Race to the Bottom thread

Insomniacal Fan said:
Compressing this quite a bit; I'm not looking at this from the perspective of a front office exec or a talent scout, I'm looking at it from the position as a fan. As a fan, it's useful for me to know whether the team is headed in a good direction or a wrong direction.

As a fan, one thing I don't assume is that I can judge from the outside how good or bad a given front office is, as so much of those decisions are internal, and as you pointed out, teams replace their front offices every 5 years or so. The least presumptuous position to take is that the front office is average, so I'm measuring likely outcomes based on average performance.

I have already granted that I am assuming that teams picking in the top 5 are looking for BPA instead of best fit. (If you're picking in the top 5, it's generally expected that your team sucks, and you don't have other pieces you're trying to build around, that's the whole point of the draft.) Corollary to that is the assumption that BPA exists, that some players are simply better at being pro basketball players than others (again, why even have a draft if this weren't at least somewhat true?) I'm curious how much you'd push the opposite belief.

If you're picking at #6, then hopefully you're doing it as part of a multi-year project to rebuild, or you're already on the upswing after nabbing a franchise cornerstone type player previously. Because there's usually only one or two players that rise to that level every year. In order to feel happy about it as a fan, you're probably going to need to zoom out and have a longer term outlook.
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(I don't think there's anything particularly impressive about VORP compared to other career impact metrics, it was just conveniently available, and seemed to correlate with my intuition in dividing very good careers from great careers. Take it for what it's worth.)

And I don't have any particular problem with analogies as an explanatory tool. Often complex concepts are usefully explained in terms of the dynamics of simplified systems, (sports analogies are popular!) But if we're already talking about a topic that's used for simplified examples, it's of dubious value. At that level, I suspect the analogy is less about explanation, and more about obfuscation.
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I just hope that teams who do utilize statistical analysis to guide their decisions take a broader view than a lot of the online discourse which seems to treat talent as existing within a vacuum. If you are starting over with the assumption that you will be trading every existing player on the roster and your goal is to begin your rebuild around an elite player who will finish top 5 in MVP voting at least once in their career, then it makes sense to apply this kind of an approach until you identify and secure that player. As soon as you have one "keeper" player on your roster though, you are now looking for more than just talent -- you are looking for talent which compliments the player(s) you already have. And as you add more and more players to your core, it's going to get harder to get both maximum value of your assets (be that a trade asset, cap space for signing a free agent, or a draft pick) and also maintain a synergistic relationship between each player on the roster.

This is why so many rebuilds ultimately top out in no man's land and then start regressing. The opportunistic low-hanging fruit deals are only there when you are starting from scratch. At some point you're going to have to concede something -- give up more in a trade, overpay for a free agent, reach to draft a player higher than their overall projection -- in exchange for adding a player to your roster who fills in some needed skills and compliments the players and the style of play you have committed to. A lot of managers are capable of reacting tactically to the situation at hand but when it comes to applying a long-term strategy which will require them to target and acquire specific players or specific player archetypes, they are either unwilling or incapable of adjusting their thinking out of "maximize asset" mode.
 
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Capt. Factorial said:
Barring a disastrous drop in the lottery, they're still 11 games out of getting into the 10th pick outright. That's why I mentioned the play-in, as they'd be basically one spot (and right now, zero games) out of the play-in if they got to the 10th pick anyway. I don't see them making any noise in the playoffs, but I figured that would be the goal, if they tried to win.

I guess they could actually be shooting for a best-of-the-rest at #10 with an eye on somebody like Hannes Steinbach or Brayden Burries or...? on the premise that 10 in this draft is better than unprotected in 2031 (and the future Stepien trade flexibility), but I sure wouldn't feel very comfortable doing that.
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the problem is even if they get the 1 seed they have a better chance of 5 then top 4. If they go in as the 10 seed they still have some chance of top 4 and 100% insure they get their pick.
 
I know this might sound crazy but is there a world where the Kings can land Giannis if we ended up with the #1 pick and trade the pick to the bucks? What would the package look like and how would you feel about adding Giannis to the team?
 

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