It’s time for lottery mainstays to change their mindset in the NBA Draft
This year’s NBA Draft is expected to be deep with talent. One that is remembered for years and years. One that changes the fortunes of numerous teams. Because the NBA has a system wherein the league’s worst teams get to choose from the amateur ranks’ best prospects, there is a logical argument to be made that a certain boom-or-bust philosophy should be occupied by league decision makers at the top of the draft. That to truly drive the trajectory of a franchise upward, upside must be treasured over past production. If we operate behind that logic, about half of the players expected to go in the lottery each year become much less enticing. And from these players’ perspectives, by being picked lower, they would also fall to a team that fits their limitations much better. It would be victory for all parties if teams followed this line of thought more directly.
When considering this quandary, I think immediately of a player like Lauri Markkanen, by all accounts a talented player, one whom The Ringer’s Jonathan Tjarks called “Channing Frye with a handle” in an episode of his High Upside podcast. That’s an interesting player, as Frye is currently on a team that is far and away the Eastern Conference’s best. But it’s not one that would emphatically change a losing franchise’s fortunes. He’s a big man that struggles to protect the rim and rebound, whose one positional advantage is elite shooting.
READ MORE: Projecting 3-point shooting for 2017 NBA Draft prospects
Markkanen will score a lot of points in this league if he sticks in it, and can help an offense get to a certain level past what traditional big men can do. However, drafting him means absorbing an already predetermined limit on defense and rebounding from a position on which teams generally rely for those qualities.
In short, a team drafting someone like Markkanen is handicapping themselves, basically ensuring another trip to the 2018 lottery unless the rest of the roster drastically improves. He fits much better as a role player on an established team, but simply by way of being a proven college performer with a positional advantage, he’ll likely get drafted in the top-10. He will go ahead of higher-upside players like OG Anunoby, Justin Patton or Jonathan Jeanne. No matter how many Giannis Antetokounmpos or Jimmy Butlers we see rise from the middle or end of the first round to become stars, mock drafts will still recognize teams’ habits above all else. For most franchises, those habits involve taking proven college players or toolsy international players over extremely athletic, versatile players who didn’t produce to the same degree.
It’s worth mentioning teams’ puzzling draft tendencies in this discussion for a variety of discouraging reasons. As ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz and Pablo Torre discussed in their recent episode of The Basketball Analogy podcast, part of what makes the draft frustrating is the gross miscalculation of talent by front offices year after year. A team like the Orlando Magic has had a half-decade to land franchise-changing talent in the lottery and has failed to do so. That has left the team scrambling for veteran GMs around the league who can raise the sails and right the ship this June. It’s unlikely to happen.
Take Buddy Hield, the 2015-16 Naismith Player of the Year at Oklahoma who stayed at the top of draft boards despite every draft pundit in the media arguing otherwise. He was an older prospect who lacked high-level ball skills or defensive abilities. His college production made him predictably impossible to pass up for a desperate Pelicans front office picking seventh the draft, and then a giddy Kings management team at the trade deadline 10 months later. He had an encouraging rookie season, but his ceiling is already in full sight.
Discussions like the one about Hield are already happening across the internet and likely in front offices around the league. Draftniks have staked a claim in their favorites– guys like Dennis Smith Jr., Jonathan Isaac and Donovan Mitchell. But in a month’s time, the names called won’t be in nearly the same order. Without fail, conservative teams will take Markkanen or Jayson Tatum — another more traditional, high floor player — ahead of their more gifted counterparts. Many of those same teams will huddle into a small, dark room next May for the 2018 Lottery.
Unfortunately, the many priorities being juggled (often all at one time) by basketball organizations make it hard to nail a draft pick. Competing voices and poor synergy can interrupt the flow of a scouting department’s work, even if due diligence has been done. It’s never as easy as finding the player with the highest range of outcomes or the highest ceiling. Often, highest floor and lowest variance are preferred. That method has also worked a lot of the time, especially at the very top of the draft. Finding talent isn’t always difficult, but as you get further from the first pick, gutsy picks are rewarded.
Next: Bravely staring down the radar chart backlash
Picks made irrespective of expectation or consensus are celebrated more than “no-brainers”. They catapult franchises past several steps of their rebuild at once, and give them cost-controlled stars for as long as they can keep them. With the way the salary structure has been changed to favor incumbent teams who land a star, simply maximizing your chance of picking high isn’t the only way to find success. Scouting well and taking chances on extraordinary and lesser-known prospects can do just as much (or even more) for a team’s growth. Succeeding in this regard can change a team’s reputation from laughingstock to revelation.