Thinking Moneyball About The Houston Rockets Draft
by R.J. Anderson on Jun 26, 2009 10:00 AM EDT
6 comments
I was a stupid baseball fan in 2002. The extent of my baseball draft knowledge extended to the first few picks overall, maybe a local college player or two, and whoever else the television broadcast and newspapers covered over the next few days. Keep in mind, this is about two years before I discovered Baseball Prospectus' annuals, so to say my baseball opinion was amateur is more than fair.
The 2002 draft was special. The Pittsburgh Pirates were the only team choosing ahead of my Devil Rays, and somehow, for whatever reason, they decided to choose Bryan Bullington. This allowed the Rays to select B.J. Upton. A high school shortstop who some compared to Derek Jeter, filling my naïve heart with glee. Surprisingly, this post isn't all about Upton, like many of my others are. Nope, this was also the infamous Moneyball draft.
Oh no, I'm not going to write about the players involved or anything else beaten over the head a million different times. Nope. I do want to compare my feeling of intrigue from last night's NBA draft to spectators of the A's draft though.
Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey is a sabermetrician. For that reason alone, I pay attention to what his team does. Basketball sabermetrics intrigue me, even if I'm not immersed in the topic like with baseball. So last night, I flip the draft on in the early moments of round two, and I leave it on as I do some writing for other sites.
Then I hear it, again and again. "I have a trade to announce, the Houston Rockets have acquired ‘x', pick ‘y' for cash considerations and a future second round pick."
I swear it seemed to happen every other pick.
Around the time of the NFL draft I recall reading a post, perhaps by Sky himself, about the value of second round draft picks. The money spent on first round picks was more excessive than the talent differentials. Naturally, the New England Patriots were the team trading into the second round willingly and often while others scrambled to get into round one. The Patriots have discovered that second round picks are undervalued much in the way the A's found that draft picks were undervalued.
Connecting the dots from this point on isn't difficult.
I don't know the answer to this question, and honestly I probably won't spend the time researching it for myself, but I do wonder out loud: how valuable are second round draft picks in the NBA? Speaking from my knowledge, albeit limited, I know that second round picks do not carry the price-tag or guaranteed contract of their first round brethren. I also know that acquiring a second round pick requires only an open checkbook, at most.
Left without a first and second round pick to begin the night, the Rockets traded into the second round three times. The players themselves aren't too relevant, the process is. What the Rockets did was essentially buy three lottery tickets. They secured potentially useful players for cash, which as far as I know will not count against their salary cap figure, and for a ‘future second round pick'. Considering the price of a second round pick seems minimal, why do I have the feeling trading a future one isn't a big loss?
I have the feeling Morey may know something the rest of the league doesn't know.
Yet.
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I feel some GM’s in the league do know a good deal about the value of second round pick (off the top of my head, I’d say Portland’s Kevin Pritchett values picks a lot, since his team always seems to have seven of them in the draft). Most teams usually use their second-rounders on Europeans and other internationals and on low-level prospects with the intent to stash them. Internationals are generally better because they end up stashed in Europe for a while.
That being said, I don’t know the numbers on trading in to the second round. I think Morey benefited from team’s perhaps not as interested in taking on bonus salary; NBA teams are notorious for selling draft picks. If Morey dangles a future second rounder (which you’re right, holds almost no value to a team prior to that year), it might entice a few clubs already loaded in their roster to simply forgo the pick. For Morey, he either gets a scrub and loses little or gets a Carl Landry and lands an important bench piece.
by SFiercex4 on Jun 26, 2009 10:54 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
couple things
his name is kevin pritchard.
also, espn.com tried to get a little nerdy and do some statistical analysis of what a pick is usually worth.
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/draft2009/insider/news/story?id=4222914
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/draft2009/insider/news/story?id=4206291
to give perspective, lebron has been worth 24 WAR (over his career), and replacement level allstar is around 10 WAR.
at least with budinger, i think morey saw late lottery talent at slot 44, where the regression line puts the typical #44 pick at about 0.25 WAR. so theres really no risk at all in the move. i guess besides the money he gave for the pick.
by someguy132 on Jun 26, 2009 1:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I knew it was Pritchard, not sure why I wrote that. My apologies.
Not being an Insider, I couldn’t read what looks like an interesting piece. That being said, sounds like R.J.‘s thoughts were right. You don’t lose much in taking the chances, but you do gain if the player breaks into the rotation and is worth some WAR. And in the current basketball market, I’m not surprised many teams were willing to take the money, either because the second-rounder might not make the roster or because they really need the money.
by SFiercex4 on Jun 26, 2009 3:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
R.J.
The other thing you have to consider is that picks can be traded during the draft. So imagine Morey has a late first rounder, like he did this year at #23. He can watch the draft, hoping that one of the handful of players he wants (or at least thinks would be worth the $ at #23) looks available by round 18-19. If this is indeed the case, he gambles and sticks with the pick. If they’re all taken, he dumps the pick, for future value considerations. He may even be able to do this closer to the wire.
It’s not only that the second round may be under-valued relative to the first, but also that those last few marginal picks still classified as “first-rounders” may be really over-valued relative to the second round. It should be easy to see if late first round picks (say the last 5) are traded more frequently than earlier first round picks. An easy way to see a possible trend would be to split the first round into six five-pick-blocks and measure the propensity of a trade happening in each one. That would give you a crude idea of this type of conjecture.
by jakeruss on Jun 26, 2009 11:16 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
There are couple of CBA-related things at work
1) There’s a hard fifteen active player-contract limit in the NBA. Before the draft, the Rockets had only eleven active player contracts, factoring in deals that expire on June 30th. With four potential roster openings, no guarantee that they’ll be able to re-sign their own free agents, no draft picks available and only the mid-level exception available to them, it was essential that the team procured talent to fill out the roster or use in trades.
2) If a team has a roster stacked with players, a draft pick is relatively useless to them. I mean, they could always “purchase a lottery ticket” with an overseas player with no intent to play in the NBA right away, but given the fact that the economy has hit many NBA teams hard — and is reducing the salary cap and the MLE — teams are more inclined to take those “cash considerations”. I know off hand that Washington is loaded with guaranteed player contracts and Detroit drafted three players before selling their fourth.
by All Shook Down on Jun 26, 2009 6:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
It's a practice that was perfected by the San Antonio Spurs in the early part of the decade, and most teams with the cap space do
The biggest success story was obviously taking Manu Ginobili with the 2nd to last pick of the 2nd round in 1999. Since some franchises are more cash-strapped than others despite being very good on court, they have to sell their low 1st round picks to avoid paying the luxury tax, since any 1st round selection is a guaranteed hit on the salary cap. The Phoenix Suns are notorious for giving away valuable draft picks (Luol Deng, Rajon Rondo, Rudy Fernandez) that would have given an already elite team some incredible depth, but to avoid the tax and retain their superstars, they had to trade the picks for cash.
2nd round picks are valuable depending on the franchise. Teams like Portland, San Antonio love to draft international prospects in hopes that they can buy out their contracts in a few years. Chicago loves to draft notable NCAA players who were very good at the college level, but for lack of athleticism or whatever aren’t considered 1st round prospects, but the team loves their fundamentals. A 2nd round pick is worthless in the hands of say, the Clippers, who don’t even recognize how to draft in the lottery after all these years.
The Chicago Bulls.....the more profitable Los Angeles Clippers.
by Ozzie Montana on Jun 27, 2009 2:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
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