The Sweet Spot in the Draft 2005-2020

The NBA Draft is a high stakes endeavor with millions riding on it. Teams have purposely tried to tank for decades now to get into that top 5 for a chance at this “elite” talent. My question would be unless there is an obvious once a generation can’t miss prospect like Shaq, Duncan, and Lebron with all the hype that surrounded their draft years should they really?

Roughly 50% of the top 100 players this year came from picks outside of the Top 10. The last 4 league MVP’s have went to two players drafted 15th and 41st. Eight of the last 10 Defensive Player of the Years have come from 15th+ with Gobert accounting for only 3 of those. Let’s take a look back at some of the top 5 picks in the NBA draft for the 15 years between 2006-2020.

The story is not done on a couple of the recent draft classes, but I think we have a pretty good idea already of what the likely outcome is. I think it’s pretty reasonable to say these players were all underwhelming if not complete bust.

That’s not even including players like Andrew Wiggins or D’Angelo Russell who weakly made All Star games and are solid enough starters to avoid this list. That said I doubt anyone would really draft them in the top 2 again either knowing the career trajectory and be excited to over paying them like their draft pedigree has ultimately demanded.

That’s 50% of the top 6 draft picks at least that are pretty much misses. To spend the entire year losing just to have a 50% chance of picking a player that doesn’t suck seems like pretty poor odds to me to trust that process. You need to do it years to come up with one meaningful player in most cases if you ever do. Luck still dictates a lot even at that level. Contrast that to some of the top players in the NBA this year and certainly the last 5 years and where they were all drafted outside of the top 10.

The picture starts to emerge to me that the sweet spot is in the late lottery, starting about 12th. You can actually try to win, and the stakes aren’t nearly as all or nothing as the top 5 in the lottery, where you purposely have to try to lose to get to. If you miss at 11th+ it’s not the end of the world like it is for the tankers who miss about 50% of the time anyway and waste the entire year. Even at 11th to 14th you still have a chance to move up too in the lottery. It’s the lottery for a reason.

For all the crap the teams chasing the 8th seed get, I see value in trying to win and then letting your draft scouting do the rest of the work because there are players to be had after the lottery, clearly. As a fan you don’t have to endure years of a full tank chasing players either. Milwaukee, Miami, the Spurs, Indiana, there are plenty examples of teams that built top 4 teams having never bottom out and through good drafting with mostly non lottery picks.