent history demonstrates, coaches are not always willing to invest in their rawest of assets.
A trial lawyer will never become adept at her craft without trying cases. A medical resident will never develop into a competent surgeon without cutting open live humans. And a professional basketball player will never evolve from shaky rookie to competent rotation player without minutes. Much like how legal research and medical experimentation are vital for the fledgling lawyer and doctor, behind closed doors practice and film study are both critical to the nascent professional basketball player. But at the end of the day, study and simulated action can only take the lawyer, doctor, and professional athlete so far. There is no substitute for the necessity that is substantial live action experience.
So why is it that year after year, in a league where the draft itself and rookie development are both so critical to the long-term success of a franchise, do so many young players fail to receive the playing time necessary to fully develop? Why do these teams fail to properly manage their investments? Why did a horrific 25 wins and 57 losses Phoenix Suns team invest in a proven winner and visionary passer in Kendall Marshall with the 13th pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, pay him nearly $2 million dollars, only play him an average of 14.6 minutes per game in only 48 total games, and then quit on their investment by trading him away just one year later? While advanced metrics were hardly kind to Marshall, both his age and his nominal sample size drastically decreases the importance of such statistics. And while Marshall’s shooting and lateral quickness were troubling to the naked eye, less than an entire season at less than 15 minutes per game is hardly enough time to make definitive decisions about the ceiling of a player.
It’s easy for professional basketball players to be written off as “bad.” It is also oftentimes lazy analysis. By labeling a player like Kendall Marshall a bust, the narrative is inherently crafted first to make Marshall out as not good enough for the NBA, and second to declare the Suns front office stupid for drafting him in the first place. Missing from that narrative, however, is criticism toward the Phoenix Suns for never giving Marshall a legitimate chance to develop. An NBA team like the Suns giving up on a young investment like Kendall Marshall after only 720 total game minutes of action is akin to Google giving up on a talented young coder for failing to develop the next JavaScript in just six months time. And as Marshall’s play on the division rival Los Angeles Lakers has demonstrated this season, the Suns made a stupid mistake.
What do Jan Vesely and Damian Lillard have in common? How about Jimmer Fredette and Paul George? What about Hasheem Thabeet and Evan Turner? Vesely and Lillard were both taken with the 6th pick in the NBA Draft in 2011 and 2012, respectively; Fredette and George were both taken with the 10th picks in 2011 and 2010; and Thabeet and Turner were both taken with the 2nd picks in 2009 and 2010. But despite being drafted in the same position each just one year apart from the other, the careers of these individuals couldn’t be any different. Damian Lillard is a Rookie of the Year winner poised to be a top-10 point guard in the NBA for the next decade; meanwhile, Jan Vesely is an awkward and seldom-used big man without a definitive position and likely without a long-term future in professional basketball on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, despite playing on a mediocre at best Washington Wizards team. Paul George is already a top-10 basketball player in the entire NBA; concurrently, Jimmer Fredette is an elite shooter who can’t see the floor on a perpetually awful Sacramento Kings team. And Evan Turner has slowly but surely developed into a stat sheet stuffer worthy of a lucrative, long-term deal in 2014; simultaneously, Hasheem Thabeet is just another 7ft stiff hanging on to an NBA roster spot solely because of his six usable fouls per game.
Damian Lillard has averaged 38.4 minutes per game throughout his NBA career; Paul George has averaged 30.3; and Evan Turner 28.9. On the contrary, Jan Vesely has only averaged 15.6 minutes per game; Jimmer Fredette has averaged 16.1; and Hasheem Thabeet 10.8. Are Lillard, George, and Turner objectively better basketball players than Vesely, Fredette, and Thabeet? The answer is a resounding “yes!” But is it fair to consider Jan, Jimmer, and Hasheem busts because of their historic NBA performances compared side-by-side with the aforementioned successful players chosen with the same pick in consecutive drafts? The answer should be an emphatic “no.”
How would we view Jan Vesely’s perceived worth as a professional basketball player if he received 38 minutes of playing time per game for the past two seasons? As a player already proven to be serviceable in expanded action during the NBA Summer League, might Vesely have become a high energy, serviceable NBA big man? Likewise, couldn’t Jimmer Fredette have morphed into the white Eddie House if given 30 minutes per game of action? And is it completely out of the realm of possibility that Hasheem Thabeet could have become an extremely poor man’s version of Roy Hibbert if given 28 minutes of playing time per game over the past three seasons?
When the Suns drafted Kendall Marshall, they were terrible. The Wizards were a proverbial train wreck when they drafted Jan Vesely. When the Kings picked Jimmer Fredette, they had no legitimate chance at competing in the Western Conference. And when the Grizzlies took Hasheem Thabeet, their team captains were Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo! Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo! The fact that multi-million dollar investments like Vesely, Fredette, and Thabeet have failed to get legitimate playing time for their respective teams is nonsensical.
If a team performs poorly enough to obtain a lottery pick in the NBA draft, that team should be incentivized to give the player drafted with that lottery pick substantive regular season minutes. Giving young and unproven players significant playing time accomplishes two incredibly important things: (1) it maximizes their development; and (2) even if their poor and inexperienced play results in losses for the franchise, that poor and inexperienced play will also result in an overt tanking strategy that is actually justifiable to a possibly disgruntled fan base.
Given the amount of possible superstar-level talent in the 2014 NBA Draft, as this basketball season continues, more and more teams will likely resort to drastic measures to lose games. Oddly enough, many of these teams needing to lose to secure vital draft position are also still failing to develop their young talent in the process. There’s really no way to sugar coat it: many NBA teams suck at sucking.
Consider the Boston Celtics—a team literally built to tank. Prior to the 2013 regular season, the Celtics traded two of their three best players, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce; improbably traded their elite head coach, Doc Rivers; and brought in a young but undoubtedly promising college head coach with absolutely no NBA coaching experience who would need a few NBA seasons to hone his craft, Brad Stevens. If there was ever a time to ensure the development of their young prospects, it would be in 2013.
But despite the quintessential scenario for rookie development, the Celtics have thus far failed to foster the growth of their 13th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, Kelly Olynyk. Olynyk is a 22-year-old seven footer with “stretch four” written all over him. One of the best players to ever compete collegiately at Gonzaga, Kelly Olynyk possesses the ability to face up and hit the NBA three, as well as a bestiary of clever post moves that make up for his glaring lack of above the rim athleticism. There is no doubt that Olynyk needs to work on his body and his ability to consistently hit the NBA three, but there is also no question that Olynyk needs ample playing time to develop. Yet the young prospect Olynyk is only logging 18.5 minutes per game. Meanwhile, older and plateaued players like the 28-year-old Brandon Bass and the 31-year-old Gerald Wallace are receiving 27.3 and 23.7 minutes per game, respectively. Given their advancing age and the state of the Celtics, it is highly unlikely that Bass or Wallace will be around when Boston is ready to compete again in the Eastern Conference. So why are they getting minutes that could be going toward the investment of Kelly Olynyk—possibly a key piece of the Celtics future successes?
One can ask the same questions about the Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland entered the 2013 season genuinely believing that they could compete now with a core of Kyrie Irving, Anderson Varejao, Dion Waiters, Tristan Thompson, and Andrew Bynum. For a variety of reasons, such hopes simply have not panned out, and the Cavaliers now possess a record of 20 wins and 33 losses in the awful Eastern Conference. Bynum is gone; general manager Chris Grant has been fired; head coach Mike Brown looks as lost as ever; Tristan Thompson has seemingly stopped progressing; and there are constant rumors that Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters cannot get along. Rather than grind it out for a shot at the 8th seed in the East, 2013 has morphed into the perfect opportunity for Cleveland to develop its youngest assets: 2013 #1 overall pick Anthony Bennett and 2012 17th overall pick Tyler Zeller. Unfortunately for Cavaliers fans, this has not been the case.
Anthony Bennett was drafted first overall for a reason. At 6’8″ and upwards of 260 lbs, Bennett is a bruising forward with a pretty but inconsistent three point shot. Bennett has had his share of adversity this season—including but not limited to being overweight, struggling with sleep apnea and asthma, and simply not putting up the numbers expected out of a first round pick. But Bennett has proven he can succeed in the NBA; on February 11, he put up 19 points and 10 rebounds in 30 minutes against the Sacramento Kings. At the end of the day, you can’t really fault Anthony Bennett’s production when he is only tallying 12.5 minutes per game for a losing team.
Tyler Zeller, meanwhile, is an athletic, fairly polished center who possesses something that you simply cannot teach: size. Standing at 7’0, the athletic Zeller—if given the minutes—could develop into a competent starting center for years to come. Currently, Zeller is only receiving 13 minutes per game at age 24 for an abysmal Cavaliers team, so his chances at reaching his potential are becoming less and less likely each year—through little to no fault of his own. Instead of allowing Zeller the minutes necessary for his own growth, Mike Brown is giving 30-year-old Jarrett Jack 25.7 minutes per game and 31-year-old Anderson Varejao 30.2 minutes per game. While both Jack and Varejao are useful NBA players, much like the situation in Boston, they likely will no longer be around the time Cleveland is ready to contend again in the East, so providing them that many minutes at the expense of young talent like Bennett and Zeller is troubling.
The Los Angeles Lakers are yet another lowly franchise with little to no grasp on the maximization of talent development during a losing season.
With just 18 wins and already 35 losses, the Lakers are all but empirically out of the race for the 8th seed in the Western Conference. And rational, honest Lakers fans would probably admit that their season was over the moment Kobe Bryant fractured his lateral tibial plateau—the bone connecting his shin to his knee. So why are the Lakers, a team incentivized to lose as many games as possible to procure the best possible draft pick, still playing their aging veterans heavy minutes instead of their promising young studs? Why is 33-year-old Steve Blake playing 33 minutes per game, despite constantly battling through various nagging injuries? And what about 33-year-old Pau Gasol and his 31.9 minutes every night? Shouldn’t 22-year-old Ryan Kelly, the 6’11” pure shooter out of Duke University, be gaining valuable experience by playing more than just 19 minutes every game? Consequently, the same can be said for also 22-year-old Xavier Henry and his 21 minutes per night. In the NBA, there is clearly something to be said for tactical age discrimination, yet terrible teams like the Lakers, Cavaliers, and Celtics appear to be partaking in age favoritism.
Interestingly enough, it’s not just the lowest common denominator that should be using off years to choose to give minutes to younger players—possibly even at the expense of the team’s prospects for limited success. Take a team like the Denver Nuggets. At 24-27, the Nuggets could realistically finish the year above .500. But do they have a reasonable chance at making the playoffs in the loaded Western Conference? I say no. Currently seven games back on the eighth seed, the Nuggets would not only have win a ton of games in the latter portion of the NBA season, but they would also have to hope that a team like the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, or Dallas Mavericks falters; AND assuming that happens, that a team like the Memphis Grizzlies or Minnesota Timberwolves doesn’t swoop in to secure that available playoff spot. To say the least, a lot of things would have to happen for the Nuggets to make the playoffs, so rather than behave in Pollyannaish fashion, perhaps they should worry about developing their young guys.
Young guys like 21-year-old Evan Fournier—the 6’6″ Frenchmen who figuratively oozes potential every time he steps foot on the hardwood. Fournier currently only gets 16.3 minutes per game, in large part because the 30-year-old Randy Foye is playing 27.8 minutes every night in front of him. This is no indictment against Foye. Nor is this an attack against the quality of aforementioned players like Pau Gasol, Steve Blake, Jarrett Jack, Anderson Varejao, Brandon Bass, and Gerald Wallace. All of these guys are deserving of some playing time. But all of these guys are also older and have already established themselves as legitimate NBA rotation players. Why waste their talents on teams that will fail to make the playoffs regardless of their respective contributions? The logical choice is for teams to instead play their promising rookies and sophomores.
Sometimes, NBA teams fail at rookie development not because of irrationally playing veterans too many minutes, but instead due to failing to properly craft a rotation or even allocate minutes reasonably. Just look at a random box score from any Sacramento Kings game. The Kings are 18-35 and have zero chance at securing a playoff seed in the Western Conference. The only things this season is good for is developing young players and creating a winning environment. At 17 games under .500, a winning environment might be virtually out of the question. As a result, head coach Mike Malone, with the guidance of the Kings front office, might as well focus on developing young talent.
But if that is the case, why on February 12 against the New York Knicks did Ben McLemore—the Kings seventh pick in the 2013 class and a player with apparent all star potential—tally just 18 minutes? And what about 23-year-old elite finisher with a mean streak Quincy Acy, who only received 5 minutes? McLemore and Acy only had two fouls between them, so it couldn’t have been foul trouble. Who can explain promising 22-year-old point guard Ray McCallum not getting off the bench? The answer is rather obvious upon just glancing at the box score: Coach Malone decided to play Jason Thompson 31 minutes, Rudy Gay 45 minutes, Isaiah Thomas 41 minutes, Derrick Williams 38 minutes, and most baffling of all Jimmer Fredette 27 minutes. If you are coaching an NBA team 17 games below .500, there is no way to justify playing those guys that many minutes while only giving a guy like Ben McLemore 18 minutes. It’s truly outlandish.
It is often seen as almost taboo to complain about playing time. Many times when players do it they are overselling their contributions to their respective teams. And almost always when journalists do it they come across as that nonathletic kid that never got off the bench on his high school’s junior varsity team. Stereotypes aside, it is time for the strategy of minutes allocation to be discussed regarding NBA franchises. If a team is going to lose anyways, it might as well develop its youngest talent. Regrettably, not enough NBA teams actually utilize this logical strategy.
The concept of tanking relies on a presumption of competence—something undeserving of many NBA franchises. Keep that in the back of your mind as you cautiously cheer on the demise of your favorite team this season and beyond.