The NBA has been considering changes to its player draft rules. The league is leaning towards increasing the randomness of the selection order, diminishing the current dependence on losing team records for setting selection order. The concern is that bad teams have an incentive to lose games in order to improve their chance of acquiring a transformational player by selecting him at the front of the draft. The draft, for teams that pursue such a course and tank, is a high stakes event in their long term viability.
Are drafts like the NBA’s high stakes events for players? Research into high stakes testing, like with college admissions, compromises the overall learning by students who get good at test taking but not at other, more useful endeavors. In nations like Japan widespread admissions testing have an enormous impact on those students’ careers and future lives.
The few hundred elite, NBA-draftable basketball players don’t follow the same kind of broad distribution that a large-population national education test has. Instead, basketball players fall into a handful of strata–a tiny number of exceptional talents, then a few more great talents, then more good players and then still more borderline talents also out there. There are also teams that are better at developing players, teams that can turn good players into great or exceptional players.
Players probably benefit most from being born at the right time, like in the same year as other elite talents. The best drafts for American players will feature clusters of players who grew up competing against and pushing each other (see 2008). Most players gain the most by going to a team that develops players’ talent, though a handful of elite players gain financially by being picked early in the draft. It’s not a high stakes event for players as much as it’s a right-team stakes event.
Many of the most desireable “right” teams are good at developing players and those teams, as a result, win games. Teams that tank will often fail to improve players, losing out on essential quality depth that would compliment the top talent from high draft picks. Maybe more important is that those undeveloped talents are out there for teams that competently develop players to pick up once they’ve fizzled on their first try, frequently for low cost. Draft status quo is an advantage for the teams that do player development well.
Sports science can help NBA teams’ ability to build roster depth and to develop players while it also helps to keep star players healthy during the long regular season. Sports science should eventually lower the stakes for NBA drafts, and draft reform would nudge teams in that direction. Ultimately the ways to improve players and teams through sports science are numerous, and they outnumber the ways that high draft picks can improve a team.