Because teams that win 34-49 games are twice as likelyto become a contender within five years as a team with less than 25 wins.
why, though?
My theory is that teams that are bad enough to win 25 or fewer games are in such a talent hole that even if they draft a future All-Star, it takes years to surround that player with a solid supporting cast. The Celtics this season always struck me as a team that had too much talent to be that bad unless they got hit by injuries, Brad Stevens was a bad coach, or the locker room became a toxic cesspool.
I personally disagree with that writers logic. I think he uses the wrong window (4 years), the wrong criteria (35-49 wins, 54 wins), I believe he's using overlapping time frames, and he's lumping all drafts together.
1. The 4 year window. I can't think of one marquee top 3 pick, that left his team after his rookie deal. LeBron, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, those guys all re-signed with their team after their rookie deal. Howard and Anthony spent 8 years with their original teams, Bosh and LeBron 7, Chris Paul 6. Kevin Love, a threat to leave, has already spent 6 years in Minnesota, and it will be 7 if he opts out, or 8 if he takes the player option. I think he should use a 7 year window.
2. 54 wins. I think it's too high. He's saying Cleveland wasn't a contender in any the 5 years after LeBron (despite making the Finals)? This is a little more arbitrary, so it's not a big deal. But I think any fan would be ecstatic to win 50-53 wins within 5 years of tanking and getting a top 3 pick.
3. Overlapping window. I don't know his data, but to me it looks like this:
2003 Cleveland - Won 17 games in 2003 to get LeBron, never won more than 50 in the next 5. You don't want to be them. Instead, you'd be much better off being 2005 Cleveland (42 to 50 wins) or 2008 Cleveland (45 wins to 66 the next year).
2004 Orlando - Won 21 games to get Dwight, then had to wait 4 long years to get to 52 wins. Why would you be 2004 Orlando when you could be 2007 Orlando who went from 42 wins to the Finals in 2 years.
The question is, how do you get to be in the 34-49 win with a young stud, without tanking first to get there?
I imagine some of those teams he's labeled as mediocre are really teams that tanked previously but were then on the rise (Cleveland, OKC, Orlando, etc.).
4. I feel there's only a few seasons when several teams are really tanking. 1996 is one of the best drafts ever, but teams weren't really tanking for the chance to draft Iverson or Camby (at least the way I remember it). 1985, 1997, 2007, and 2014 are the only drafts I recall being thought to have game changers going in that teams were tanking for (maybe '92 but it was even harder to tank then, and don't remember tanking talks then). Teams might be bad and rebuild in other years, but they're not really tanking for the chance to draft Olowakandi, Kenyon Martin, Elton Brand, Kwame Brown, Bogut, Bargnani, etc. There's only a few particular seasons where several teams are thought to be tanking hard, so I don't think you can count them with teams that are just bad ahead of the 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, etc. drafts.
Not necessarily saying I disagree with the anti-tanking approach, just I have a few questions/concerns/disagreements with the way he came to his conclusions.
