A couple days ago @midnight_hwy made the point that it's important to tank for multiple years. He's obviously right that the odds aren't on your side in any single-year tank to get what you need out of it. But I wondered how much tanking might be typically needed to accomplish a team's objectives (which, I take it, are to get the player(s) that can lead you to championship contention). So I've tried to devise a rough method to make a good estimate. The answer?: about 5 years on average (of course luck could make it longer or shorter).
Here's how I came to that conclusion:
It turns out the average player value of picks 1-7 is 21.1 (median 20). This means that on average (average lottery luck, average pick luck), it will take nearly 5 years of bottom-4 finishes to obtain players that equal 100 in tanking value.
(If anyone's curious what my valuations were for each player, let me know and I'll post them. I think I was more generous than stingy in my assessments, and so I may be a bit too optimistic for how short an average successful tank needs to be).
Any thoughts? Disagree with my assumptions/method? Let me know.
Here's how I came to that conclusion:
- I used a bottom-4 finish as the measure of true tanking. Given how the league works these days, it's an achievement to finish bottom-4 in any given year, so I consider a bottom-4 finish a tank done well. And even more, it's no simple feat to finish bottom-4 multiple years in a row.
- I looked at the 7 top draft choices over the past 15 drafts. I used 7 because the bottom 4 records are almost guaranteed a top-7 pick. And given the lotto odds, you can't really expect more than a top-7 pick from a strong tank. We all want a top-5 pick when tanking, but that's not realistic in today's NBA.
- I gave each of these picks a value from 0 to 100. 0 represents a role player or worse (since you don't need to tank to find a role player in today's NBA). 30 is a good, strong starter who can be a key player on a winning team, at least in theory (Markkanen, Aaron Gordon, Porzingis, for example). 50 is a player that if you had two of that quality you'd be on your way to contention (Chet Holmgren, Jaren Jackson Jr, Paulo Banchero). 100 means that this single player himself is virtually a path to contention (I only gave 100 to Wemby; though 95 to Doncic). A couple more examples to help give a feel for what I did: I gave Anthony Edwards a 65, Jaylen Brown a 40, and Brandon Ingram a 22.
- Basically the idea is that you want to be able to get players that add up to 100 in any successful tank so that you're on a clear path to championship contention.
- If you assume that after a year of solid-tanking you could get a draft choice anywhere from 1-7, then it follows that you can average the values of the players drafted 1-7 to see how many years of serious tanking (on average) it will take to equal 100.
It turns out the average player value of picks 1-7 is 21.1 (median 20). This means that on average (average lottery luck, average pick luck), it will take nearly 5 years of bottom-4 finishes to obtain players that equal 100 in tanking value.
(If anyone's curious what my valuations were for each player, let me know and I'll post them. I think I was more generous than stingy in my assessments, and so I may be a bit too optimistic for how short an average successful tank needs to be).
Any thoughts? Disagree with my assumptions/method? Let me know.
