Big Bored

A lot of your favorite Twitter follows are probably posting their final big boards right about now. It’s fun, it’s draft szn! But I hate big boards, they’re an exercise in futility. Since we aren’t able to clone ourselves, no one (including some high level decision makers) is really watching a dozen college games of the dozen players available in their draft range, let alone the dozens of other prospects that might be available if they were to trade up. And no one has access to medicals, or has interviewed anyone, or has talked to a prospects’ high school teacher. So instead of doing some incredibly thin slicing, I’d rather ruminate about some macro draft thoughts.

In the NBA Finals, over two-thirds of the minutes were played by players who were drafted by the Warriors (65.7%) or the Celtics (73.1%). Although the success of those organizations’ drafting and player development may be outliers, the draft is a demonstrably important team building tool.

You’ll hear people suggest that NBA draft picks, especially late first round picks, aren’t worth much. They say these things when they’re throwing the kitchen sink in for Jrue Holiday or Nikola Vucevic. Although there’s some truth to it, it’s largely indicative of the kind of short term, win-now thinking that plagues front office personnel on 3 year contracts, or every team Lebron has been on in the last decade, or the Sacramento Kings.

What the draft is really: high variance. Whoever trades up for Jaden Ivey will likely expect stardom, but mid lottery picks are only about a flip to become long term starters, and ~25% to be All Stars (I haven’t seen an updated draft value chart lately, would appreciate a link in the comments if there have been fresh posts!). The reality is that Jaden Ivey’s median outcome is closer to Jordan Clarkson than Ja Morant, but hopium is a helluva drug (and readily available in NBA front offices in late June).

From a front office point of view, I’d much rather look at the draft as an opportunity to combine three resources to amplify returns. First, to select a player better than the market; second, to use player development to make that player the best version of himself; and third, to use restricted free agency to squeeze a valuable second contract[1]. For the homegrown players in the Finals, it’s tough to argue that each front office hasn’t done all of those things impressively.

Seven years ago I did a “big board” on the 2015 draft. I wrote this about my draft philosophy and what was important to winning basketball games:

(1) versatility and ability to guard multiple positions (and not be targeted on D as we see in the playoffs), (2) ability to hit top X% outcome and be a transcendent player (I believe that everyone, including this board, still underrates outlier outcomes in EV-- i'd take a top 5 player 1/10th as often as the 50th best player every time, because of how the salary cap works), (3) elite skills (I believe a team is more made up of skills than players)

While I remain committed to points (1) and (3), I’ve changed my tune a bit on (2). Of course upside is still important, but I’ve come to think it’s a bit easier to peg median outcome and still have an understanding of where the long tail lies. The draft is an extremely high variance affair, but you don’t have to draft bad players in the name of upside (see: Kuminga, Jonathan).

Another thing I’ve noticed is that a person’s draft valuation is directly correlated with their player valuation. Maybe you thought Jalen Green was an easy choice over Jalen Suggs. Maybe you also think Zach Lavine is better than Jrue Holiday. Now we’re having a totally different conversation, and we’ll have to agree to disagree.

The worst thing about big boards, and player rankings for that matter, is that they’re ranked linearly. Poor human beings and our limited spatial abilities that allow us to only read from top to bottom. If I ever actually had decision making power I’d insist that my front office rank in tiers, and that all tiers be randomized. Of course the quality of prospects is a pyramid, not a list; this is the same way that talent in the NBA (and many other sports) is distributed. Preferring something more specific overrates human beings’ ability to evaluate basketball talent.

There is *no way* that you have a real opinion on whether Kendell Brown or Christian Braun (also pronounced “Brown”!) is a better NBA prospect[2]. They’re both in your fifth tier and you watched a 5 minute highlight reel of Brown standing in the corner, and then maybe you saw Braun get hot in the national championship game. They’re totally different ages. They’re totally different player types. And one of them is bound to get drafted by the Knicks and sign his second contract in Europe.

In the end, the draft is a petri dish of human cognitive biases. Remember that although there are infinite ranges of outcomes in the multiverse, in every one of them NBA front offices get to take credit for having the player that turned out good higher than consensus, while never taking blame for having the player that turned out bad higher than consensus.

[1] Restricted free agency is incredibly rigged for the incumbent team, and yet few teams use it to their advantage as much as they could. Most of this is probably pressure from agents to extend, with the carrot being their clients' happiness. I'd push the envelope in most cases, especially with the downside risk of a serious injury (re)appearing in year 4 (see: Porter Jr., Michael).

[2] To be clear, there are some people out there that have a good opinion on which of these prospects is likely to become a better NBA player, it’s just not anyone that reads this blog.

Wagner's Law

The 2021 rookie class is an outlier. It’ll have multi-time All-Stars, All-NBAers, and maybe even a couple Hall of Famers. But one of the reasons it's so good has been decidedly overlooked. It’s true, Cade Cunningham and Jalen Green are exciting, though overrated, prospects. And it’s also true, Evan Mobley is a generational talent, the quality of top overall pick that we only get every few years . What if I told you that if your goal was to win NBA basketball games right now, the best rookie this season has been none of those players?

Those of you familiar with Gödel, Escher, Bach[1] will know Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Today I present to you Wagner’s Law: No matter how highly you rate Franz Wagner, you will always underrate him, even when you take into account Wagner’s Law.

It’s relatively hard to figure out what wins basketball games. We have some reasonable ideas, but such a large portion of the game takes place without the ball. And this is where Franz is so good: moving into threatening space on offense, keeping the opponent out of it on defense. He’s already an incredible cutter, despite playing on a team without a positive passer at any position (except himself!).

One way to be threatening on offense is to move with the level of the ball and make the defenses' eyes be in two places at once.

And though his best skill is team defense, individually he snuffs out everything before it happens, and has the lateral quickness to stay with just about anyone

The video clips of Franz trying to pull a quarter point out of thin air or saving a tenth of a point with his footwork or gapping are nice, but the only way to truly approximate value for an NBA player is with a large sample. So for trying to figure out how good Franz has been, I looked around at a few one number metrics to get a better idea of the best rookies this year.

EPM is reliable one number metric that includes shot luck. There are only 3 rookies who are positive in this metric: Franz +1.2 (80th percentile), Evan Mobley +1, and Herb Jones at +0.5.

I don't usually agree with 538's basketball coverage, but they have access to the Second Spectrum tracking data. RAPTOR seems like their most referenced one number metric. Among all rookies, Franz is behind only Herb Jones.

And it’s reasonable to think that you don’t need black box sorcery to understand why he's been so good. His team is almost 10 points better with him on the court, playing something like league average defense luck adjusted. If that doesn’t sound impressive to you, you haven’t looked at the Magic roster lately.

Go looking for more stats, and you’ll be more surprised: He got to the free throw line better than Cade, despite less usage. And he’s one of the best free throw shooters in the league, shooting a hair better than Jayson Tatum from the line at 86.3%. How do you think that bodes for his future from behind the arc?[2]

If you scouted Franz, you knew he’d be this type of player. A connector. But what I wasn’t ready for is the versatility of his shot, his finishing footwork, and how good the passing already is at this level.

He's an exceptional passer who should've been tasked with even more creation responsibility for the Magic.

But this is the kind of stuff that'll make him an All Star, the footwork and patience to create shots near the rim (he shot a high volume from floater range per CleaningTheGlass, with above league average efficiency).

And here's The Full Franz Experience: starting with how ready he is in the gap, and finishing with a nifty pass.

His strength lies in his processing speed, the angles he takes, the efficiency he plays with. For those reasons, he will never be overrated. Among the included benefits to this are a discount on his next contract (see: Anunoby, OG; Bridges, Mikal).

With a little more on court time, Evan Mobley will be the far superior NBA player. When Cade Cunningham learns to dribble, or Jalen Suggs learns to shoot, or Jalen Green grows 3 inches and gains 25 pounds, lookout.[3] But by any reliable metric Franz Wagner is a league average starter right now. He's one of the top 100 or so basketball players in the world, at age 20.6, on a roster that isn’t doing him any favors.

I don’t blame you for not watching the Magic, you shouldn’t watch the Magic. They’re an awful team owned by a not particularly great bunch of people (even for owners) in a crappy city who likely chose the wrong head coach. But one day many years from now they’ll be in the Play-In, and on that day you’ll remember Wagner’s Law.

[1] Of course I haven’t read Gödel, Escher, Bach, but I’m cool enough to know people who have.

[2] I don't feel the need to say more about his shooting; at present you can't leave him open, in the future it may be a five alarm fire if you do.

[3]There are a lot of Raptors slappies out there, so I have to at least mention Scottie Barnes: Offensive rebounds don’t scale particularly well, and Scottie’s numbers are all buoyed by the Raptors sending more people to the offensive glass than any team in the modern era. The Raptors are four points better with Scottie off the floor, some of that is capable backups, a lot of that is bad footwork and his constant insistence on impersonating a traffic cone on defense. But I digress.