Effects of Draft Lottery Results on NBA History Part2

NBA Draft is days away so it’s time for some topics about it…

In part 1 I focused on a difference between players who were drafted at any given spot and those who would have been drafted there had lottery played out exactly as odds suggested. In part 2 I’ll take into consideration those odds. Incidentally I’ve stumbled into a solid way of quantifying how well teams have drafted!

But first, here’s a remainder of rules which were used:
– I assumed continuity of teams so “OKC Thunder” means “Seattle SuperSonics” in earlier years,
– I included new ownership of picks via trades only when they were completed before making a pick,
– I assumed that Career Win Shares in regular season adequately describe player’s career,
– I assumed that players would be drafted at the same slot no matter which team have owned given pick.

What’s more, I changed perspective to the Last 10 Years because IMHO drafts from 1995 to 2000 had too big impact on numbers because careers of those players have lasted way longer than any other. For every season in last decade I re-created probabilities of getting every pick before draft [this is an example from 2010]:

Team	Rec	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th	11th	12th	13th	14th
NJ	12-70	0,25	0,215	0,177	0,358	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
MIN	15-67	0,199	0,188	0,171	0,319	0,124	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
SAC	25-57	0,156	0,157	0,155	0,225	0,265	0,041	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
GSW	26-56	0,104	0,112	0,121	0,099	0,373	0,178	0,014	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
WAS	26-56	0,103	0,111	0,12	0	0,238	0,342	0,082	0,004	0	0	0	0	0	0
PHI	27-55	0,053	0,06	0,07	0	0	0,44	0,331	0,045	0,001	0	0	0	0	0
DET	27-55	0,053	0,06	0,07	0	0	0	0,572	0,226	0,018	0	0	0	0	0
LAC	29-53	0,023	0,027	0,032	0	0	0	0	0,725	0,184	0,009	0	0	0	0
UTH	29-53	0,022	0,026	0,031	0	0	0	0	0	0,797	0,121	0,004	0	0	0
IND	32-50	0,011	0,013	0,016	0	0	0	0	0	0	0,87	0,089	0,002	0	0
NOR	37-45	0,008	0,009	0,012	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0,907	0,063	0,001	0
MEM	40-42	0,007	0,008	0,01	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0,935	0,039	0
TOR	40-42	0,006	0,007	0,009	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0,96	0,018
HOU	42-40	0,005	0,006	0,007	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0,982

Then with those numbers in hand I calculated Expected Value for every spot [in Career Win Shares] and compared it to Career Win Shares of a player who was actually drafted at given pick.

This can sound complicated but it really isn’t, so let me show you an example from 2010:

Nets had 25% chance for #1, 21.5% for #2, 17.7% for #3 and 35.8% for #4. Those picks turned out to be John Wall [with 2,2 Career Win Shares to Date], Evan Turner [2,3], Derrick Favors [2,9], Wesley Johnson [1,3] so our final equation for this spot looks like this: 2,9 – [0,25 * 2,2 + 0,215 * 2,3 + 0,177 * 2,9 + 0,358 * 1,3] = 0,8768 which means that based on their chances of acquiring certain players before draft Nets have gained almost 1 Win Share with their decision to draft Favors.

And when you do the same for all picks, all teams and sum up results you will get this table…
BTW, “Total Change” = aforementioned calculations for every team’s pick while
“Times” = Times in the lottery and “CWS” = Career Win Shares:

Team	Total Change	Times	Biggest Loss	Year	CWS	Biggest Gain	Year	CWS
Houston	57,27	5	Marcus Banks	2003	–	Yao Ming	2002	52,2
Orlando	31,87	3	Fran Vasquez	2005	-12,1	Dwight Howard	2004	43,2
Oklahoma City	27,90	7	Vladimir Radmanovic	2001	-2,4	Kevin Durant	2007	24,9
New Orleans	27,53	4	Hilton Armstrong	2006	-0,7	Chris Paul	2005	28,8
Boston	22,72	3	Jeff Green	2007	-5,5	Brandon Roy	2006	23,9
Memphis	20,68	6	Mike Conley	2007	-5,4	Drew Gooden	2002	13,2
Portland	19,89	5	Tyrus Thomas	2006	-2,8	Deron Williams	2005	24,8
Miami	16,09	3	Michael Beasley	2008	-6,7	Dwyane Wade	2003	20,2
Phoenix	14,65	3	Earl Clark	2009	-0,1	Amare Stoudemire	2002	7,4
Cleveland	13,63	5	Dajuan Wagner	2002	-23,8	LeBron James	2003	51,2
Golden State	7,54	9	Ike Diogu	2005	-4,3	Jason Richardson	2001	9,5
Philadelphia	5,27	4	Evan Turner	2010	-0,7	Andre Iguodala	2004	5,9
New York	1,54	5	Mike Sweetney	2003	-3,0	Nene Hilario	2002	8,1
L.A. Lakers	0,98	1	–	–	–	Andrew Bynum	2005	1,0
Atlanta	-0,79	6	Marvin Williams	2005	-22,2	Pau Gasol	2001	41,5
Sacramento	-2,16	4	Spencer Hawes	2007	-1,0	Jason Thompson	2008	0,0
Indiana	-2,21	4	Acie Law	2007	-1,8	Paul George	2010	0,2
Milwaukee	-19,12	6	Yi Jianlian	2007	-17,1	Andrew Bogut	2005	10,4
L.A. Clippers	-20,38	9	Chris Kaman	2003	-30,8	Tyson Chandler	2001	38,3
Utah	-20,40	4	Martell Webster	2005	-19,7	Ronnie Brewer	2006	0,2
Toronto	-20,53	6	Rafael Araujo	2004	-15,4	Chris Bosh	2003	4,6
Chicago	-22,03	7	Jay Williams	2002	-33,2	LaMarcus Aldridge	2006	23,9
Charlotte	-26,56	5	Adam Morrison	2006	-15,9	D.J. Augustin	2008	9,8
Minnesota	-28,28	6	Randy Foye	2006	-13,5	Rashad McCants	2005	-0,6
Denver	-32,38	3	Nikoloz Tskitishvili	2002	-18,3	Kedrick Brown	2001	-2,9
New Jersey	-32,48	4	Eddie Griffin	2001	-34,4	Brook Lopez	2008	1,6
Detroit	-35,56	3	Darko Milicic	2003	-27,3	Greg Monroe	2010	2,2
Washington	-47,22	6	Kwame Brown	2001	-29,1	John Wall	2010	0,3

I didn’t plan it but…
those lists could work as The Best and the Worst Pick for each team in the Last 10 Years, right?
Although we have to remember that most of careers are still going on so this list will change over time there are few IMHO interesting notes here:

• Mavs and Spurs weren’t in the lottery in the last 10 years,
• Wolves and Nuggets drafted so badly that their BEST move was a loss
  [remember that Carmelo was worse than Bosh and Wade],
• Nets, Pistons and Wizards only recently have came up with a positive result,
• Rockets, Hornets and Thunder not only drafted a star but also avoided huge losses.

As a bonus here’s a summary for effects of moving up and down in the draft thanks to lottery results…

Move	Total Change	Times	Biggest Loss	Year	CWS	Biggest Gain	Year	CWS
8	9,20	1	–	–	–	Derrick Rose	2008	9,2
6	38,27	2	Greg Oden	2007	-0,8	Tyson Chandler	2001	38,3
5	10,36	1	–	–	-0,8	Andrew Bogut	2005	10,4
4	14,41	6	Darko Milicic	2003	-27,3	Yao Ming	2002	52,2
3	24,89	1	–	–	–	Kevin Durant	2007	24,9
2	41,67	4	Kwame Brown	2001	-29,1	Pau Gasol	2001	41,5
1	16,92	4	Shaun Livingston	2004	-30,5	Brandon Roy	2006	23,9
0	-30,60	80	Jay Williams	2002	-33,2	LeBron James	2003	51,2
-1	-124,48	19	Eddie Griffin	1999	-34,4	Dwyane Wade	2003	20,2
-2	7,48	10	Martell Webster	2005	-19,7	Chris Paul	2005	28,8
-3	-42,14	7	Eddy Curry	2001	-20,3	Jason Richardson	2001	9,5
-4	-7,68	1	Jonny Flynn	2009	-7,7	–	–	–

OK, it is not an exciting discovery that it was better to move up than to move down…
but once in a while somebody will take Marvin Williams over Chris Paul ;-)
BTW, staying in the same spot could be considered a slight loss…

P.S. Sorry for the delay but it was a tough cookie to make…