Bethlehem Says

This draft is bad. This much has been decided, and it’s wearing us all down inside. Drawing this conclusion before any prospect has suited up in the NBA is hopelessly premature; then again, low-expectation drafts rarely turn out to be golden—at least not by the ad hoc standards we use when terming drafts “good” or “bad”. The judgment is simple, even crude. Franchise players are, let’s say, worth 4 points. Perennial All-Stars, 3 points. Occasional or rightful All-Stars, 2 points; starters, 1 point. There’s some added value tacked on for role and rotation players of note. But these are individual measures. Conventional wisdom holds that a good draft is one that spits out talent, and yet in a lot of ways, this could not be more backward.

The question is whether this really measures how “good” a draft has been. Franchise players change the landscape of the league. The important thing there, though, is that it’s their impact that matters, not their sheer ability. Go a rung down, and you can start rattling off very good players who simply didn’t take teams anywhere, or were never in the right situation. Any team would want them, sure, but that doesn’t mean their presence makes for a “good” draft. I think this has something to do with Spinoza, maybe? An objectively stacked draft ignores both the subjective considerations of each team, and the conditions that each player finds his way to. In the end, these are what determine how much impact a player will have on the league.

Historically useful players, not the number of minor or even medium stars, should be the measure of a “good” draft. The categories don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but superstars are a need, not a luxury. We should look at ends (outcomes), not means (talent level), when trying to determine which draft classes were boons and which disasters.