We are about to enter “big board” season, the time when every Joe, Dick, Susan, Harry, Sally, Alfred and Tom will be ranking prospects set to enter the NBA draft in list order and sharing these lists. On the face, the purpose of these lists, knowing it is nearly impossible to do so, would seem to be to rank the prospects in the correct order from best to not-so-best. The reality of the matter, at least for NBA teams and not armchair enthusiasts like you and me, is that the big board is only the first step in creating a roadmap or decision tree.

According to wikipedia, a decision tree is “a decision support tool that uses a tree-like graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility.” They can take on all shapes and sizes, but often they look something like the chart below. Though even were we not to draw it out like this, or to draw it out at all, an NBA team’s decision-making must greatly resemble such a tree, choosing between action and inaction by considering the possible consequences of a decision at least several steps into the future:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree#/media/File:DecisionCalcs.jpg

To get one example of how this might play out, let’s take a look back at the 2017 Draft and think about the Boston Celtics. By now, it should be apparent, no matter what games were played before the draft, that Jayson Tatum was number one on the Boston Celtics draft board, while Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball were perhaps one and two on a majority of other boards. Thus, the Boston Celtics’ notes about the top of the draft may have looked something like this:

Notice that I did not rank Fultz or Ball. I am sure Boston would’ve ranked these players, but I have no idea how they might have done so, and for the purpose of this thought exercise, it is not important. Tatum was number one and Tatum was the player they wanted, and we should assume, that since Boston had the number one pick in the draft, there was no way they weren’t going to end up with their guy.

The simplest way to do so, of course, would have been merely to select Tatum at number one. Tatum on the Celtics. Case closed. But that was not necessarily the best course of action, because there was the possibility, given one of the team’s below them wanted to trade up to insure the selection of their player, of a trade down. Which is to say, there was a possibility of extracting additional value out of a selection that the Celtics were going to make regardless. The only condition for success was that neither of the two teams below them could have Tatum rated as the best prospect.

You can see the pertinent information included on the simple table above. We could guess with a reasonable certainty before the draft that the Lakers liked both Fultz and Ball. We could guess with a reasonable certainty that the Sixers loved Fultz. These positions were telegraphed, without any real mystery. Whereas no one knew how Boston would act, an uncertainty that provided the two teams below them a potential incentive to act in order to insure the prospect of their choice.

A simplified version of Boston’s decision tree might have looked something like this, apologies in advance for the messy scrawl on a stray sheet of paper:

From that tree, it is obvious that Boston had every incentive to trade down, if such an option was available. If Philadelphia was willing to trade a first round pick, trade down. If Philadelphia was willing to trade not so much more than a early second round pick, trade down.

Though it should be noted firstly that the Celtics couldn’t send this signal. In order to possibly extract a high first round pick, they had to make Philadelphia think it was necessary to trade one. And secondly, it may have been necessary for Philadelphia to trade one, as accepting a trade that was perceived by the league as being undervalued might send the wrong message in making future trades, one that gives other teams the idea that they can walk all over you, even if you were making a calm and rational decision.

The risk of that potentiality would certainly show up on a more complicated version of the same decision tree, one that mapped out not only the potential trading partners but the potential assets that would be received in return and how they might positively or negatively affect not only the roster, but the organization’s ability to make effective actions in the future.

With Respect To The Draft

First, we have to make a big board. One consideration in making this board should be that the gaps in talent at the very top of the draft are likely larger than those that we’ll find as we move down the board. Perhaps not every year, but in most, the difference between the first and third best prospect is likely quite a bit larger than the difference between the 10th and 20th best prospect. Even if there is only a single space between one and three, while there are nine spaces between 10 and 20.

This is one of the purposes of a tiered ranking system — to separate out the prospects who are similar in value from those that are not. Thus, rankings within tiers should mean less than rankings between them. Though the same rule that applied to individual prospects also applies to tiers as a whole. The difference between the first and second tier is likely larger than the difference between the second and third tier, and also very possibly larger than the difference between the second and fourth tier.

We can see this if we rank drafts in hindsight, knowing the true outcomes of the players within. 2009 will perhaps be a good example, ranking with preference for players who have been selected to All-NBA teams:

2009 is one of the rare drafts where the difference between the top 2 prospects in terms of peak value is significantly less than the difference between the 2nd and 3rd prospect. Aside from that, the rules hold up. Blake Griffin’s peak, which was relatively early in his career, was quite a bit more valuable than anyone in the draft besides Curry and Harden. DeMar DeRozan is of course better now, but apex Griffin vs apex DeRozan isn’t close.

Whereas I’d argue that the difference between apex DeRozan and the best version of Wesley Matthews, pre-achilles injury, in terms of total value delivered to team was probably not all that different. And even then, arguably for certain teams, the best versions of Jeff Teague or Jrue Holiday or Patrick Beverley may have been more favorable than that version of Matthews.

So don’t get too bogged down in how I have ranked the players and tiers in particular. There are likely many other rankings which are arguably valid, and I may have even forgotten someone who belongs within this group of players. The important thing to note is that the players at the very top of the board change the respective destinies of their franchises in hugely positive ways and are very few, whereas the players below them, even if they happen to be very good, tend to act as compliments to those standouts.

There are many more complimentary players than there are superstars. But go beyond that. There are many more single-time or borderline all-star types than there are true multi-year all-stars. There are many more multi-year all-star level players than there are true difference-makers. The kinds of players we would call superstars. The kinds of players that could be the best player on the best team.

We all know this much. This knowledge has to be incorporated in some way into our big boards.

Number Two: The Ranking Itself And Decision Trees

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation in which the team that selects number one has ranked Luka Doncic and DeAndre Ayton, without considering context to the team (just as players), with identical grades. Now let’s consider this team draws out a decision tree for each player, reflecting not only the possibilities for each individual player but how selecting that player will affect other decisions the team might make in the future.

A bare bones beginning of decision tree for this team, should it end up with the number one pick, might start out with three options: pick Doncic, pick Ayton, or make a trade.

From there, the decision tree would form three trees of their own, each as simple or complex as it might need to be, noting how this draft decision would affect 2018 Free Agency, then the season in terms of wins-losses-possible trades-possible in season acquisitions, then onto the next draft, the next free agency and so on, until the number of possible futures deriving from a single decision at the top of the draft might seem numerous enough that it wouldn’t matter if they were infinite.

The main point here is not the number of possible futures, but that the decisions we make right now, to a great degree, affect the decisions we might make in the future. The selection between a versatile wing-type player and a single position player like a center or a point guard often changes the very nature of a franchise’s future choices.

Considering just the question of center versus the other two positions, we can see some signs if we merely look at the league at large. How some of the best teams have won big with off-the-street free agents like ZaZa Pachulia, JaVale McGee, David West, Nene Hilario, Amir Johnson, Aron Baynes, and Ersan Ilyasova. Or with players chosen relatively late in the draft like Clint Capela or Pascal Siakam or Daniel Thies. To pay a center often precludes a team from signing one or several of these bigs for cheap. And even if they are not huge value difference-makers, they are players that do traditionally add a fair amount of surplus value to the team, relative to the size of the contracts they sign.

Then we can also look at the list of names who might become free agents at the position in the next few years, including but not limited to Nerlens Noel, Clint Capela, DeAndre Jordan, Nikola Jokic, Rudy Gobert, Steven Adams, Andre Drummond, Kelly Olynyk, Zach Collins and Jarrett Allen. And lastly, according to ESPN, the players who happen to be rated most highly in the 2019 draft class:

James Wiseman, Vernon Carey Jr., Charles Bassey and Chol Marial. All centers. Not only is the center position one that is not particularly scarce of talent now, it isn’t likely to be so in the coming future either. And though there’s a few players that add very good to elite positional value from the center position (Anthony David, Joel Embiid, Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic, Karl Towns, and Al Horford), it is telling that no team that’s won a championship has featured a center as its first or second most important player since Dallas in 2011 (the Spurs were in 2013-14 built around Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and teamwork, whereas the two most important players on the Mavericks were their bigs, Dirk Nowitzki and Tyson Chandler).

That’s six years and very likely to go to seven in 2018. The game is no longer played from the inside-out. And it’s apparent absolutely everywhere, from college basketball to the NBA. Everywhere that is, except for the NBA draft.

A Further Examination Of The Center Conundrum

We also saw this in Philadelphia recently when the Sixers selected three centers whose offensive games couldn’t possibly fit together. What ended up happening? The best one of the three, Joel Embiid, rightly monopolized opportunities when healthy, while the other two, Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor, grew discontent with reduced opportunity and were discarded from the franchise for very little, or next to nothing.

Given the knowledge I had at the time and knowing very little about Giannis or Gobert, Nerlens Noel seemed like the right choice to me. As did Joel Embiid the following year. The chance for a potential star or superstar player should not be passed up. But when embarking down this path of picking players who cannot fit together, you can bet more times than not, that one of more of the players is going to have to part ways with the franchise. That’s not always a bad thing.

The Sixers picking Jahlil Okafor, instead of Kristaps Porzingis, undoubtedly led to more losses which led to the chance to draft Ben Simmons, a player who not only seems to be better than Kristaps now and into the future, but also seems to better fit the needs of a modern champion, most of which are driven by brilliantly creative perimeter players of one fashion or another. Clearly a one step back, two steps forward situation, but a situation that also relied on a fair amount of luck as the Sixers had a fairly small chance to win the lottery, even with the league’s worst record (only 25 percent). Whereas the Sixers had a 100 percent chance of drafting Kristaps Porzingis the prior year, should they have wished it.

Passing up a 100 percent chance at Porzingis for a 25 percent chance at Simmons is not always going to be a decision that is going to work out so well. And that’s not even considering that the odds were certainly less than 25 percent, since the Sixers still had to go through the season and lose all those games. It’s also noteworthy considering the worst team, from here on out, will never again have such a high chance at receiving the first pick. The rules have been changed.

If that’s the case, a team naturally not only wants the most talented player, but the most talented player who allows the greatest future flexibiity in team building. Therefore, in the situation any team comes to an equal or near equal grade on Luka Doncic and DeAndre Ayton, this team should necessarily rate Doncic higher, for allowing for more versatile roster construction into the future is reason enough. The center precludes more possibilities than the player who can play wing or power forward on defense.

That’s just one way decision trees, or any form of thought that allow us to consider not just the present decision but the way that present decision will impact future decisions, is important. And, at least if we are to make good decisions in the present, we absolutely, with as much clarity as is possible in matters of insight and foresight, must consider the possible futures into which these decisions will lead us.

A Big Board Is Just A Tool To Make Decisions

One of the best examples was in the 2012 draft in which, without a doubt, Andre Drummond at number nine is the best player selected until you get to the beginning of the second round. Draymond Green (picked 35), Khris Middleton (picked 39), and Jae Crowder (picked 34) all have arguments as being the better players, or, at the very least, being more useful to contenders at the high points of their careers. However, none of these players were likely to be selected by the NBA anywhere before the end of the first round, a fact which, despite the fact that the success of at least two of them was picked out by multiple computer models and several people, likely remains at least partially true today.

So the Pistons picked Andre Drummond at number nine. By the way we judge the draft, this is a highly successful pick. Getting a player who has been selected to all-star teams and who multiple members of the league would deem worth a max contract anywhere outside of the top three should in general terms be considered a huge win.

However, it’s fairly easy to see, should we look at the Pistons’ decisions since then, the most important ones almost inevitably given the selection of Drummond and his ability on the floor, how this pick essentially doomed the franchise to years of mediocrity.

The chain of events is as follows:

1) Select Andre Drummond.

2) Andre Drummond develops.

3) Year 2 or Year 3 decision: trade Andre Drummond on the way up and risk losing the best talent your franchise has seen in years (teams never do this) or decide to pay Andre Drummond when he becomes a restricted free agent, removing basically all flexibility from the team’s future.

4) To build around Andre Drummond, the Pistons need a perimeter player of import but cannot find one in the draft. Trade for the best one they can get —Reggie Jackson.

5) Andre Drummond becomes good enough to be worth and to demand the biggest contract his team was allowed to give him. Max extension for Andre Drummond.

6) Detroit can’t let Reggie Jackson leave for nothing. Big contract extension for Reggie Jackson.

7) Results: repeatedly picking in the late middle or tail-end of the lottery in which talent is more difficult to select, little salary cap flexibility for a team that already has trouble attracting free agents, borderline to out of the playoff team for the foreseeable future, and no chance at a championship.

That’s what happens when a team hitches their ride to the wrong player, however good he may be. And Andre Drummond is good at basketball. He’s just not good enough compared to the guys he has to beat.

I’m not going to say this type of franchise crisis could have been avoided by the use of a decision tree, or any other schemata that might allow one to envision the extended outcomes that may evolve from our present day decisions. What I am going to say is if that’s the end result, almost inevitably, of picking such a player, a player who happens to be as good as Drummond but not better, at the top of the draft, shouldn’t we be grading the draft differently? And creating the decision-making tools that allow us to make decisions in the draft differently as well?

Is a big board sufficient? Yes, perhaps. But we have to realize that a big board is just a tool. And that sometimes, given our psychology which leads us to dangerous biases that have us holding positions longer than we should. These most dangerous biases for basketball personnel men are these, with explanations provided by Investopedia.com:

1) Disposition Effect Bias: “This refers to a tendency to label investments as winners or losers. Disposition effect bias can lead an investor to hang onto an investment that no longer has any upside.”

2) Regret Aversion Bias: “Also known as loss aversion, regret aversion describes wanting to avoid the feeling of regret experienced after making a choice with a negative outcome. Investors who are influenced by anticipated regret take less risk because it lessens the potential for poor outcomes. Regret aversion can explain an investor’s reluctance to sell losing investments.”

3) Familiarity Bias: “This occurs when investors have a preference for familiar or well-known investments despite the seemingly obvious gains from diversification . The investor may feel anxiety when diversifying investments between well known domestic securities and lesser known international securities, as well as between both familiar and unfamiliar stocks and bonds that are outside of his or her comfort zone. This can lead to suboptimal portfolios with a greater a risk of losses.”

4) Anchoring or Confirmation Bias: “An investor whose thinking is subject to confirmation bias would be more likely to look for information that supports his or her original idea about an investment rather than seek out information that contradicts it.”

There would be no problem with drafting a capable player like Andre Drummond if teams were willing to walk away and take profits early. But there are more than a few reasons that isn’t likely to happen, and indeed rarely does. In the NBA’s reality, the only prospects that seem somewhat likely to be traded early are those like Steve Nash, Chauncey Billups, Joe Johnson or Mike Miller that simply don’t perform up to immediate, and sometimes unrealistic, expectations in their first year or two in the league.

Andre Drummond and The 2018 Draft

Andre Drummond is interesting with respect to the 2018 Draft primarily because he is a center, and the 2018 draft has a plethora of players at this position who could be lottery picks: DeAndre Ayton, Jaren Jackson Jr., Marvin Bagley, Wendell Carter Jr., Mitchell Robinson, Jontay Porter and Robert Williams. That’s seven players who essentially play the same position, and possibly eight, if we consider that Michael Porter Jr.’s best position may be as a four/five.

The first problem here is that center more than any other position, even point guard, is a zero sum game. They can’t all possibly be good enough to lead one’s team to a championship level, or even be a key piece worth a large percentage of the salary cap. It wasn’t possible in a league that was dominated by big men. It certainly isn’t possible in a league that is now completely dominated by mostly smaller players who play on the perimeter.

And that’s not even considering the league is already well stocked with young and very good big men and will continue to be so into the future.

Anthony Davis. Joel Embiid. Rudy Gobert. KAT. Jokic. Steven Adams. Andre Drummond. Clint Capela. Myles Turner. Jonas. Cody. Zach C. JJJ. Marvin Bagley. WCJ. James Wiseman. Vernon Carey Jr. Charles Bassey. All 25 or under. In DeAndre Ayton's best season he's the — B (@KaiserLindeman) April 19, 2018

Ask yourself just how good one of these players has to be to truly be worth the almost inevitable max or near max contract they will receive and then ask yourself if they are not that good, what the future may be for one’s franchise. Because when Steven Adams is currently the sixth best center under 25, the bar is really high, let alone to be at an Anthony Davis or Joel Embiid level.

Of course, we could ask the same question of Luka Doncic and very realistically come to a similar conclusion.

Giannis. Harden. Kawhi. Ben Simmons. Oladipo. Paul George. Draymond Green. Cov. OPJ. Donovan Mitchell. Jayson Tatum. Jaylen B. Lonzo Ball. Ingram. Markelle Fultz. Zion Williamson. RJB. Scottie Lewis. All wing sized players 27 or under. In his best season, Luka Doncic will be — B (@KaiserLindeman) April 20, 2018

James Harden shouldn’t be on this list, as he’s in his age 28 season, but there will certainly be others we could add as we move further into the future. Perhaps conservatively, it seems unlikely Doncic will ever be one of the top two wing-sized players in the league. And were I to have to bet, 4th to 7th would be the most likely outcome. Better is certainly possible, as it is for Ayton. But the most likely scenario for a player with Doncic’s strengths and weaknesses is top out slightly below the group that is in actual competition to be the best player in the league.

Here’s the difference (already addressed above). A team can play at least three of these players together, and if that is like Philadelphia or Milwaukee or perhaps Zion Williamson’s future team, with huge players that can create for their teammates, even four. The other aspect of Doncic that supersedes many of the bigs is that he has a classic “skills that fit” profile. That is, the set of NBA skills which do not diminish and are sometimes amplified in value when placed in the context of team. To speak broadly, we could identify those skills roughly as:

1) Shooting the basketball from distance. Floor spacing.

2) Passing the basketball. Ball movement and creation.

3) Decision-making and taking care of the basketball with respect to role. Could include cutting, screening, etc…

4) Effort. A skill which affects all other skills.

5) Rebounding.

6) Individual Defense.

7) Team Defense.

Doncic has at the very least the first five, and I’d argue that he’s going to be a solid to good team defender as well, even if team’s do at times clip him on his individual D. Think of Doncic as a slightly less extreme version of UCLA Lonzo Ball here. Is he going to be the team defender Ball is? No. But that won’t necessarily limit him from having some effect.

It’s eminently different drafting this kind of player and having them only turn out as the 7th to 10th best player at his position. Not just because it’s actually two or three positions, but because players of this type not only can play together, but can have skills which are amplified by the presence of others. How much better, for instance, do you think Doncic would be if he got to play alongside Lebron or Giannis or Simmons? Not only players whose very presence on the court would shift huge amounts of defensive attention away from him, but players who can create open shots and driving lanes for others.

And we could say the same to a great extent for all the good to great wings, Mikal Bridges and Miles Bridges potentially in this draft for example . While also believing the team context projection might be more difficult for the centers or even players like Trae Young and Collin Sexton. Even if the centers or the small point guards do indeed end up being the best players in the draft. Certainly possible. According to many, even likely.

But these players not only have to be the best in the draft to be successful picks. They have to be the best players in the league, the best in ways that the upper crust wing sized players simply won’t have to be. Either that, or the team that drafts them has to be prepared to move off of them when the time comes. That’s generally year one, year two or year three. Year fou is possible as well, but by that time it is often too late.

This is one reason why when teams are considering players in the draft, it is fundamentally important for them to consider trade value. What it may be in a year or two, but even more so, what it is at the time of the draft. Very often, the value of a player to the league at large will never be greater than on the day of the draft. If I were a team, I would find a way to bake such trade value into my big boards, into my decision trees.

After all, due not in small part to our precognitive biases as humans, it may be the last time one gets a chance to make such a decision. But teams who are prepared to walk away from good players when it is time (Jrue Holiday, Thaddeus Young for the Sixers) might put themselves in position to find great ones later (Embiid, Simmons). Even then, there are no guarantees. There never are. In the NBA, every team is competing for the same goal, a championship, and at the end of each year, only one team can win.