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What are the odds of getting THAT GUY via draft?

I

idiot

Well-Known Member
You know the guy you have to have leading your team to be a serious contender for a title? And preferably you want more than one?

Since we're likely beginning to settle down to reality this season, I figured it's a good time to try to calculate the odds.

1st (worst record) =11.2%
2nd = 10.7%
3rd = 10.3%
4th = 9.6%
5th = 8.9%
6th = 8.0%
7th = 7.4%
8th = 6.8%
9th = 6.1%
10th = 5.3%
11th = 4.4%
12th = 4.1%
13th = 3.9%
14th = 3.6%
15th = 3.3%

This is for an average year, mind you, so take it with a grain of salt for this draft class (though keep in mind as well that the NBA is a zero-sum game; you can't have all years be above average). Interesting that the best average odds are really no better than 1 in 9 for getting THAT GUY with a league-worst finish.

I calculated these odds by figuring out how many THAT GUYs have been drafted in the 30 years up until the Luka draft (too soon to really call things after the Luka draft), figuring out where they were drafted and then combining that information with the current draft lottery odds.

I identified 36 THAT GUYs over the 30 years, so on average there's just a hair over one per draft. Every NBA finals participant (both winners and losers) had at least one of THAT GUY on their team. These are guys you can imagine being the most important player on a championship team if everything breaks right for that team. So a step up from what Donovan and Rudy were with the Jazz. I used primarily 1st and 2nd team all-NBA players to figure out who is a THAT GUY. But even many one- or two-time second-team All-NBA players didn't make the cut (Julius Randle, Demar Derozan, Gobert, etc). Even two one-time first teamers didn't (DeAndre Jordan, Joakim Noah). The following players were on the margins of making my THAT GUY category, just to give an indication: Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol, Paul George, Devin Booker, Amare Stoudamire, Chris Webber. I made Jimmy Butler an honorary THAT GUY because his playoff performances regularly exceed his regular season performances and the 2020 Heat would have been the only finals contender over the past 35+ years without a THAT GUY otherwise.

(By the way, if you get the #1 pick in the lottery, the odds for getting THAT GUY jump to 26.7% -- which of course means that even the #1 pick turns out to be THAT GUY only about once every four years.)
 
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Very interesting post. The draft really is much more of a crapshoot than fans of tanking teams like to think, at least when it comes to getting that franchise changing talent.

Over the years, it's become clearer to me that there's basically just two kinds of NBA fans.

One group consists of people who basically just enjoy the game for its own sake. They want to see their team compete and win and pay attention to small details, like player improvement and tactical changes. Each game is a microcosm of basketball. To these people, winning is important, but they recognize that there's too many chaotic factors at play in the NBA for anyone to be able to "plan" their way into true contender status over years-long periods. It's fine to try to put together a good team, but there's a balance to be struck. Stuff happens, or doesn't... but meanwhile, there's high level basketball and it's worth watching.

In the other group are people who take pride in "looking at the big picture". To these fans, the present day means almost nothing. They get their enjoyment from the idea that the true prize awaits somewhere in the future, and that the path there can be controlled. They scoff at the fans who want immediate satisfaction in the form or "meaningless" wins. I'm not sure the people in this latter group actually like the game of basketball that much. To them, it's less about the game itself, and more about elevating themselves above the hoi polloi in the fan community. They see themselves as the ones who have the patience and foresight to put aside short term goals.

Personally, I'm in the first group. I played the game myself and find basketball too beautiful and interesting to ruin my experience with intentional losing seasons. The theoretical possibility of winning a championship sometime in the (far) future is simply not worth it for me. If it happens, fantastic! But if if doesn't, there will still be competition and wins, and basketball brings me the escape from the everyday grind that I need.
 
I’d say about 15%. There could be multiple that guys in the draft and the chance someone around 10 becomes a that guy.
 
With only 36 Guys, it seems weird that your numbers would work out so smoothly, maybe I'm missing something. Whatever the case, it shows that your chance at drafting The Guy goes up as your record goes down.
 
Tremendous Upside said:
Very interesting post. The draft really is much more of a crapshoot than fans of tanking teams like to think, at least when it comes to getting that franchise changing talent.

Over the years, it's become clearer to me that there's basically just two kinds of NBA fans.

One group consists of people who basically just enjoy the game for its own sake. They want to see their team compete and win and pay attention to small details, like player improvement and tactical changes. Each game is a microcosm of basketball. To these people, winning is important, but they recognize that there's too many chaotic factors at play in the NBA for anyone to be able to "plan" their way into true contender status over years-long periods. It's fine to try to put together a good team, but there's a balance to be struck. Stuff happens, or doesn't... but meanwhile, there's high level basketball and it's worth watching.

In the other group are people who take pride in "looking at the big picture". To these fans, the present day means almost nothing. They get their enjoyment from the idea that the true prize awaits somewhere in the future, and that the path there can be controlled. They scoff at the fans who want immediate satisfaction in the form or "meaningless" wins. I'm not sure the people in this latter group actually like the game of basketball that much. To them, it's less about the game itself, and more about elevating themselves above the hoi polloi in the fan community. They see themselves as the ones who have the patience and foresight to put aside short term goals.

Personally, I'm in the first group. I played the game myself and find basketball too beautiful and interesting to ruin my experience with intentional losing seasons. The theoretical possibility of winning a championship sometime in the (far) future is simply not worth it for me. If it happens, fantastic! But if if doesn't, there will still be competition and wins, and basketball brings me the escape from the everyday grind that I need.
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I don't think these things are mutually exclusive at all. You can both enjoy watching basketball and hope that your team wins a championship by giving itself the best chance to acquire that talent to do so.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
With only 36 Guys, it seems weird that your numbers would work out so smoothly, maybe I'm missing something. Whatever the case, it shows that your chance at drafting The Guy goes up as your record goes down.
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I'm a little surprised at how smooth the final numbers worked out, too. But I'll go into a little detail about why I think they did.

First of all, as you seem to surmise, with only 36 players, I had to generalize. I took each 1-5 pick individually, but then I combined picks 6-10 as well as combined picks 11-15. If I hadn't, it would actually be picks 9 and 15 that would have been unusually high (the randomness in the process worked in their benefit over the small sample size -- they each had 3 THAT GUYs).

And picks 1-5 just happened to be distributed pretty much as you'd think: 8 THAT GUYs were picked #1, 4 at each of #2 and #3, and 2 each at #4 and #5.

Add to both of these the fact that the lottery odds work to smooth things out quite a bit as well, and you get a pretty smooth distribution.
 
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SoberasHotRod said:
Whatever the case, it shows that your chance at drafting The Guy goes up as your record goes down.
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Yes, of course. We all know that.

I think the only possible disputes we (Jazzfanz generally) are having is how much the odds change based on the record and how favorable or unfavorable those odds are in an absolute sense.
 
idiot said:
Yes, of course. We all know that.

I think the only possible disputes we (Jazzfanz generally) are having is how much the odds change based on the record and how favorable or unfavorable those odds are in an absolute sense.
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Sure, I think another way to look at it is, how do we get the best chance at first dibs to pick our top educated guess.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
Sure, I think another way to look at it is, how do we get the best chance at first dibs to pick our top educated guess.
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Yeah, I understand this. But where I think the disputes come in is over the sacrifices you are willing to make to get that extra half a percentage point or whatever. To change the odds from one in 9.5, for example, to one in 9. Or even from one in 12 to one in 10. You're quite unlikely to come out "on top" either way.

But I understand why there are differences of opinion. I just want to try to make sure our arguments are based on numbers that are as realistic as possible.
 
By the way, over those 30 years there's never been more than 3 THAT GUYs come out of any single draft. Both 1996 (at picks 1, 13, 15) and 2009 (at picks 1, 3, 7) produced the most THAT GUYs.
 
Excellent post. It’s a crap shoot. Although this year Wem is more likely to be THAT GUY than anyone else in a while
 
You need to question if a team is constantly angling to get a good draft pick but the Jazz have never been that team.

Guys like Simmons, Zion, Cade, Wiggins seemed way over hyped. I recall preferring Ja over Zion in the '19 draft.

Victor is just a totally different animal.
 
Great work. I like this line of thinking. Another question we should be asking ourselves is how many of THAT GUY have been traded AND what was the average trade package when that occurred?

I could be wrong, but it feels like they system is set up to trade star players vs. having them leave in free agency. With the money as big as it is, I don’t feel like you can have sustained Stockton and Malone success in the draft any more. I could be wrong, but it seems like you can build a solid team that way, but you have to trade for THAT guy to get over the championship hump.
 
Thought experiment: Imagine having a tanking team that signed 15 19 year olds who last played in high school. All 15 players are 5’9” and below in height. None have anywhere near professional level talent.



The team goes 0-82. Each game is pathetic, laughable. Layup drills for the opposition. Final scores of 200-0 most games.



True tankers might love the concept, but I think our thought experiment shows that even with tanking, it is best to have limits. The current practice of having GMs trade away all stars for future picks but then have the coaches direct motivated intriguing players, like our current Jazz team, seems reasonable. So I’m not sweating every game hoping for a loss, the surprise wins have been enjoyable.
 
The level of intrigue in this draft really only revolves around that guy and there is nobody else in the same tier or maybe within 3 tiers of him. But he has toothpicks for sticks and weighs less than 3 little nuggets that played the halftime game in Denver
 
HeatCheck said:
You need to question if a team is constantly angling to get a good draft pick but the Jazz have never been that team.

Guys like Simmons, Zion, Cade, Wiggins seemed way over hyped. I recall preferring Ja over Zion in the '19 draft.

Victor is just a totally different animal.
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How so?

I mean, we really can't say that. We've never seen this guy face his future peers in a sustained competitive environment. The French league more or less sucks compared to the highest level of the NCAA. And the physicality is like 20% of that of the NBA.

Luka Doncic was a Euroleague MVP at age 19. That's what a sure thing looks like.

Victor may become the most overhyped prospect ever.

People had no trouble saying Zion had tons of body-related red flags when he was at Duke, even though he was an absolute force of nature and proved without a shadow of a doubt he was ready for the NBA. Victor hasn't proved anything and has at least as many red flags, but people keep ignoring them because he's "built different" or something.
 
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