Rebuild Without the Draft? Impossible in The NBA

Posted May 18, 2009 3:55PM By Tom Ziller (RSS feed)

Disclaimer: I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell a great deal. I read his books, columns and blog. There's a substantial backlash against him, especially in the sports world, but I'm not a part of it. He has great gifts in distillation and (in my opinion) telling stories. I'm a fan. (I also generally like Bill Simmons, for the record.)

But Gladwell's argument that the reverse-quality structure of the NBA draft "does untold damage" to the league is awful. I touched on Gladwell's discussion of "moral hazard" in the NBA draft over the weekend as it relates to another plea by the author (that teams think outside the box more frequently). But here I'd like to really dig into Gladwell's specific theory (endorsed by Simmons) that all teams would benefit from a complete reformation of the current draft system.

You should have read the Gladwell-Simmons exchange by now. In case you haven't, here is Gladwell's specific NBA draft suggestion:

I think the only way around the problem is to put every team in the lottery. Every team's name gets put in a hat, and you get assigned your draft position by chance. Does that, theoretically, make it harder for weaker teams to improve their chances against stronger teams? I don't think so. First of all, the principal engine of parity in the modern era is the salary cap, not the draft. And in any case, if the reverse-order draft is such a great leveler, then why are the same teams at the bottom of both the NFL and NBA year after year? The current system perpetuates the myth that access to top picks is the primary determinant of competitiveness in pro sports, and that's simply not true. Success is a function of the quality of the organization.

Gladwell argues that destroying the reverse-qaulity structure would help the Bostons and the Sacramentos alike ... because high draft picks don't matter as much as the salary cap (presumably he means free agents and traded players).

Let's take a look at this season's All NBA teams.

FIRST TEAM
LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade

SECOND TEAM
Paul Pierce, Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Brandon Roy, Chris Paul

THIRD TEAM
Carmelo Anthony, Pau Gasol, Shaquille O'Neal, Chauncey Billups, Tony Parker

These are, according to the voters, the 15 best players in the NBA in 2008-09, with some flubbing necessary for positional purposes. (Read: Shaq doesn't belong there.) Notice anything odd about the list?

The entire first team is made up of players who have only ever played for one team, the team which drafted them or acquired them on their draft day. The entire second team fits the same bill. Two third-team players have only played for one team. Of the other three, only Shaq and Billups have ever changed teams in free agency (Pau has been traded once). The one time Shaq changed teams in free agency, he signed with a large-market team (Lakers) with a winning (53-29) record. Billups has signed with teams as a free agent twice. In both cases, the team was coming off a 50-win season.

So of the top 15 players in the NBA this season, 12 were acquired by their current team by draft (or draft day trade), one has been traded by the team which drafted him and two changed teams in free agency at least once, but both signed with winning programs. Read this Gladwell line again.

[T]he principal engine of parity in the modern era is the salary cap, not the draft.

Shaq is the only All NBA player this year who missed the playoffs. We assume, then, that the best teams have the best players. This is a league of stars, after all. The best teams all got their best players through the draft! Fourteen of the 15 All NBA honorees were lottery picks! The best teams are the best teams because they drafted the best players, and the best players tend to be drafted highly!

Cleveland was the pits of the NBA in 2003. It did not get to its current status as toast of the league because of the salary cap. It got there because of LeBron James. New Orleans did not turn around its post-Baron existence because of the salary cap. It did so because of Chris Paul. Portland's recent lottery picks have included Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden. (Leave Marty out of this.) Portland's recent free agent signings have included Joel Przybilla and Steve Blake. Which is responsible for Portland's playoff run: the draft or the salary cap?

You can get good (and very ocassionally great) players via trade and free agency. But it's much more likely to acquire them in the draft. The evidence is littered all over these playoffs.

If you implement Gladwell's suggestion, the droughts suffered by losing teams will stretch far longer than they do currently. You can't build an elite team without an elite draft pick. Look at the playoff rosters! It's all right there!

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-18-2009 @ 5:02PM

Eric said...

While it's true that top talent is at the top of the draft, there are tons of misses up high too. Charlotte is the best example I can think of to prove this point, and the blame for picking guys like Felton, May, Morrison, etc. rests on the shoulders of Bobcats management; there is something to the idea that success is a function of the quality of the organization. Teams can definitely get good players by accident, but if GSW continues to suck for a long time, it's not much of a mystery as to why.

Not having read the Gladwell article yet, I don't really understand why expanding the lottery to all teams would help anyone, particularly the weakest teams. Also, I'm not sure how this fits in to the discussion, but there ARE good players available later in the draft (Parker, Granger, etc.) -- teams just have to find them.

5-18-2009 @ 5:15PM

Ninja Elk said...

You're arguing that an alternate system cannot work, because of how things work in the current system.

The reason the Gladwell plan wouldn't work is that the salary cap doesn't actually provide parity. There's a limit on what a single player can make. Therefore if say... the Lakers had been lucky enough to draft LeBron, Kobe, and Dwight all making the league maximum, they'd still have cash leftover to pay whoever to fill out the roster, and be an unstoppable juggernaut. If teams were allowed to pay players what they're truly worth then the Gladwell plan could work. If all three of those superstars above were making nearer to 30 million (you can't tell me a team wouldn't pay LeBron what Odom and Ben Wallace are making combined), the Lakers would be forced to part with *at least* one of them. Then, you'd have great players hitting the open market.

With the current Maximum Individual Contract however, it'd be more than possible to keep 2-3 superstars under the same payroll, and under Gladwell's plan the first team to get lucky that way would be dominant for a decade or more.

5-18-2009 @ 5:40PM

henryclemente said...

There's nothing wrong with sportswriters thinking up creative solutions to address the problems with the lottery system. But in this case, Simmons/Gladwell have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Their biases clearly show that they don't have the best interest of the entire league in mind. Gladwell is philosophically opposed to moral hazard (nothing to do with basketball). Simmons wants to make it easier for his team (Boston) and other elite teams to obtain the best player.

5-18-2009 @ 11:30PM

grover said...

Re: Moral hazard

Right now, there is a strong incentive to underperform at the end of the season.

The NBA has 30 teams, but room for only 16 in the playoffs. It's generally pretty obvious which teams will not make the playoffs with a month or more remaining in the season.

Usually only the top 10 teams in each conference are in contention - leading to 10 out of the 30 teams in the NBA tanking (or just playing w/o hope). Surely this can be improved, and Gladwell's suggestions might be a way to get there.

The other current option is to develop the D-league or further connections with Europe in order to create a second division. Then, like European football (soccer) you could relegate the bottom tier of teams and promote the best of the 2nd division each year.

5-19-2009 @ 12:49AM

Sure, no doubt it would remove the incentive to under-perform at the end of the season. But at what expense? The system that Gladwell proposes makes a couple assumptions -- teams will always tank at the end of the season. And bad teams don't ever get better with the draft. If those assumptions were correct 100% of the time, then I'd be all for his proposal.

But what then about the teams that go through the normal cycle of weakness/contention? Most teams fall under this category. This would make it much more difficult for them to get better.

5-18-2009 @ 6:01PM

Ryne Nelson said...

Thanks for clearing this up, Tom. Again, I don't think many people even considered this theory as true. I'm with you -- Gladwell does good work and sheds light on many things, but I'm not sure his theory about the Draft even deserved this much attention.

5-18-2009 @ 6:31PM

mike said...

Let the scrub teams draft 1st; The league has to have some parity? All the great big men always seem to find their way to L.A. after their initial stints with other teams. Guess who coming to L.A. next? Your right, D. Howard! He needs a bigger market to showcase his talent. Go Lakers

5-18-2009 @ 9:01PM

Martin said...

You ignore several arguments in your analysis of Gladwell's comments, including the following:
1. The "moral hazard" argument is a valid argument. When teams "shut their star players down" near the end of the season with the result that the team increases its odds for a better draft pick, the integrity of the game is compromised.
2. Sometimes a team fares poorly when its star player is out with an injury. For example, San Antonio got a high draft pick when Robinson was out for a year with injuries. They selected Tim Duncan in the draft, Robinson returned from his injury, and San Antonio began a dynasty. Does a good team that has a bad year because its star player is injured deserve a high draft pick?
3. In a capitalist society, the strongest survive and the weakest don't. In a welfare society, success is punished and failure is rewarded for the sake of parity (equality). As an alternative to the current lottery system, I would suggest greater revenue sharing between small and large market teams.
4. High draft picks are not always the solution. Look at how many high picks the Clippers, Kings, and Grizzleys have had. And last year's champion Celtics didn't pick up either Allen or Garnett through the draft.
5. Many of the players on the all NBA teams have never been unrestricted free agents, which is why they are still on the team that drafted them. In addition to Allen and Garnett, as mentioned above, other star players who changed teams include Shaq, Jermaine O'Neal, Steve Nash, Baron Davis, Elton Brand, and Allen Iverson, just to name a few.

5-19-2009 @ 12:50AM

1 - 3 True. But is there no other less-extreme solution to this? Making the draft order-of-finish will cause a lot more problems than it solves.

4 You're cherry picking the most poorly managed teams in the league (Clippers, Grizz) and want to change the system to deal with their mismanagement? What about the rest of the league that goes through the normal cycle of contention/weakness? Gladwell's system will make it much easier for the good teams to stay on top and harder for weaker teams to rebuild. This makes for a pretty boring league.

5 The players you're talking about have not become free agents due to contract extensions. It just proves how important the draft is, as star players will more than likely sign extensions after their rookie deals are over.

(By the way, what Kings high picks are you talking about?? They highest they've picked in the last 15 years is 7. Their average 1st round draft position in that span is 15.6)

5-19-2009 @ 5:42AM

Dave D. said...

Many of those players still play for the team that drafted them because of the incentive structure of the collective bargaining agreement, which is changeable.

I think a bigger issue is one that nobody except Gladwell wants to touch on: whether it's beneficial for the league or for the average fan for the best new players to go to losing teams.

Yes, it's difficult for bad teams to get good without drafting well; one of the reasons is that bad teams are, on average, not as well managed. There are issues besides draft history which factor into whether or not a team is successful, and it can be considered a waste for a truly talented player to end up in a losing culture.

Do you realize that since 1984, the year I was born, only 6 different franchises have won a championship? In my life, only six different franchises have been fully relevant, no matter my draw to exciting teams occasionally put out by the Sonics, Kings, Mavericks, etc. Even assuming the Lakers don't win this year (I don't think they will), that leaves 23 teams historically relevant in the strictest sense.

The hope is that once a unique talent arrives, a new culture is created, and that very often happens -- talent attracts talent. But what about great non-elite talents (the Elton Brands, if you will) who fans will rarely see properly utilized.

It is only through trades and free agency that the average fan has gotten to see the best in Kevin Garnett and Pau Gasol. All else aside, I think everyone can agree that it would have been better if Garnett was consistently on competently run teams that made it past the first round of the playoffs.

While I understand why we want to see the historically bad teams be given the opportunity to advance through the draft, the truth is that what many people want most of all is elite basketball. When people talk about the distillation of talent in the NBA, which is both true because of the increased size of the league and not because of the increase in talent, the distribution of new players plays a part. Increasing the likelihood that great players end up in great organizations is certainly one solution.

There is a fine line: competition is important and must be promoted, but failure should not be rewarded. This is the difficulty of any regulatory body, and I don't have the answers and I don't think either Gladwell or the current system does either. But I think the best interests of the league and all possible routes to get there need to be discussed. Dismissing change on a single assumption, that it's most important that the league's worst teams get better as soon as possible, is in danger of being short sighted.