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.
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.
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.
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