The Ball Effect

As you (hopefully) know, I'm a Lakers fan. Therefore instead of writing about the actually interesting things that are happening in the NBA at large (Russell Westbrook put up a 50-point triple double in the playoffs and lost, for one), I'm going to talk about pointless hypotheticals concerning the Lakers' draft pick.

This is a hypothetical because if the Lakers don't land a top-three pick in the draft lottery, they lose their pick. It's furthermore a hypothetical because the only player I'm actually interested in in this draft, Lonzo Ball, has maybe a 40% chance of landing on the Lakers even if they do keep the pick (which has roughly a 47% chance of happening).

I think Lonzo Ball is a special player. I think he's the best player in this year's draft, and that he has the potential to be the best offensive player in the league. But before I talk about him, I want to talk about the presumed #1 pick in this year's draft, Markelle Fultz.

Markelle Fultz

I should be interested in Markelle Fultz. It's weird that I'm not. I'm nominally a UW fan (although I emphatically couldn't care less about college basketball) and my loyalty is at least strong enough to manifest as a passing affection for Isaiah Thomas despite his being on the Celtics (although not strong enough that I don't find the Celtics being down 2-0, as a one seed, against the 8th seed Chicago Bulls, hilarious. Hey look, another interesting NBA event that I'm not going to talk about). But I just can't get into Fultz as a player.

This is partially because I haven't seen anything from him that makes me think he's going to be a superstar, and partially because frankly playing for an awful team makes me think he's less than transcendental. Let me unpack both parts of this real quick. In order to win at the NBA level, you need one of two things: Either you can be one of the greatest defensive teams ever, with amazing team chemistry and an absurd degree of defensive depth, which has been done exactly once, by the 2004 Pistons; or you have to have superstars. With a top-three draft pick, if you're not drafting a superstar, you're wasting your pick. I think it is a dramatically better decision to swing at and miss on a superstar prospect with the first overall than it is to take a sure-thing low-All-Star-level player who can contribute to a winning team but can't necessarily take the reins. Nobody will ever win a championship with a guy like Joe Johnson or Kevin Love as their best player. And to be perfectly honest I haven't seen anything from Fultz to make me think he's capable of being the best player on a championship team.

The second reason I'm not high on Fultz, as I mentioned, is because the Huskies are bad. They finished 9-22, winning only two conference games and finishing 11th in the Pac-12. Now, Fultz is comfortably the best player on that team, and there's an argument to be made that it's much harder to win without having other elite-level talent. I just don't agree with it. Basketball is a team game, but ultimately there are only five guys on the floor at a time for any given team, and having one of the five be a supposedly-transcendental player should be enough to make a major impact on your team's performance. Fultz just didn't do that.

Lonzo Ball

Ball did. In 2016, the year before Ball showed up, the Bruins went 15-17, finishing 6-12 in conference play. In 2017, this year, the Bruins went 31-5 overall and 15-3 in conference play. But that's not all! They improved dramatically in virtually every offensive stat for which we have a metric (overall NCAA rankings, out of 351, in parentheses):

Year:	FG%:	2P%:	3P%:	AST:	Pts:	Pts/G:
2016	45.4% (101st)	48.8% (185th)	36.3% (102nd)	502 (71st)	2480 (129th)	77.5 (67th)
2017	52.2% (1st)	59.1% (3rd)	40.6% (4th)	771 (1st)	3233 (2nd)	89.8 (2nd)

Wow. Under Lonzo Ball, the Bruins went from being a dead-average D1 team offensively, and one of the worst Pac-12 teams, to being one of the best offensive teams in the nation overall. They improved dramatically across the board. Ball's offense was a bona fide juggernaut.

The natural next question is: What? How can one player have such a massive impact on his team's performance? There must have been something else going on, right?

Well, not really. The Bruins kept the same coach. Four of their five major contributors from 2016 returned -- Bryce Alford, Isaac Hamilton, Aaron Holiday, and Thomas Welsh -- and all four of them remained major contributors on the '17 team. The only other significant addition was TJ Leaf, a power forward (who replaced the departed Tony Parker (not that Tony Parker), the fifth major contributor from 2016). And while Leaf is definitely an upgrade and he certainly contributed to the team's shooting and scoring improvements, the difference between him and Parker was not nearly enough to account for such a massive change in offensive performance. (Some of the difference between Parker and Leaf is also attributable to Ball; virtually every Bruin from the '16 roster played better in '17.)

The X-factor is Ball. He led the team in minutes, at 35.1 per game. He shot extremely well: 55.1% from the field, 41.2% from three, and an unthinkably good 73.2% from inside the arc (!!!). He put up 14.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 7.6 assists per game, as well as contributing on defense (which I haven't even mentioned so far in my assessment, since his offensive contributions are so much more profound). But that statline, while impressive, doesn't reflect on paper what you've already seen: Ball's offensive abilities almost singlehandedly transformed the Bruins from an average offensive team to an unstoppable freight train.

THAT is what I want to see from a future superstar. That's what I expect to see when we talk about transcendental players.

Of course, Lonzo Ball carries some caveats, which is why Fultz is generally projected to go ahead of him. His shooting motion is awkward and unconventional, although it clearly works; those shooting splits aren't decorative. And Ball's floor is probably lower than Fultz's, although I sincerely doubt he'll be a worse player. But as I said before, I would much rather pick someone like Ball, who, if he pans out, will -- in my opinion -- become the best player on a championship-caliber team, than take a guy like Fultz, who I don't think can take a team to the promised land.

Again, this is all doubly hypothetical: the Lakers might not keep their pick, and even if they do, the only spot where they're more-or-less guaranteed to take Ball is 2nd overall; if they draft first, they might very well take Fultz, and if they draft third, Ball might be gone. But I want Ball. I really, really want him. Gamechangers like this don't come along very often, and when they do, they often confuse analysts. They get written up as accidents, asterisks, weird outliers way beyond the realm of reason. (For instance, check out the section in this article titled "The Asterisk.")

But sometimes those accidents aren't so accidental. Sometimes one player really can have that big an effect. I think Ball is that player.

How do you spell MVP? B-A-L-L.

Bill Simmons and the Wine Cellar Team

In his magnum opus (from the Latin, meaning "big work") The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons says a lot of things. Many of them are wrong (to name a few: Bill Russell was not better than Wilt Chamberlain, and Moses Malone was not the greatest rebounder of all time), many more are right, and quite a few are surprisingly insightful. If you haven't read the book already, I suggest you pick it up.

Simmons's whole book is basically building up to the reveal of what he calls The Secret. Spoiler alert: The Secret is not actually a secret, nor is it surprising to anyone who has played or watched team sports at any level at any point in their life. At the risk of ruining your incentive to buy the book, The Secret is this: Being really successful in basketball is less about talent than it is about having the right people on your team. They need to like each other, to work together, to have compatible personalities. In short, team chemistry is an underrated factor in determining which teams are successful and which flop.

I know, shocker, right? Who could have deduced that from watching the '04 Lakers shit the bed, or watching the '04 Pistons band together and win it all? Seriously, this big Secret became blindingly obvious to everyone in those NBA Finals, if it somehow wasn't already.

Later in the book, Simmons describes his Wine Cellar Team. The premise is this: Aliens are coming to challenge Earth in basketball for dominion of the planet. We need to produce a team that can beat them. But we get an advantage: We can choose any player from any year of their career and put them on our team. For instance, not only can we pick Magic Johnson, we can specifically pick 1985 Magic Johnson.

And the key? He wants players who understand and embody The Secret. Guys who are unselfish and dedicated to to team. Good teammates who understand when to step into the spotlight and when to defer to their better teammates. Not just a big jumble of superstars, but guys who understood their role and could fill it to perfection.

So it's maybe a little bit fucking shocking that his team is basically a giant mess of superstars and personalities plus half the starting lineup of the 1986 Boston Celtics.

I'm not joking. Here's his roster:

- '86 Larry Bird
- '03 Tim Duncan
- '85 Magic Johnson
- '92 Michael Jordan
- '77 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- '86 Kevin McHale (seriously???)
- '92 Scottie Pippen
- '77 Bill Walton
- '09 Dwyane Wade
- '09 Chris Paul
- '09 LeBron James
- '01 Ray Allen

Couple notes.

First, the obvious Celtics bias. Mathematically, it's not that bad: Bird, McHale, Walton, and Allen make four, which is 33% of the roster, for the second-most-talented franchise ever. The big problem here is basically that McHale and Walton (and Allen) are not close to good enough to be on this roster. They're not even in the conversation. How does one make a case for McHale over, say, Kevin Garnett, who would be a vast improvement at defense, an excellent team player, and just overall better? How do you argue for Walton over, I don't know, Hakeem Shaq Ewing Robinson even Dwight Howard, ANYONE else other than Walton? The presumption here is that the '86 Celtics were the peak of teammate-ship, and that anyone Simmons can pull from that roster is gonna be a crucial piece on this roster. This is just straight homer nonsense.

Second, all the other biases. Dropping Kobe for Dwyane Wade is outrageous, and all but the most egregious haters should be able to understand why. It's not a coincidence that Simmons's least favorite player ever got dropped from this list. It's also not a coincidence that there are three--count them, three--seasons on this list from 2009, and it's not because 2009 happened to be the greatest individual year in basketball history. No, this is why: Guess what year the Book of Basketball was released. That's right--2009! So Simmons is throwing in three seasons from the year he just witnessed, because apparently his memory doesn't go far enough back to think of anyone who might be a better fit. Imagine if I made a team and included 2017 Westbrook, 2017 Harden, AND 2017 Kawhi. That's basically what we're talking about here. And by the way, those are all stronger choices than the ones Simmons made.

Third, and most ridiculous. Simmons, as I mentioned, spends the whole book basically building up to the reveal of the obvious Secret. Then he completely fucking disregards it and throws a bunch of superstars on his team at random. Here's Simmons's criteria for what he wants on his team:

"Don’t forget that a formula of 'unselfishness + character + defense + rebounding + MJ' will run the Martians out of the gym unless they have an eight-foot-three center we didn’t know about."

And here are some of the ways he completely ignored that formula in forming his team:

- Michael Jordan is and was an asshole. This isn't even controversial; it's basically universally acknowledged. He punched Steve Kerr, ruined Kwame Brown, and alienated anyone who wouldn't bend to his unassailable will. I think the justification for Jordan being here is basically that he coexisted with the '92 Dream Team and with Scottie Pippen, but that misses the point badly: the Dream Team let him take the lead because the Olympics were a gimme and Jordan was the only superstar still in his prime (seriously, revisit that roster), and Scottie Pippen only coexisted with Jordan because he was happy to take second fiddle on the offense and first responsibilities on the defense. Can you imagine Jordan trying to get along with Shaq, or even Bynum? Or Dwight? I'll check the microfiche, but I'm pretty sure Kobe never punched a teammate in practice. Yet Jordan is somehow a lock for this team? The team that's built with the specific requirement that it be full of good teammates?

- In general, I don't know why Jordan is considered to be a necessary piece to win a championship. He won six, yes, but it was with a team that was specifically built both to suit his talents and to disguise his weaknesses, with players who were committed to taking inferior roles so that Jordan could shine as the superstar, and with a coach who intimately understood Jordan's psychology and knew exactly how to manipulate him to greater heights.

- Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Dywane Wade, and Ray Allen are all pretty mediocre at defense. The Bird excuse is "he jumped passing lanes," and people just kinda pretend that Wade and Allen were better than they really were.

- It's probably more notable that Simmons doesn't have ANYONE on his roster who particularly excels at defense far more than offense. He falls into the classic trap: thinking that players who score a lot of points are necessarily better than players who don't. But points are highly duplicable; with teammates like this, if you don't score that basket, your teammate probably will. Defense, though--you can never have too many good defenders. Or rebounders, or passers, or great teammates. The kind that doesn't punch the other players on the team.

- He says "rebounding" but doesn't take the greatest rebounder of all time, Dennis Rodman. He considers taking Rodman but decides against it, presumably because he doesn't think Rodman can coexist on this roster. Never mind that Rodman already coexisted with the worst personality on this roster for three years and won three championships with him.

- The other big thing that Simmons misses entirely is the rise of three-point shooting as an absolute offensive necessity in the past few years. This one he isn't entirely to blame for--who could have seen Steph Curry coming?--but he bears responsibility nonetheless.

Anyway. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of problems with Simmons's implementation of the Wine Cellar premise. I can do it better, and have, and will, but the focus of this article is explicitly on Simmons and his terrible choices. Next I'm going to cover a couple prerequisites for my big Wine Cellar article: I'll talk about Jordan, and why he's a bad choice; I'll talk about Kobe, and why he's a better choice; I may even mention Rodman, and why he's an indispensable choice. But I'll tell you one thing: My team will have players on it who didn't score a lot, who focused more on other aspects of offense, or even on defense (!). My team will be full of great teammates, elite defenders, selfless players, and dominant rebounders. My team will be so good that it will kick Simmons's team's asses up and down the court. Just you wait.