Does TANKING for the NBA Lottery ACTUALLY work?
They call it the NBA lottery for a reason because some teams will hit the jackpot, and others will be kicking themselves for blowing everything they have on a ticket. In 2023 the Dallas Mavericks were fined 750 thousand dollars for tanking. They elected to sit Kyrie Irving and practically all of their starters, basically throwing a game that could have earned them a spot in the play-in tournament. They weren’t tanking for the worst record in the league, but simply to get into the lottery, likely as no better than the 10th pick in the draft. It was leaked that Dallas felt losing was their best chance at improving their team, and I find that hard to believe. So let’s see what the history of the draft actually tells us about the lottery’s chances of making your team into a championship contender.
To answer this question I looked at every draft from 2015 to 2019. Because to be clear, first round picks sign 2 year deals with a 2 year team option. Which means any player drafted in 2020 or later hasn’t really had a legit chance to fail or succeed. But after those two options NBA teams are forced to determine if they even want to keep them around any longer and actually pay them. Honestly lottery picks in the draft fit into 3 categories. The All Stars, the NBA players, and the benchwarmers. We know that every team in the lottery is hoping to get an All Star, but realistically, that’s not going to happen.
The All Stars
Every team wants a future All Star in the NBA draft, but the odds of getting one aren’t high. Between 2015 and 2019 there were 20 All stars selected out of 70 picks. That means that 2 out of every 7 lottery picks will actually pan out. What it means to be an All star is simple, get elected to an All star team, at least once. That means that D’angelo Russell who wasn’t even an all star for the team who drafted him is a success story. Along with Ja Morant, Darius Garland, Shai Gilgeous Alexander, and even Devin Booker. Even every All Star isn’t created equal. So far, only Devin Booker, and Luka Doncic have actually made the All NBA first team of all the stars drafted since 2015. And on top of all that, the chances of getting an all star at the top of the draft, in the top 3 picks is actually 9 out of 20. Which means that nearly half of all the all stars will likely come from the top 3 picks, and you might as well be rolling dice from there. Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, and Donovan Mitchell were all drafted either 13th or 14th. Those are the last two picks of the lottery, and all of them are All Stars now.
The NBA Players
If you can’t get an All Star then you need to at least get a legitimate NBA player out of the lottery, am I right? If you don’t then it is safe to say that your NBA draft grade is an F for failure. Most NBA players don’t last long in the league, so the goal is to at the very least add someone to your team who will. Any player who started at least 40 games in 3 seasons, or averaged 15 points or more twice is what I would call a legit NBA player. Yet the lottery has a lot of men who won’t make the cut. Only 20 players drafted in the lottery qualify as NBA players, between 2015 and 2019. Which is ironically the same number of All Stars that were available.
The NBA players range from Myles Turner in 2015, to RJ Barret, De’Andre Hunter, and Tyler Herro in 2019. There’s no real correlation between where these players are drafted, all that matters is that they were in the lottery, and you had to snatch them up before someone else did. Or be thankful that nobody else did before you turn comes around. Buddy Hield and Jamal Murray both went sixth and seventh in their 2016 draft class, which is ironic because the teams that picked ahead of both of them, sure wish they took them over the actual guys they drafted.
The Benchwarmers
The truth is that the remaining 30 players drafted in the lottery are benchwarmers. To be as clear as possible, these players didn’t start more than 40 games in a season 3 times, and some of them either ended up out of the league entirely, or left and came back after a period of time in the G League or overseas. Some benchwarmers hang around the league but all that matters is they aren’t on the court that much. Typically they will play the most during their first 2 seasons in the league on their rookie scale contracts. After that time has passed, they likely bounce around from team to team, because they are the types of guys you throw into a trade just to make the money work.
Benchwarmers are all over the lottery, even within the top 3 picks because Marvin Bagley III and Jahlil Okafor qualify as benchwarmers, and they were drafted 2 and 3 overall. If you look around the G league rosters you will find some of these lottery picks who became benchwarmers. Like Willie Cauley-Stein, Jarrett Culver and Emanuel Mudiay who are all G league players now. In fact for the 2015 draft, only Myles Turner survived as an NBA player, alongside 4 other All Stars. Which means that the other 9 men drafted in the lottery were all bench warmers.
The Bottom Line
Teams can tank if they want to because draft picks come cheap, and can get you a lot of production really fast. Howver, unless your scouting department is incredibly good at their jobs, there is almost no way of knowing who you will actually get in the lottery. In fact if you don’t have a top 3 pick, the chance of getting an All Star drops down to only 20 percent. And your chances of getting a bench warmer are more than 50 percent!
The Thunder drafted Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden three years in a row. So the lottery brought them three NBA MVPs and no championships to show for it coincidentally. The 76ers only got Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, after years of tanking with what they called the Process. You can trust the process if you want to, but betting on tanking to win NBA games is so far away from a sure thing that it is legitimately gambling with your future. If you pick wrong, somebody will likely get fired over it. Let's hope that Mark Cuban and the Mavericks know what their doing because they sure aren’t in the Wembanyama sweepstakes this year. The chance of drafting another bench warmer is way more likely than even getting a future starter, but of course this is why they call it the lottery. Only one thing is for certain, there will be winners and losers. May the odds be ever in your favor.
KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.
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