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.