And the winner of the 2018 nba draft is

Obviously the Hawks. Okay so we're through the first six (6) picks, which is as far as I bothered to look vis-à-vis prospects, so MY draft is over (until the Lakers draft a couple scrubs or trade away our late picks), so here's my anal
ysis.

#1: DeAndre Ayton, Suns
Duh. Ayton is like tall and athletic and has a decent shot. So what if he doesn't play defense? Neither do Karl-Anthony Towns and Nikola Jokic, and look how many championships and shit they've won. I mean... Joel Embiid is a tool. Can I just say that real quick? Like, trash-tweeting my guy Ayton like 30 seconds after he gets drafted just screams insecurity. You remember that time Embiid has played like 94 career games and was drafted FOUR YEARS AGO?? Let's hold off on the criticism, The Next Greg Oden. (Which is actually unfair to Oden, who actually is a pretty decent guy afaik.)

#2: Marvin Bagley 3, Kings
Whoops haha. No idea about this kid. Wasn't he injured or something? Give me like thirty seconds to do prospect evaluation.

Okay I'm back from prospect evaluation and I have nothing to say. Okay Kings. You made a pick. I literally have nothing to say about Bagley. He's a basketball generic. I'm assuming that's not a good thing but maybe he'll surprise me.

#3: Luka Dončić, Mavs
Or: Luka Dončić is still a BUST and other exciting news.

THIS IS WHY THE MAVS ARE BOTTOM-FEEDERS. Spoiler alert: Dončić is not going to be as good as Dirk Nowitzki. He's literally worse at everything. Sorry, Mavs. Sorry, Mavs' fans. Sorry, racist NBA fans dying for a new white superstar (remember the good old days when Larry Bird was a thing?).

See you never.

#4: JJJ, somewhere
I don't even care

#5: Trae Young, Hawks
HOLY SHIT THE GOD PICK. Trae Young just led the nation in scoring and assists as a freshman and shoots threes from an average of like five feet behind the line, because Trae Young doesn't give a fuck. Trae Young doesn't just THINK he's Steph Curry, he IS Steph Curry. Except he's not. You know why? Because Steph Curry sure as shit didn't lead the nation in scoring OR passing (I think; not checking), because Steph Curry is a fucking scrub compared to Trae Young. I don't even like the Hawks at all and watch me watch them play every single one of their games next year because I don't want to miss a moment of Trae Young's illustrious, Hall-of-Fame career.

Edit: Can I also just say that it's fucking hilarious watching Hawks fans freak out and like rage at their FO because they traded Dončić for Young, not realizing that that's like the most lopsided trade possible in this draft (biggest bust for best player)?

#6: Mo Bamba
This dude good. I already wrote about him in the article above re: Dončić being a bust. I'm not going to repeat myself. As a wise person of indeterminate gender once said, the nice thing about having this blog is that I've already written down all the sports-related shit I believe and I can just link you to it, instead of screaming it over and over and having no one ever ever hear, which is how oral communication works. God, fuck talking.

Clickbait Title

You remember that time that Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double for a season (in '62) and it was considered one of the best seasons ever even though by pace it was basically a 10-3-3? And then Westbrook did basically the same thing only in the modern NBA and at modern pace and people criticized him for "not playing defense" and "losing a lot" and "only averaging a triple double and breaking the record for triple doubles in a season because he wanted to look cool," but they gave him the MVP anyway because of my very influential and convincing article? That was really something. One of the big historical achievements in NBA history, and we were all there to witness it.

And then he did it again this year and nobody fucking noticed.

I don't even get it. Like, I'm the poster child for explaining why media biases and whatever "narrative" is fuck up fans' perceptions of what's actually going on in sports, and even I don't understand how nobody noticed what Westbrook was doing this year. Admittedly there were fewer fourth-quarter explosions this time around, and the scoring fell off a little, but still: Russell Westbrook just averaged only the third triple double in NBA history, with a 25.4-10.1-10.3. Can you imagine what would have happened if LeBron had put up these numbers? No, seriously-- he would have gotten a unanimous MVP. He would have been proclaimed the Greatest GOAT Of All Time. Delonte would have welcomed him back into the James household with open arms. But Westbrook does it twice in a row and nobody cares. Just because LeBron is way better than him and has actually done things like winning in the finals and playing defense ("has done" implying, obviously, that both of these things are in the past and are not likely to happen again), we don't care that Westbrook put up maybe the fourth most impressive seasonal statline in NBA history? Are we so far removed from conventional stats that we genuinely don't care that we just saw probably the only two triple-double seasons we're likely to see in our short and miserable lives, back to back?

I'm not even saying he should win MVP. He should, but only because James Harden is a cancer on the NBA and any minor shock of disappointment in his life is like mother's milk to me. Actually, can we change subjects real quick and talk about how I literally don't watch Houston games anymore because watching Harden flop around like a fucking fish is so painful? I'm not even going to link to anything here, because if you're reading this blog and you haven't seen Harden jumping onto someone's back to draw a defensive personal foul, you're just willfully ignorant. If the Rockets and Celtics make the finals, which it looks like has about a 40% chance of happening, I legitimately might not watch them, which will be the first finals I'll've missed since like 2007 (and I honestly might have watched that and just forgotten).

Longer articles mean better journalism, so here are some more sneers and jeers for NBA players I dislike.

• Anthony Davis, your unibrow looks like shit, because it's a fucking unibrow. It's like if I were the player known for playing with like feces smeared all over my face. Oh, what a branding opportunity! Except I'd still look better than you, you ugly-ass unibrow-having-ass motherfucker. (I'm so glad no one reads this blog.)
• Kevin Durant, I'm not even going to address the whole bitch-made Golden State thing, because I already know you're sensitive on the subject. But remember when people were talking about how you're like a great defensive player and then you were like, sike, I'm still mediocre-as-fuck Kevin Durant on D? And how everyone keeps pretending that you're somehow the second-best player in the league but you're only like in the argument for the second-best player on your team?
• And you nicknamed yourself Servant. The fucking Servant. And this was BEFORE you quit out on your team to go join the 73-9 Warriors.
• Ben Simmons can't shoot. He doesn't even try to shoot. I'm still pretty sure he's shooting with the wrong hand. He looks pretty good for a guy that can't shoot, but there just isn't precedent for someone this bad making it in the NBA.
• What the fuck, Raptors?
• And how are the Celtics this good? They lose maybe their two nominally best players (even though I've never exactly been high on Kyrie or Hayward) and they're suddenly the best team in the East? I'm all for them making the finals and losing, but if they WIN with a team led by Al fucking Horford and a couple of 20-year-olds, I'm not going to be happy.
• Why the fuck is Israel monolingual? Yiddish is such a cooler language than Hebrew, linguistically, and it's way more relevant to the survivors of the Holocaust, which is the whole damn point. But now it's dying because of linguistic chauvinism.
• Microsoft Edge is claiming now to be the fastest browser, but it still feels slow as fuck and clunky to use. Plus Chrome has finally caught up to Firefox with the extensions (although it still crashes when I have too much shit open and it's got massive fucking memory leaks -- seriously, where's the good browser these days?), and I have literally no idea what the Edge extension situation is.
• Why does the dude from Rancid sound so weird when he sings? Like weirdly British or something, even though he's allegedly American? And plus the dude from Kings of Leon. And Kendrick fucking Lamar. Am I the only one who notices these things? I've actually googled "Kings of Leon singer sounds weird" and found nothing. Is that how everyone else thinks people sound when they sing?
• Climate change is going to kill us all and nobody's doing anything about it because nobody notices or cares and because global capital is destroying any sense of moral obligation or social contract between government and governed. We've replaced morality with profitability and nobody seems to care. This is not a welcoming world. This is a broken world, heading rapidly for catastrophic ecological disaster. Doesn't anyone realize that the Great Filter is inevitable self-annihilation?
• The 118-110 Golovkin-Álvarez scoring is probably one of the most outrageous boxing-related stunts I've ever seen and is, for me, categorical proof that boxing is at least as fixed as basketball. I also find it funny, for the record, that people pretend that the NBA is like pristine and unfixable when this already fucking happened. Remember the big sweeping reforms to root out and destroy referee corruption? Yeah, me neither.
• Why the fuck aren't we holding floppers accountable? There was a tiny little effort a few years back that's just been abandoned. I had two good ideas for curtailing flopping. The first one was the exponential approach: for a player's nth career flop, they're fined $10^n. That'll stop them right quick, but it's still only my second-best idea. The other one is this: You get two warnings. Starting with your third flop (and we'll review them to make sure they're legit, don't worry) we cut off one of your fingers. After twelve flops you're probably not in the NBA any longer anyway.
• The obsession with advanced stats in basketball has become a problem. Advanced stats are for nerds. All I care about is flashy dunks.
• Oh also there's this weird obsession now with claiming that Kobe's all-defensive teams are increasingly illegitimate. It started with this claim that his last few were undeserved, and then it spread to like the whole latter half of his career, and now people are claiming that he was never even a good defender, which is kind of like when Tolstoy claimed that Shakespeare "can not be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author." The truth is that all of Kobe's All-Defensive teams were voted on by NBA coaches, and they were all legitimate. Suck my balls.
• I started writing this article on why Jordan is overrated and it grew and grew and I never published it and now it's like 15 pages long and still not done. I'd finish it and publish it but no one's going to read it, so I'm going to wait until I get famous and do it then. It's not like you're going anywhere, dear reader.

Peace.

Luka Dončić is a BUST and other exciting news

So I have this to say.

Luka Dončić is going to bust.

This is considered a crazy thing to say by most basketball fans. Their argument basically hinges on these points:

1. Dončić is dominating Euroleague, which is widely considered the second-best basketball league in the world (just ahead of my YMCA league but behind my intramural 3v3 Claremont Consortium league). This is true, but it's also missing a few key points about what Euroleague basketball actually looks like, which I'll get to in a bit.
2. Dončić is basically the best European prospect ever, and has a skillset that looks like it will translate fairly well to modern NBA basketball. This is because he's allegedly a killer three-point shooter (he's 30.9% this year from the Euro three, which I'm going to assume is the FIBA three, i.e. 19.25 inches shorter than the NBA three, which is just... so impressive) and is allegedly a great passer (cards on the table, I do actually think he's a pretty good passer).
3. Supposedly he's a "sure thing" with a "high floor," both of which are bullshit platitudes NBA fans tell themselves to convince themselves that they're not completely awful at projecting players -- which they are. Accept this. NBA front offices get paid millions of dollars to be very wrong about player prospects. Fans are almost guaranteed to be worse (unless they're me). The thing is, in the NBA there are no sure things (because Darko Miličić, Michael Beasley, Kwame Brown, and Sam Bowie exist, in case you forgot) and there are no high floors (because... you get the picture). Dončić's floor, much like everyone's floor, is Anthony Bennett.

Let's first double back to Euroleague and explain why it's a garbage league full of garbage players. Basically, Euro guys can't play D. I'm not trying to be like continent-ist, but seriously, go watch any Dončić tape and watch what the guys trying to defend him are doing. He has the slowest first step I think I've ever seen in a "high-end" prospect, and guys go FLYING. He gets wide-open shots because every single European pro is a sub-NBA-quality athlete (which is why they're Euro pros, if you were wondering), with a handful of exceptions, of which Dončić is supposedly one. Even if we give them lots of respect in the skill department (which I'm categorically unwilling to do; these are not NBA-adjacent players no matter how you slice it), there's no question that there's a big imbalance between how they compare to NBA players skill-wise and how they compare athletically. Dončić is feasting on guys who wouldn't make NBA benches, but somehow this gives him the highest floor in the draft?

Dončić is not projected as a particularly strong defensive prospect, and rightly so. But this means he's being drafted strictly on offensive merit, and he's playing against guys who are, defensively, at what I'd feel comfortable calling sub-D-I level. In other words, the supposedly higher level of competition in Euroleague vs. NCAA doesn't apply here; Dončić is in fact benefiting from the relative lack of athleticism in Europe.

I don't have a horse in this fight (my Lakers aren't going to have a top-two pick hopefully ever again, and don't pick until 25 this year, and plus I don't have much love for either top-two team this year, although I prefer the Suns). I just like making predictions and being proven right and then having no one ever pay attention. It's kinda my thing. (And yes I'm still coming back to that, because holy shit I got every one of those predictions right, except the Bortles Pro Bowl thing.)

Other Stuff

• I really like Deandre Ayton. I love his offensive game. He's the best big-man finisher I've seen in YEARS (as in I could see him being the best offensive big man since Yao, no shit), and he's got some nice range. I have concerns about his D, but with that kind of athleticism (I mean what the fuck) I have confidence he'll figure it out. Or he won't. Phoenix's problem, not mine.
• By the way, Phoenix is taking Ayton. Dončić will go to Sacramento, where he belongs.
• I also really like Mo Bamba, and not just because his name sounds like a bad reverse-portmanteau of Mamba. I like him for the opposite reasons of why I like Ayton. His offensive game is super shaky and his shot is streaky (but rangy), but on D he's one of the better shot-blockers I've ever seen at the college level. I think he has upside in the Mutombo range on D.
• I'm kind of in love with Trae Young. Only in this fucked-up basketball antifan world could we watch a freshman become the first PLAYER to ever lead the nation in points and assists in the same season and conclude that he's overrated. I mean, what the fuck? I'm saying that a lot lately, but shit, everyone is wrong about EVERYTHING IN THIS DRAFT. The other thing I love about Young, besides the fact that he's just obviously the best offensive prospect in this draft class and one of the best ever (because duh), is that he takes more of his threes from NBA range than any other prospect I've ever seen. Like 90%+ of his three point attempts are from 24+ feet, often way more. He's taking 30-footers like Steph, and making a really solid number of them (he shot 36% from primarily the NBA three, which is way better than probably any college prospect ever). His defensive ceiling is limited, but shit, so is Dončić's, and nobody's saying Trae Young is the best player in this draft (even though he is). I'm going to have to become a part-time fan of whatever team drafts him.

For context (this the Trae Young show now), two freshmen have ever led the NCAA in scoring, and three freshmen have ever led it in assists (most recently the great Lonzo Ball, if you were wondering). Young is one of each. I don't care if he's 5'5 with a 6-second 40 (what sport is this?), that's incredible.  It's one of the great achievements in college sports history. (Also up there: Pete Maravich leading the nation in scoring three years in a row, with an average average of 44.2 PPG.) And, by the way, he's not; he's like 6'2 with a 6'3 wingspan, which isn't ideal, but is about half an inch shorter (wingspan) than Steph Curry's, an inch and a quarter shorter than Chris Paul's, and 3.5" longer than T.J. Ford's, who's the other freshman to lead the NCAA in assists. This obviously isn't a guarantee that Young will succeed defensively in the NBA, but it is evidence that he isn't exactly a T-Rex/Isaiah Thomas/Nate Robinson type coming in with a great shooting talent and very little else.

Someone get me off this subject. Let's talk about Mitchell Robinson.

Mitchell Robinson is weird. He was dominant in high school (think 15-20 points, 11-14 rebounds, 4-8 blocks, depending on competition), then went to Western Kentucky (?) and got immediately cut (behavioral). He's basically been chilling for a year and is now available for the draft, but it's really hard to predict what kind of a prospect he actually is. This is literally (according to Wikipedia) unprecedented.

Also interesting: Robinson has intimated and all but stated outright that he won't play for anyone but the Lakers (who pick, again, at 25, which is just a little behind where he's projected). Hello there.

Interesting NBA Prime Teams

The question is this: If a given NBA team had all of its players in their primes, how good would it be?

Example: Last year's Warriors were really good. But imagine how good they would have been if Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, and David West were in their primes? But we can't just say "in their primes," because we're not lazy, so instead we'll pick years. For instance, we'd take '08 Iguodala, '16 Livingston, and '13 David West. The answer, by the way, to how good they'd be is "slightly better, but not enough to be interesting." So let's get to the interesting ones.

(N.B. By its very nature, this question is almost impossible to answer without analyzing virtually every year of every team. I'm not going to do that, so what we have instead is a number of very strong and/or interesting choices I've selected. But I definitely missed a lot of good teams, some of which might even contend.)


The Favorites:
2004 Los Angeles Lakers
PG: '96 Gary Payton, '09 Derek Fisher
SG: '03 Kobe Bryant, '07 Ime Udoka
SF: '97 Rick Fox, '02 Devean George, '00 Byron Russell
PF: '97 Karl Malone, '06 Brian Cook, '04 Stanislav Medvedenko
C: '00 Shaquille O'Neal, '92 Horace Grant

(I'm leaving off a couple guys but we have the ones we need.)

Holy shit, this team dominates. '96 Payton is the best defensive guard season ever, '03 Kobe is one of the best guard seasons ever, '97 Malone is extremely dominant, and '00 Shaq makes Malone look like a small child. Plus we have the underrated '09 Fisher, some solid forward play in George, Russell, and Cook, and then our secret weapon: Horace Grant, one of the most underrated players in NBA history. There's absolutely no one who's stopping this team on offense, and virtually no one who can score on their D. Payton and Bryant form, by far, the best defensive guard duo in NBA history, and Malone, Shaq, and Grant are all defensive presences in their own right.

The one evident weakness is at the 3, where we don't have an all-time great player to slot in. This is a little surprising, given how ridiculously strong the rest of the team is. But Fox is a very strong role player and we have tons of depth here. Kobe can slot in at 3 if need be, but there really isn't a better choice at 2. Still, Fox is solid on both sides of the ball, and it's not like there are any other holes of any kind on this roster.

And out of left field comes...


The (Extremely) Dark Horse:
2014 Brooklyn Nets
PG: '08 Deron Williams, '16 Shaun Livingston
SG: '05 Joe Johnson, '07 Jason Terry, '10 Marcus Thornton
SF: '02 Paul Pierce, '04 Andrei Kirilenko
PF: '04 Kevin Garnett, '13 Andray Blatche, '13 Reggie Evans
C: '13 Brook Lopez, '16 Mason Plumlee

Right? Where did this come from? This is a team that won, in real life, 44 games. But in our fun little exercise here, suddenly they have Williams, who was at one point (though we've collectively decided to forget it) considered juuust a step below Chris Paul; Joe Johnson, who is the poster child for being just good enough not to make the Hall of Fame (bkref has his chances at 50.6%); Jason Terry, who is one of the best sixth men ever; Paul Pierce; Garnett, who had one of the most dominant seasons of any PF ever in '04; Brook Lopez, who is a little bit of a weak point here; and Andrei Kirilenko, who was actually pretty good back then.

This team is not on par with those Lakers. They're significantly worse at 3/5 positions and only slightly better at the other two (maybe I'm being unfair to Paul Pierce, but in my defense, fuck Paul Pierce). They're here because it's interesting that such a bad team had such a ridiculous amount of non-prime talent.


The Old School:
1972 Los Angeles Lakers
PG: '66 Jerry West, '75 Jim Cleamons
SG: '72 Gail Goodrich, '70 Flynn Robinson
SF: '63 Elgin Baylor, '74 Jim McMillian, '74 Keith Erickson
PF: '74 Happy Hairston
C: '67 Wilt Chamberlain, '68 Leroy Ellis

And I mean old school. This team was already one of the greatest of all time, so all we're really doing is youthifying it a bit. We bring West back into his supposedly-athletic-but-who-can-know-for-sure prime, and we take a nice, prime, athletic Baylor season in the hopes that he can finish out the year with the team and win the ring he so richly deserved. Goodrich and Hairston were already pretty much in their primes, as was most of the bench. The keys here are West, Baylor, and Chamberlain.

We take Chamberlain from '67, which is slightly after his physical prime and not his most dominant season (that would be '62). But '67 is also the year that he became an exceptional team player (7.8 assists per game), while also retaining his scoring touch (24.1 PPG on 68.3% shooting) and rebounding (24.2 RPG). Nor was he quite the defensive presence in '67 that he was in his younger years, but he was still an elite defensive pivot and will do fine for this roster. There's also a sentimental reason here: '67 was the year that Chamberlain and the Sixers beat the dynastic Boston Celtics, the only championship Boston lost in the '60s.

So on this team we have West, one of the best guards ever in his absolute prime, a great shooter, passer, and (supposedly) defender; we have Baylor, the first of the athletic wings, a full decade before Dr. J came along and lit up the league; and we have Chamberlain, the most dominant force the NBA has ever known, with his perfect combination of utter physical dominance and elite passing skills that made him such a unique threat in NBA history. The depth on this team is also going to be really underrated, because you and I both have never heard of them but they were pretty solid, moreso than most of the other teams on this list.


The Other Lakers Team:
1999 Los Angeles Lakers
PG: '90 Derek Harper, '09 Derek Fisher
SG: '03 Kobe Bryant, '00 Eddie Jones
SF: '97 Rick Fox, '95 Glen Rice, '00 Ruben Patterson
PF: '92 Dennis Rodman, '98 Robert Horry
C: '00 Shaquille O'Neal, '96 Elden Campbell

Haha, I say "the other" Lakers team as if this is going to be the last Lakers team in this article. It probably won't. But this team is deceptively interesting. The key is Rodman. Rodman is by far the best rebounder ever and one of the best defenders ever, and him being in his prime for this Lakers team massively boosts their performance. Suddenly the Lakers have by far the best frontcourt in NBA history.

Then we shift everyone else into their primes, leaving us with an extremely strong starting roster with ridiculous depth. Fisher, Jones, Rice, Horry, and Campbell are the best bench rotation of any team listed so far, and the core of prime Bryant, Rodman, and Shaq is hands down the best trio we'll see. Then you have Harper, an excellent starting guard, and Fox, who we already talked about.

I actually think this team is a strong sleeper to win it all. They match up well with almost anyone, and their depth is positively elite. The one "weakness" they have is two non-elite starters, as opposed to the '04 Lakers' one (plus '99 doesn't have a bench player as good as Horace Grant), and maybe that's enough to change the balance of the game. Or maybe not.


The Bad Guys:
1988 Boston Celtics
PG: '81 Dennis Johnson, '84 Jerry Sichting
SG: '92 Reggie Lewis, '83 Jim Paxson, '88 Danny Ainge
SF: '86 Larry Bird, '85 Darren Daye
PF: '87 Kevin McHale, '91 Fred Roberts
C: '72 Artis Gilmore, '81 Robert Parish

If you've ever before dealt with the question posed by this blog post, or read Bill Simmons's Book of Basketball, you might be wondering why this isn't the 1986 Celtics. After all, that was a legendary team as it was, and they would get to add a better version of Bill Walton, who was an excellent center in his very brief prime. But this team is better.

The key is Gilmore, who, in his 1972 season (sixteen years before the season in question) put up one of the most dominant seasons of all time by a center not named Wilt, Kareem, or Shaq. And yes, it far outstrips Walton's best season. The other big advantage here is Reggie Lewis at SG, which means we get to have Paxson and Ainge, both of whom are very capable starter-level SGs, in our bench unit. Which is good, because besides them and Parish, the bench here is pretty shallow.

I hope, though, that I don't have to (further) explain how good this starting lineup is. Johnson is an elite defensive guard (although not on the level of Gary Payton), Reggie Lewis was very good, Bird is a legend, McHale was dominant on both ends of the ball, and Gilmore, as I just described, is one of the more underrated centers to ever play. I don't think this is the best team here, but they're probably better than you think.


The Other Dark Horse:
2009 Houston Rockets
PG: '16 Kyle Lowry, '07 Rafer Alston, '10 Aaron Brooks
SG: '03 Tracy McGrady, '02 Brent Barry, '07 Luther Head
SF: '04 Metta World Peace, '06 Shane Battier
PF: '09 Luis Scola, '10 Carl Landry, '06 Brian Cook
C: '97 Dikembe Mutombo, '04 Yao Ming, '11 Chuck Hayes

Interesting. Let's look at what we've got here. Lowry isn't elite, but he's effective at the 1. (Of course, being "effective" is far from being deserving of inclusion in this article, but he isn't that huge a weak point.) McGrady is elite, and his '03 season is one of the better ones on record. Artest is a defensive monster, probably the second-best defensive wing ever (after Scottie Pippen), and Battier is very good at the same.

I think Scola is actually a bit overrated, but the really interesting part here is the center position. Mutombo is dominant, one of the best shot-blockers of all time and an elite defensive pivot, and then you have Ming, who's 7'6 and skilled for his size. That's a devastating combination, although they probably can't occupy the floor at the same time; it's nice to have a seven-footer-and-then-some on the court at all times.

This team probably isn't as good as most of the others here, but it's very interesting. There's a lot of defensive talent here, between Artest, Battier, and Mutombo, and just as much offense, with Lowry, McGrady, and Ming. The question is, are the massive matchup problems that this roster can create enough to overcome the quite frankly large talent disparity? Honestly, I doubt it.


Showtime, Baby!:
1983 Los Angeles Lakers
PG: '90 Magic Johnson, '79 Norm Nixon, '80 Eddie Jordan
SG: '84 Michael Cooper, '81 Billy Ray Bates
SF: '90 James Worthy, '80 Jamaal Wilkes, '76 Steve Mix
PF: '75 Bob McAdoo, '89 Kurt Rambis
C: '72 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I found the perfect year. This is Showtime, distilled into all its glory. This team is utterly and completely unstoppable. Let's take a walk. We have:

Magic Johnson, in the prime of his abilities ('90 gets underrated because the Lakers were pretty old and beat-up by that point, but Magic himself was phenomenally good still), with Norm Nixon as his excellent backup; the solid Michael Cooper, who was a lock-down defender, at SG; both of the Lakers' excellent wings in Worthy and Wilkes; and then the centers. Oh, the centers.

Kareem is God; we all know this. And '72 Kareem is one of the most unstoppable forces in NBA history. But then we have McAdoo, who was devastatingly good (and underrated) in his best season in '75. McAdoo also has the ability to slide to four, or we can play him off the bench with both Worthy and Wilkes starting. Either way, we have a lineup that A) is stacked with talent, top to bottom, and B) plays beautifully together as a team, as the Showtime Lakers played basically the best team ball we've ever seen.



Honorable Mention: The Near Miss
1997-99 Houston Rockets
PG: '95 Brent Price, '97 Matt Maloney
SG: '88 Clyde Drexler, '01 Cuttino Mobley, '00 Michael Dickerson
SF: '97 Scottie Pippen, '83 Eddie Johnson, '97 Mario Elie
PF: '90 Charles Barkley, '94 Kevin Willis, '93 Antoine Carr, '03 Othella Harrington
C: '93 Hakeem Olajuwon, '93 Stanley Roberts

(This is a mashup of two seasons, '98 and '99, but if I wrote '98-'99 it would look like I'm talking about just the '99 season.)

What could have been (in this article). In '98 the Rockets had the dynamic-postprime-trio of Hakeem, Barkley, and Drexler. The next year Drexler retired and the Rockets acquired the 33-year-old Scottie Pippen, also solidly past his prime. If only Drexler and Pippen had been on this team at the same time, we could have had a real contender!

Instead, what you end up is either a team with Hakeem/Barkley/Drexler or Hakeem/Barkley/Pippen and two pretty big weak points at the 1 and either the 2 or the 3. That's hard to overcome, even though those triads are still very strong. It's possible that one of those teams, e.g. '99 (with Pippen), could be strong enough to upset one of our other teams (like the '14 Nets), but it's much more interesting to talk about what could have been.


Honorable Mention: The Very-Nearly Unbelievably Dominant Juggernaut
1995-97 Los Angeles Lakers
PG: '90 Magic Johnson, '97 Nick Van Exel, '09 Derek Fisher, '92 Sedale Threatt
SG: '03 Kobe Bryant, '00 Eddie Jones, '88 Byron Scott
SF: '96 Cedric Ceballos, '01 George Lynch, '88 Jerome Kersey, '96 George McCloud
PF: '96 Elden Campbell, '98 Robert Horry, '98 Derek Strong, '89 Larry Krystkowiak
C: '00 Shaquille O'Neal, '95 Vlade Divac

(Again, this is a mashup of the '96 and '97 Lakers.)

Okay, so I'm not actually as sold on this team as I was when I wrote this title. The point, of course, is that we have Magic, Kobe, and Shaq holding down the starting spots, with absolutely absurd depth: Van Exel and Jones are All-Stars, Horry is Horry, and Divac is very solid at center. The problem, also of course, is that the forward spots aren't exactly strong. There's a massive disparity in talent between, on one side, the unfairly-stacked PG, SG, and C, and on the other side the solid-but-not-great SF and PF positions.

There is some hope that Magic can make the offense function. In fact I think the offense will be absolutely fine. The problem would be defense, and in matching up with some of the stacked teams here. Mostly this was about getting Magic, Kobe, and Shaq on the same team.

NBA Exercise: Draft Picks Adding Up To 200+

So this reddit post happened recently. The question is this: Make the best starting five you can whose draft positions add up to 200 or greater. So Magic would add 1, Darko Milicic would add 2, Kobe would add 13, etc. I saw this question, was interested in it, and knocked it out of the park. Unfortunately I got there late. So here's my answer, which I'm posting in blog form because I'm self-indulgent like that.

PG - Magic Johnson (1)
SG - Manu Ginobili (57)
SF - LeBron James (1)
PF - Dennis Rodman (27)
C - Artis Gilmore (117)

Total: 203

Okay. So most people in this thread fucked up spectacularly. There were two common mistakes. First, to take a bunch of late-first-to-second rounders and try to make the best of what is truly a pretty weak crop of players (think Isaiah Thomas at #60). This is a bad choice because basketball is predominantly about top-level talent and frankly there isn't much of that outside of the first round.

The second mistake was to assume no one good was drafted late and "punt" a position while getting the maximum value from your other players. This is fine if you punt it right (e.g. Gilmore), but if you end up with a garbage player in your starting 5, that's going to hurt.

Here's the winning strat: Recognize that value here comes from getting a few players drafted very late who are still very good. That is to say, not worthless sixth-rounders, but also not guys who are very good but drafted not-so-late (like Draymond or Isaiah, the latter of whom really isn't good enough to merit inclusion in this conversation). Gilmore is comfortably the best-value draft pick I saw -- he was taken in the seventh freaking round, and he's arguably one of the ten best centers ever. (This may not sound that impressive, but recognize that the top of that list goes, in some order, Kareem Wilt Shaq Russell Hakeem, and then guys like Ewing, Parish, Robinson, Malone, et al. vying for the last few spots.)

There's one caveat with Gilmore, and that's that he was also drafted by, and played for a number of years in, the ABA. So that 117 might potentially be influenced by the possibility that he wouldn't go to the NBA. I don't know; I can't find sources from that far back. During the NBA-ABA merger, he was actually taken 1st overall, and he went pretty early in the ABA draft (not sure exactly where). But frankly, I don't care. 117 is his official NBA draft position, listed on BBRef and his Wikipedia page. Him getting drafted 1st in the ABA dispersal draft, after playing an extraordinary 5-year career in the ABA, really doesn't matter here, nor does his ABA draft position. I get him and it counts for 117.

Next up, I tried to find a high-value player from the late second and beyond, and who should pop up but Ginobili. This guy has super high value, as probably everyone who's watched basketball in the past 15 years knows, and is pretty much the perfect teammate. He's also an elite 2-guard, and while he's not at the Kobe level, his value at 57 is super high.

Now we're in a nice position. Artis and Manu add up to 174, meaning if we can get a pick at 24 or later, we get to finish up with two first overalls. First overalls, in basketball, are extremely valuable; basically half of the all-time greats were taken #1 overall. Fortunately, there's a great choice: Dennis Rodman at 27, who puts us over already and who is arguably the most valuable player in NBA history. He's an all-time great defender and the GOAT rebounder, and he fits beautifully in with this team, as he does with almost any team.

That leaves us with the freedom to go nuts with our last two picks, so we're taking Magic and LeBron, two of the greatest players ever and easy choices at the 1 and the 3. And so we arrive at our final roster. Notice how not only do we have an absurd level of talent (Manu and Gilmore are the two worst players on this roster, and they're both comfortably Hall of Famers), but we also have a beautiful balance with respect to roles, ball-dominance, offense-vs-defense, and leadership.

Magic is going to run the offense with LeBron slotting into his ideal role as a multitalented genius player on the wing. The fastbreak is going to be utterly unstoppable and the half-court is pretty absurd too. Gilmore is our main scorer inside, with LeBron and Manu taking lead perimeter scoring roles. Magic can do whatever he wants (which is usually to pass, but remember that time he started at center in the decisive Game 6 of the 1980 Finals, and won, with a 42/15/7? That happened), and Rodman can do whatever he wants (which is to play lockdown defense and rebound, which is why Rodman is the most valuable player ever).

Magic and LeBron both love to control the ball, but they're both also very effective playing with other players who can control the game, so they'll work fine together. Manu and Gilmore are relatively low-usage players, so they won't miss touches. And Rodman is obviously crazy-low usage (which, again, is part of the reason why he's so valuable). So basically, we have an unstoppable one-two punch, we have perfect third and fourth options, and we have the greatest glue guy in NBA history.

Our offense is going to work beautifully, because we have Magic, LeBron, Manu, and Gilmore. All four of those guys are offensive savants -- Gilmore's the one you might not know, but he's ridiculously efficient on reasonably high volume. We're also set defensively, since Gilmore is a great defensive center, Rodman is one of the greatest defensive players ever, LeBron can lock down anyone on the wing, and hopefully Magic and Manu will keep up. (We're handwaving this because interior defense is more important and we dominate at it.)

And finally, we shouldn't have any problems at all in the locker room. Magic is whatever the opposite of locker room cancer is (locker room chemo? locker room radiation therapy?), LeBron seems to get along well with everyone besides Kyrie, Manu is great, and whatever, I'm done talking.

This Weird Celtics Trade

The Celtics just traded down two places in the draft in exchange for one (1) future first-round pick. This will be the '18 Lakers pick if said pick falls between 2-5 overall, otherwise it will be the '19 Kings pick. In exchange the '76ers will pick Markelle Fultz first overall.

The weird part isn't that the Celtics are trading down; I actually like the decision to pass on Fultz, although I think they could probably have gotten more for it (Kings' #5 and #10 and a future first might have been attainable). The weird part is that, by all accounts, the Celtics are doing this because they want to draft Josh Jackson.

Why???

I'll admit, the first time I saw Jackson's tape I was impressed. He's a very athletic wing who can dunk spectacularly. But that's about all I see from him as a prospect, and it's not like being very athletic has historically been enough to manifest a high-level NBA player.

Here's what Jackson can't do:

- His handles are mediocre, as he himself has admitted, and his passing isn't elite (that is to say he's not Ben Simmons);

- He's not a consistent shooter, and will probably face problems adjusting to NBA defenses and range;

- He's athletic and has a high motor, and scouts say he looks great on D, but his short wingspan (6'10 on a 6'8 frame) means he's not going to be a defensive game-changer at the 3 like Kawhi Leonard or even LeBron;

- He's a weird sort of tweener, because he's not long enough to defend 3s, but you wouldn't want to play him at 2 when he can't shoot very well.

Let's take a moment and think of all the great athletic forwards with no shot, no handles, and a non-elite wingspan who have made it in the league. Here's my list of the best ones:

1. 

Oh, right.

The rest of the draft:

I desperately hope the Lakers take Lonzo Ball. There are three reasons for this: First, I think he's the best prospect in the draft. Second, I think Jackson is going to bust. And third, if Lonzo becomes a star (as I think he will), I would detest seeing him on the Celtics. That would be the worst possible outcome.

Fortunately, the Lakers are in a position now where they have an extremely good chance of landing Lonzo, which is something I've wanted since even before the draft lottery. The dream would be that we take Lonzo, we overperform next year and give a late lottery pick to the Sixers (and not the Celtics), and Boston fades back into obscurity (and, preferably, the Atlantic Ocean).

There aren't a whole lot of other prospects I'm high on in this draft, but I haven't looked that deep, either. The one guy I really like is Malik Monk, who looks like an elite shooting guard who was unfortunate enough to end up in a 6'3 body. I hope he ends up somewhere nice, preferably somewhere with a big guard to put on 2s so Monk can guard 1s. You know, like the Lakers.

That's mostly a joke but I have actually looked into scenarios. The most plausible would be swapping D'Angelo Russell for, say, the Kings' 5th and 10th picks. But that backcourt is extremely questionable defensively and anyway I'm excited to see what Russell can do as a primary 2-guard.

It's weird, actually. I've seen a lot of people, including plenty of Lakers fans, ask whether Russell can play SG. He literally played it his entire life until he landed on the Lakers. He was the inaugural winner of the Jerry West Award for the best SG in the country. (Which is a little ironic, because West is the prototypical combo guard and played a lot of his pro career at point. The most recent winner of the award, by the way, is Monk.) Russell will survive and thrive as a 2-guard who just happens to be an excellent passer.

Lonzo and the Lakers

I like Lonzo Ball. I like him so much that I wrote about him before the draft lottery as the best prospect in this year's draft, a belief I still hold. More than that, I think Lonzo has the potential to be one of the best players in the league. Barring catastrophe, Lonzo is going to be a Laker (although I have a sneaking fear that the Celtics are going to take him first, or trade the #1 pick to someone else who wants him, and I'll have to watch my favorite draft prospect ever--I started watching sports sometime after the LeBron draft--play for some team that's not the Lakers). I'm going to use this article to make a couple bold predictions about the future of Ball and of the Lakers, and to bring up some strengths and weaknesses of Ball as a prospect.

Prediction 1: Lonzo Ball is going to be a Hall of Famer.

I don't want you to think I'm getting overhyped here. (I am, but I don't want you to think that.) I have never made this prediction about a draft pick. In ANY sport. They tell me Lonzo Ball has flaws. They tell me his shot is broken. Actually, wait, let's do a new thing for this:


Weakness 1: His shot is broken.
Okay, A, no it's not. Lonzo Ball shot 55% from the field, 41% from three, and 73% from two (because he doesn't take shots from the midrange, but that's basically a fetish for the modern NBA. He's still ridiculously good at them), the latter of which was 3rd in the country among everyone, big men included. His shot chart is absolutely ridiculous. Ben Simmons he is not. He shot 67% from the line, which has some people scared, but I'm pretty sure FT% is 99% psychological and 1% having hands too big to handle the ball, if you're Shaq, but that doesn't apply to Lonzo either.

There have also been claims that Lonzo has elite-tier speed on his release, which might help him get shots off in the NBA, but I'm not concerned one way or the other. Here's the thing: I don't need or want Lonzo to take all that many contested shots. If he can make them, that's fine, but if not, he can at least hit wide-open threes from Steph Curry land. That's enough to force teams to defend him, which creates space and lets him do that Lonzo magic (pun extremely intended). He's never gonna be Rondo or Rubio, where teams can play way off him because he can't punish them for it.

So really, Lonzo's shot is a strength. It's one of the best shots in college basketball statistically speaking, and it has the potential to be one of the best shots in the NBA.


Strength 1: He might be one of the best passers ever.
At the most basic level if you want to evaluate a passer you look at his assists. Lonzo looks good here: he averaged 7.6 assists per game, leading the nation by a good margin. (Markelle Fultz, all else aside, finished 17th with 5.9 APG).

At a slightly more sophisticated level, you might want to look at assist-to-turnover ratio, and Lonzo looks good here, too: He had 3.08 assists for every turnover, which is not actually first in the nation (it's 13th), but which is pretty unprecedented for point guards at his level (see this article, which is old but still accurate for everyone but Lonzo). In other words, Ball led the nation in assists (by, again, a comfortable margin) while turning the ball over less, proportionally speaking, than just about anyone in the nation (not to mention virtually all future elite NBA point guards).

On a qualitative level, it's easy to see by watching UCLA games just how much of an impact Ball's passing has. That whole offense, that #1-ranked juggernaut offense, that's all Ball. He's not just running the thing, he's practically inventing it as he goes along. He's the pilot of a top-flight fighter jet, Top Gun style, and he's flying it better than anyone else can fly their Cessna. He's the Peyton Manning of college basketball.

If that seems like not enough evidence to call Lonzo maybe one of the best passers ever, just read the rest of the article (and the last one) and keep in mind that while he's a great shooter, the vast majority of Ball's impact comes through his passing.


Weakness 2: The Lakers might not draft him.
So this isn't really a weakness of Ball himself, but moreso a weakness of this whole situation. What's weak is that the Lakers haven't explicitly said they're taking Ball. I'm hoping this is to avoid the instinctual sibling reaction of Boston to take him first, although part of me wants to believe that NBA front offices make decisions at a more mature level than that. (The other part of me remembers that John Hollinger, creator of the worst advanced stat ever made, is currently the VP of Basketball Operations for the Memphis Grizzlies, which is all the proof I need that NBA front offices have no goddamn clue what they're doing.)

My fear is that the Lakers get too clever and either trade this pick or take a player who's not Ball. The latter would be a huge mistake because Ball is by far the best prospect in this draft (although his floor is lower than Fultz's and some other players'). The former would be a mistake because, unless we draft Ball (more on this later), the Lakers aren't going to contend for another 3-4 years at minimum. But the Lakers front office, like all front offices, makes decisions either at random or based on the impulses of a child (cough Hollinger), and so I'm nervous.

(If you think I'm being too hard on the Lakers front office, recall that we're currently paying a combined $34 million to Luol Deng and Timofey Mozgov, who aren't even starting anymore. Admittedly those contracts come from a previous iteration of the Lakers FO, but that iteration was also considered one of the best front offices in the league.)


Strength 2: Lonzo Ball is able to impact the game with ridiculously low usage.
Here's the deal with usage rate. It's basically a measurement of how involved a player is in his team's offense. The ideal player is able to contribute a lot with relatively low usage, but in practice this is extremely rare. Most players either contribute a lot with a lot of usage, like Kobe Bryant (31.8% career usage) or Russell Westbrook (an all-time-record 41.7% usage this past, likely MVP, year), or they contribute a little with low usage (e.g. virtually every bit player in NBA history). It's very rare to find someone who contributes a lot with little usage, like Dennis Rodman (career usage of 11.4% and massively valuable to his team, partially because of said contribution-to-usage ratio).

A point guard's whole role is to control the offense, distribute the ball, and, secondarily, to score sometimes. A point guard who dominates the ball, like Westbrook or James Harden (34.2% usage last year), can still be a valuable asset to his team, because you want the ball in his hands a lot regardless. But a point guard who can contribute hugely to his offense while not taking up a third of his team's possessions is the absolute dream. Magic Johnson is such a player: he's considered the greatest point guard ever and his career usage is only 22.3%. Ditto John Stockton, whose career usage rate is a stunningly low 18.9%. Chris Paul has a career 24.0% usage, and Isaiah Thomas hit a career-high 34.0% this last year. Markell Fultz's usage rate is 31.4%.

All this is to give you context to what a normal usage rate is expected to be for an elite point guard. So you'll understand what it means when I tell you that Ball's usage rate is 18.1%. That's lower than EVERYONE I just listed, and well below everyone not named Stockton. But as my last article about Ball showed, Ball nevertheless has an incalculable impact on his team's offensive performance. To have that big an impact while commanding less than a 20% share of your team's possessions is absolutely staggering.

In other words, Ball is not the kind of player who demands that you build an offense around him. He's the kind of player who not only lets his teammates shine, but lets them outshine him. This is why, for all of the individual abilities that other players bring to the table, I don't think a single one of them will help their team nearly as much as Ball will.

Prediction 2: Lonzo Ball, if drafted by the Lakers, will take them to the playoffs in his first two seasons.
This one is bold. Really, really bold. The Lakers finished with the third-worst record in the league last season, and they play in the very strong Western conference. They aren't poised to make any major free-agent signings (in fact, despite popular misconception, they almost never do). The west is an extremely strong conference and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Within the next two years, the Lakers will be facing the following teams: A Warriors team starring Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant; a Spurs team with Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, LaMarcus Aldridge, and the walking corpses of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Pau Gasol; a Rockets team with James Harden and pals; a Clippers team that, while currently starring Chris Paul et al., will quite possibly implode this offseason (wait and see); a Jazz team on the upswing (+10 wins this year), led by (I'm hoping) this year's DPOY in Rudy Gobert, plus something called a Gordon Hayward; the Russell Westbrooks; the Memphis Grizzlies; a potentially good Blazers team with Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum; the Nuggets (I don't think they will be a threat though); a Pelicans team with the disastrous duo of DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis; the Miserable Mavericks; and if you think the Timberwolves' core is actually good (Karl-Anthony Towns, Ender Wiggin--once he gets good enough to deserve that nickname, Ricky Rubio, and Zach LaVine) then the Timberwolves. That's a lot of teams, several of whom are good.

I'm not going to try to predict the future, because things like Derrick Rose and Isaiah Thomas happen all the time. No one knows what franchises are going to take off with no warning or collapse into dust. But Lonzo Ball is a phenomenally gifted basketball player whose greatest attribute is that he improves his teammates' performance more than just about any point guard since Magic Johnson.

The Lakers have a young, raw core: D'Angelo Russell, who, despite the popular misconception that he is a "point guard," has actually been playing out of position for his entire pro career (he is a shooting guard); Brandon Ingram, who is very long and extremely talented (moreso physically than Lonzo, but less so BBIQ-wise) but hasn't quite figured out how to play yet, like a German Shepherd puppy trying to walk on its oversized paws; Julius Randle, who has teeny little T-Rex arms but who is inexplicably a pretty good basketball player; Larry Nance, Jr., who is athletic and actually good at defense; Ivica Zubac, whose name is pronounced "Ivitsa Zubats" and who is a surprisingly precocious center; Jordan Clarkson, who is a guy; and some other players. This motley crew is not very good right now; they finished, as I mentioned, third-to-last in the league, and although they probably underperformed a little because of the whole tanking thing, they didn't underperform by all that much. And while they showed a few flashes of brilliance (remember this game?), overall they did not impress.

But Lonzo Ball changes things. He is a magic player with a genius-level basketball IQ. He has the potential to turn all those guys from the preceding paragraph into All-Stars and strong role players. The Lakers were 17th in offense last year (slightly worse by ORTG). That's roughly as bad as the Bruins were (116th out of 351 by ORTG) before Ball showed up and turned them into the best offense in the country (2nd in PPG, 1st in ORTG). And before you jump on the defense train (which is reasonable; the Lakers are currently terrible at defense), you should know that Ball took the Bruins from 249th to 157th in DRTG. Some of that might be due to an easier schedule, or all of it might be. But I'm selectively choosing to credit Ball in order to support my own preconceived notions about his value to his team. The offense, though, is indisputable.


Weakness 3: LaVar Ball.
Unlike seemingly everyone else in the country, I don't have a problem with LaVar Ball. He's passionate and greedy and trying very hard to profit off of his son's success, but that's not any worse than anyone else involved with the NBA at any level. The reason I have LaVar as a weakness is because, as far as I can tell, the Lakers front office might actually have some concerns about him; they're reportedly talking with the coaching staff at UCLA to make sure he wasn't too disruptive to the team.

I don't think he will be. I think this whole thing is a concerted effort to A) get Lonzo to the Lakers, B) get his name (LaVar's) into the public eye, and C) polarize the world with respect to Lonzo. Polarization is absolutely key to getting the kind of success and fan loyalty that can make Lonzo an endorsement superstar. Nobody wants to sign Gordon Hayward to a billion-dollar deal (sorry for picking on him but he's just the most unremarkable top-tier player I can think of). I don't think LaVar actually gives a damn about what the Lakers do, and I definitely think he's smart enough to realize that if he doesn't shut up and leave the Lakers alone, his son will end up somewhere that's not LA.

There are only three ways I can think of that Lonzo won't be a Laker next year. First, if the Celtics take him. Second, if the Lakers fuck up horribly and decide that some other player is a better prospect or (shudder) a better fit. Or third, if they think LaVar will be a sufficiently large distraction to counteract the relative benefits of drafting Lonzo. This makes LaVar Lonzo's biggest weakness.


Strength 3: Fit.
When you're drafting a top-two draft pick (as the Lakers have in each of the past three drafts, including this one), you don't draft based on fit. You just don't. You would rather pull a Sixers and draft twelve elite big men and no guards than to draft based on fit and miss out on a superstar for your well-fitting role player. So when I say that Lonzo fits beautifully with the Lakers, I want to make it clear that this isn't a reason to take him. The reason to take him is all the stuff above: he's a basketball genius, he tremendously improves his team without dominating the ball, and he might be one of the best passers ever. Fit is just gravy.

That being said: Lonzo fits beautifully with the Lakers. As I mentioned, D'Angelo Russell is not really a point guard, he's a shooting guard playing out of position who happens to be a pretty good passer (his 4.8 assists per game last year, as a point guard, barely exceeds Kobe Bryant's career 4.7 APG, and Kobe played SG more or less full-time*). So with Ball sliding into a full-time point guard role, which he's better at than virtually anyone in the NBA, including Russell, D'Angelo gets to move back to his natural position of SG while still retaining his solid passing skills.

(* I feel the need to note that Kobe's assist numbers are artificially low due to A) playing most of his prime in the notoriously assist-denying triangle and B) playing almost all of his career as a shooting guard and very little as a point guard. But remember back in January of '13 where he played point guard for three games and averaged 16.3 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 13.0 assists? And explained that if he so chose he'd be the best point guard in the game? And then that March, he put up 42/7/12 and 41/6/12 in consecutive games? Who DOES that? The point being, playing PG and playing SG are very different things, assists-wise.)

Playing Ball and Russell at the two starting guard spots (which the Lakers will absolutely do; Ball is a day-one contributor) pushes Jordan Clarkson to a backup role, which is a good thing; Clarkson is a solid bench player but shouldn't be starting for an NBA team that hopes to contend. And while there's always the chance that he pulls an Isaiah and breaks out three or four years down the line, at this point chances are better that he never improves past bench player. Which is fine.

At the 3, the Lakers' future is Brandon Ingram. It is not Paul George. I referenced earlier in the article how the Lakers very rarely build around free agents, and I linked there to an old post of mine showing this to be the case. Of course that's not actually an argument against getting George, which I'll get to in a moment. First, the argument for sticking with Ingram: He's one of the most gifted young players in the league, with a huge wingspan, a great basketball IQ (albeit not Ball-level), enormous potential on both offense and defense, and the gift of youth--he's still only 19, about two months older than Ball. People who expect players to have a huge impact their first year in the league are usually forgetting that most of the guys who did that generally played three or four, and at least two, years of college before the draft. Those are important developmental years that are now happening after players are drafted. I expect Ingram to dominate within a couple years.

Now the case against George. I don't think he's a bad player, or even a mediocre player. My philosophy is to never pay mediocre players big contracts (cough Luol Deng and Timofey Mozgov), but this certainly doesn't apply to George. And if and when he comes to the Lakers as a free agent, he'll probably be a young 29. There are still prime years after that. But there aren't very many, and there's no guarantee the Lakers are going to contend before this core is in their mid-to-late 20s themselves. At that point George will be in his mid-30s and not contributing much for the money he'd be getting.

But more importantly, I think George might stunt our core's growth. He's made it clear that he would want to play SF for us, to the extent that positions are a thing. But how are we supposed to play Ball, Russell, and Ingram around him? Does Ingram play the four (being skinnier than Kevin Durant)? Does he come off the bench (the future of our franchise)? Do we push George to the four, against his wishes, and probably end up blowing the whole thing up Dwight-style? This isn't a great argument against getting George, but it's at least worth considering.

The bigger philosophical problem is that basing your future plans around getting a free agent who has, at best, expressed interest (he's not exactly Carmelo Anthony forcing a trade to the Knicks) is a terrible idea, especially for the Lakers, who really don't sign very many big free agents. (I think people remember those '04 signings of Karl Malone and Gary Payton as being a lot better than they actually were. Them plus Shaq leads to everyone forgetting that, hey, the only other big free agent the Lakers have ever signed was Jamaal Wilkes.) What if George, like virtually every other free agent who's expressed interest in the past decade and a half, decides not to come? If we've been planning on George coming, we're left in the lurch. If we haven't, we can go ahead and win a championship with our young core regardless.

You don't base your future prospects on free agents. You accumulate player capital, you draft or trade for talent, you build your team, you retain your stars, you avoid bad deals, and maybe you get lucky and land a nice free agent. That's how you win in this league. Signing Paul George is a loser bet, and not just because there's a decent chance it doesn't pay off. It's a violation of the foundational philosophy of winning in the NBA.

Moving on. The other relevant Lakers to consider are Randle, Nance, and Zubac, but I don't have as much to say about them. Randle has improved pretty impressively over his time in the league, and I think having an elite passer like Ball distributing will help him get much better looks on offense. Nance I see as primarily a defensive contributor, and I'm not sure where Zubac is going to end up, as a player. I could see him becoming a real contributor in the mold of Marc Gasol -- they are virtually identical physically: both are 7'1, both 265 pounds, both with a 7'0 wingspan -- or I could see him never becoming more than a role player. But either way, having a guy like Ball running the offense can only improve their performance, much like it improved the play of all of Ball's teammates at UCLA (and Chino Hills).


Wrap-up:
I should address the possibility that Ball is going to bust. I see how it could happen: His shot is a little unconventional (although it goes in), he doesn't have much experience creating shots or scoring from the midrange, his defensive potential is solid but not elite, and his father might be a significant distraction at the pro level. I freely acknowledge that Lonzo has a better chance of ending up an Anthony Bennett than, say, Markelle Fultz. But I don't think it's going to happen, and I think by now I've thoroughly explained why.

But more importantly, I believe that if you're picking top-two in a draft as stacked with talent as this one, you don't settle for the safe choice. Maybe it makes sense for Boston, who are currently down 2-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals against a great Cavs team, but it doesn't make sense for the Lakers, who earned their top-three pick with light tanking and good old-fashioned bad play. We need a superstar. We need a transcendent player. And I suspect that Fultz won't be that kind of player. I think Ball will.