im in favor of all non playoff teams getting equal shot at every pick. seems perfect, making the playoffs means more $ (I'd think) than all but the top few picks, GMs have their jobs to look after so it'll always be playoffs >>> 1/14 chance at top pick, 3/14 chance at top 3 pick, etc.

celtics + raptors are on the fence.

raptors: really all the matters is lowry. either you can trade him + tank or be competitive and try to re-sign him this offseason. if they do tank, they should be able to assemble a competitive team next year by hiring a real coach + some rotation pieces so JV + amir don't get too sour of the franchise.

but the 9th seed in the east will be worse than 4-5 west teams that miss the playoffs, so you don't have to bottom out to gain a ton of equity. if you give them an equal chance of finishing anywhere 5th-10th worst, that gives them a mean of ~ $25M more draft equity than they get by reaching the playoffs as 8th seed. So if it boils down to $25M + assets from lowry haul vs lowry's bird rights + 2 home playoff games + slightly higher player morale, it's not obvious to tank but it's easy to see why they'd choose that route.

celtics are more complex to analyze but it's still going to boil down to "could go either way"

i'm not assuming things about him staying with the team. i priced in a 50% chance of him leaving before his 2nd year. really the only area where i "cheated" is assuming that he signs a 5 year extension after his rookie deal instead of 3/4.

and i'm not really sure what kwame brown + stromile swift have to do with the discussion. they would be fringe top 10 picks in this draft, who cares.

the problem with shifting the weight away from the worst teams is that it incentivizes .500 teams to tank. you might see teams tanking their way out of a playoff spot if they have a shot of picking anywhere in the lotto


words for this post, i have none

I mean if you want to assume a guy is 80% chance to become a perennial allstar, that's your right. I think that's crazy.

Dean's case vastly more convincing than sethy's lightweight contrarian analysis. "How top five picks have done on average over the last 15 years" means absolutely nothing to Jabari Parker's value, and it should be very very obvious why.

Parker seems more of a lock than Durant did when he came out. Obviously less of a lock than Oden.

KD might even have been a better college player [I'll look up at the stats now], but he had more question marks about his game translating than Parker. Parker seems like a lock +starter at the 3 or 4.

ETA: Durant put up 26 and 11, including 5.8 3pa/game at 40%; Parker is at 22 and 8, including 3.6 3pa/game at 47.5%

Durant got about 2 steals and blocks per game; Parker closer to 1 each. Durant played 36 mpg, Parker 31. Both get to the line a lot (Durant once more per/40) and shoot very well for 18 y/o (Durant 81.6; Parker 77.4).

33 Balls
1 lotto ball to each of the 1st round losers.(8)
1 lotto ball to the 3 worst teams (3)
2 lotto balls to the rest of the teams that miss(22)

Lotto the top 5 picks and the rest by order(Maybe this should be less)

seth, you tried to equate an above average #1 overall pick to an average top 5 pick and specifically cited kwame brown + stromile swift as downside possibilities. it might be time to take a quick breather and gather yourself here.

elite prospects who have excelled as college players bust ~never unless they get hurt like oden. 20% is an incredibly generous bust rate to offer jabari, and even if it's modified to 30% that's not going to crush his value because again it's far more driven by his upside scenario.

Is this in reference to me or Bobbo? Regardless, do you remember how I complained the other day that you have a tendency imo to misquote/misrepresent me? I think you're doing that in the bolded sentence, and I think that if you stopped doing this and only argued against what we were really saying then you wouldn't find that "its not even a debate."

Anyway, offer stands to do a point-counterpoint series of articles. My only rule would be that I don't want you and Bobbo being d*cks to each other and constantly taking snide pot shots during the debate, as that would ruin the fun for sure.

Parker has faced some elite competition early. Only really struggled against Arizona (7-21), but had great games against Kansas and UCLA, and a very good game against Michigan.

Assani,

I said one person. He has thousands of posts on this site deriding people for their lack of intelligence(In his opinion, because they disagree with his perceived amazing ability in basketball evaluation). I don't think that's you, however that may be because I don't distinctly recall you constantly name calling so I haven't bothered to do a search to see how often you do it, but I view you as more as being stubborn in your views opposed to pompous.

My family does a lot of work towards mental health and the mentally disabled so that part is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. We all are susceptible to it, and it's very common and casual for intelligent people to call other people stupid(and even MORE common for people who think they are a lot more intelligent than they really are to do so-Dunning-Kruger effect) An important thing that people often forget is just how aware "dumb" people are that they are not as intelligent, and how insulting it is to see/hear those words constantly being used, even to the people of average intelligence.

FWIW, I think he probably has a lower "bust" percentage than most, but you're overvaluing the "value added" of a bust as it's probably negative (which was the point I was trying to make with respect to those guys, factoring in the contract, those busts produced negative value).

You're neglecting all the possible and somewhat likely outcomes between Paul Pierce and bust. Not to make direct comparisons, but the world needs players of the caliber of Danny Granger, Michael Finley, Glenn Robinson, Jimmy Jackson and Jason Richardson too, and that level of player from solid rotation to fringe allstar are all a significant portion of his range of outcomes for a number of reasons - he might turn out to be slightly less good than we think, he might end up in the wrong situation, he might suffer a bunch of injuries.

I also think you're overvaluing things that happen much past the first contract if we're talking about the present day value of each draft pick. You don't have to discount that heavily to prefer $10 mil today to 20$ mil in year 10 of a guy's career.

read the wheel article. it's brilliant and what they should do

Relegation pleaseee

Sent from my SCH-I545 using 2+2 Forums

I know you said one person, thats why I asked "me or Bobbo?" Anyway, obvious now that I catch up on thread that you were talking about him.
I have no desire to get in between you guys, as I consider you both friends. Fight away for all I care. Offer for point-counterpoint article stills stands, and if you wanted to just do it between me and you due to personal issues with Bobbo then we can.

Oh man, this entry--its structural and phraseological weirdness--is hilarious in an odd way. In a maybe subtle way, it's, like, combative-edit stew. (Many Wiki entries are far worse, but to a skimmer, this one is ostensibly passable, which adds to the comedic value.)

My three favorite bits:

1) Research conducted by Burson et al (2006) set out to test one of the core hypothesis put forth by Kruger and Muller in their paper "Unskilled, unaware, or both? The better-than-average heuristic and statistical regression predict errors in estimates of own performance," "that people at all performance levels are equally poor at estimating their relative performance."

2) The entire "awards" section.

3) [...] Dunning and Kruger have noted similar historical observations from philosophers and scientists, including [...] Bertrand Russell (" [...] ", though this is actually a misquote, see Wikiquote) [...]

ETA: The second and third aren't mistakes or anything. I find them funny for other reasons.

ETA 2: "Some of its structural oddities" sounded awful. The irony. What am I going to do with all of these spoons?

Dean, let me put it to you this way, do you think Parker has an 80% chance of being a first ballot HOFer?

here's my idea for the lottery: keep it the same, except worst team can't win 1st pick, 2nd worst can't win 2nd pick, and 3rd worst can't win 3rd pick.

it doesn't change much but it could be enough to cause teams to hesitate before racing to the bottom

yeah, this is his bust scenario. he's not going to be gerald green.

Seth,

Would you have said it was crazy to say that Blake Griffin was ~80% to be a perennial allstar? I think Parker is equally lockish to that.

Also,

Parker has less than 5% bust equity imo.

EDIT: Though his Durant equity is also closer to 5%.

Basically, he'll be a top 20 player in the NBA almost always, rarely becomes top 5 but it's possible.

My draft system is this,

No lottery balls. No randomization. No sorting by record.

David Stern arbitrarily decides the draft order based on what he perceives is best for the league.

Yes, I would have thought that was on the high side, though Griffin getting drafted to an LA team with his style complicates it a little. I probably would have gone closer to 50 or 60 than 80.

So basically close to what we have already.

Then we aren't using "bust" in remotely the same terms.

I don't think it's likely that he'll be a total bust (which is much more of a worry for Embiid just based on his status as a "tools" big guy), but ignoring the possibility (even if through injury only) is foolhardy and flies in the face of experience. I don't think your valuations are off by 2x or anything more like by about ~15% on the top end.

Look, I love Parker and if I had the #1 pick today, I'd PROBABLY pick him, but that said I'd put his range of outcomes as

5-10% top X megastar
20-25% perennial allstar
20-25% career peak 4 year all star, fringe allstar before and after
20% above average rotation guy
15-20% - solid rotation guy
5-10% - bustish.

you are really getting hung up on all the wrong things in an effort to be the resident skeptic

i could have made the analysis to be

20% durant
20% something between durant + pierce
20% pierce
20% something between bust + pierce
20% bust

and that INCREASES his value in my analysis even though he's now only 60% to be a 1st ballot hall of famer. more variance = more EV

again the key point that you're missing:

we get it, sometimes negative variance happens. its bearing on my analysis is incredibly low leverage so as much as you love to beat this drum, this isn't a context where it's applicable