Coach: Theory of General Draftability
Each week, HOOPSWORLD NBA analyst and coach Anthony Macri opens his notebook and offers an assortment of observations on games, players, and teams from throughout the league. Coach Macri serves as a player development consultant for the Pro Training Center and Coach David Thorpe, working with a variety of NBA players on their skills and game understanding. The Coach’s Notebook appears on HOOPSWORLD every Thursday.
Theory of General Draftability:
Success = Potential (Production + Asset Value) * Risk
If only it was as simple as the equation above. Solving the NBA Draft is like grasping at sand on the beach – the harder one tightens their grip, the more sand slips through the fingers. As teams and franchises attempt to identify future stars, role players, and busts, it is the teams approaching the draft as a combination of variables and implementing a cogent and consistent “draft theory” that end up being the most successful.
The NBA Draft is part of a larger process of team building, and it is critical for folks to keep that perspective. It is one of many tools at the disposal of a front office to build a competitive team. It is also the most high variance tool available – since a front office has the least information available to them about how a prospect may flourish or fail at the next level, building a team solely from drafting can be an extremely risky strategy.
When assessing a draftable prospect, a number of factors must be considered, then all lumped into some kind of analysis that determines a particular player’s value in two ways: as a “producer” and as an “asset.” Many times, these two characteristics overlap, though not always so.
Typically, production value is a short-term measurement of the immediate impact a prospect is likely to have on his new team. Some teams draft solely on production value, or may use a certain pick in a given year on a player they feel has immediate production value, which often placates fans and folks looking mainly for instant gratification. Often, these selections are easier to make: a team has a positional need, or they lack size or quickness, and so they select the best player on their board that fits their immediate need.
Asset value is a very different concept. These players can be selected as long-range prospects. Very often we refer to these potentially appreciating assets as “projects” – players that may or may not pan out, and whether they do or not, they give a franchise a lot of flexibility with roster maneuvers. Asset value can also come from selecting the best player available, regardless of position–not to fill any particular need, but to provide flexibility going forward.
Back in my Coach’s Notebook from April 7th, I examined the intrigue of how a team with the #5 pick might hypothetically choose between Kemba Walker and Brandon Knight. While it seems now Knight has clearly emerged as the consensus higher selection according to most rankings, the analysis still holds. A team must look both short and long term, considering the player’s potential as a combination of production and asset values.
To assess production value, the most critical factors include how ready a player is physically, mentally, and emotionally to play the game professionally. Playing an 82-game regular season is a grind. Add in the travel, practices, training camp, and potential for the postseason, and that is one long stretch of basketball. In addition, how a player fits directly into a team’s puzzle, both in terms of playing time availability and in terms of the skills and abilities he brings, is critical. Saying a team needs a center isn’t enough; what kind of center? Do you want someone who can run the floor and finish above the rim or a guy who can stretch defenses and pull his defender out to the perimeter? Drafting on production value is a lot like finding the right size nut to fit a particular bolt.
{AUTHOR_BOX}Judging asset value is very different. Asset value is about picking a nut that might do the job without knowing what the bolt looks like (or, in some cases, if there even is a bolt at all). Selecting a player as an asset means valuing not only how that player can impact your own franchise, but also considering how other teams may view that player two to three years down the line. The decisions here are much murkier, but the rewards when a team gets it right are immeasurable. Not only do they get a player who can help them win (maybe after a year or two), but they get something much more important: an asset through which they can improve their franchise in other ways.
Back in the 2006 draft, the Phoenix Suns selected a young point guard out of Kentucky named Rajon Rondo and dealt him immediately to the Boston Celtics. The Suns obviously did not draft Rondo for production value (some guard named Steve Nash was still there). The trade brought them very little in retrospect, but at the time they obviously felt they were getting some value for him as an asset. Imagine, for a moment, what they could have received for Rondo (or for Nash) after a few years of development!
This illustrates pretty clearly that any decisions made based on incomplete information are going to have some degree of risk. Determining production value is a frustratingly inexact science (though more and more metrics are coming out to project how a player may transfer his production from the NCAA into the NBA), and evaluating asset value is really a task for the imagination – almost an art. Heightening the risk even more, it’s also easy to have correctly gauged both production and asset value and then have a player suffer an injury or clash with the coaching staff. In the end, each team that makes their selection recognizes there is one over-riding factor preventing the Theory of General Draftability from becoming law: luck.
Have questions for Coach Macri? Be sure and drop by HOOPSWORLD on Mondays at 2PM Eastern for the Coach’s weekly basketball chat! You can also follow Coach Macri on Twitter @CoachMacri.
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