NBA earthquake
I recently did a post pointing out how the coastal areas are pulling away from older interior cities:
Visiting both San Francisco and San Jose on this trip, it was clear how much these cities have pulled away from middle American cities like St. Louis and Cleveland. The wealth and sophistication in the Bay Area is visible everywhere . . .
Last night I felt a rolling earthquake, and soon after a major trade represented an earthquake for the NBA. In the past few days, 4 of the top 10 players have moved to NYC or LA teams, and a top 15 player also moved to NYC. Last year one of the two greatest players of all time moved to LA. These two cities are absorbing top NBA talent at a dizzying rate.
The most recent Super Bowl was Boston vs. LA, as was the most recent World Series.
Sports fans will correctly argue that this isn’t exactly new, as big coastal teams have often been dominant (think NY Yankees.) But the past week does represent a bit of a change from recent NBA history. The NBA put into effect a draft lottery, salary caps, and “restricted free agent” rules which favor weaker teams. For a while that seemed to at least slightly balance things out, as the NY and LA teams were no longer very good. But now their pull is rapidly overcoming these artificial barriers to success. You can only hold down a good city for so long.
PS. A few years ago, I criticized the tendency of fans and reporters to question the mental health of players who complain of hard to diagnose injuries that team doctors cannot understand. In the past NBA finals a Warriors team doctor told Kevin Durant that his injury was healed, and then he immediately went down with a far more serious injury in the same foot area. He’ll be out for a year. His team was then beaten by a team led by Kawhi Leonard, who ignored the team doctor’s claim he was healthy, and waited until he was truly healthy before going back out to play. (Leonard was called a “head case”.) There’s a real conflict of interest problem with team doctors, and players should not be doubted just because their injury is hard to diagnose. They know best.
Leonard was often discussed in a very condescending way by people who mistook his introversion for stupidity. It turns out he is much shrewder than we imagined.
PPS. Remember that the “free market” model has no relevance for sports, as the “product” is games, and is produced jointly. Sports teams compete on the playing field, but in an economic sense they cooperate. Entire leagues are competing with other forms of entertainment. The league has an incentive to cartelize in order to make games exciting. If one team (i.e. “firm”) drove the others out of business, it would also go bankrupt. Sports is not like other industries.
PPPS. I rated Kyrie as top 20, and AD, Kawhi, PG and KD as top 10. I don’t think I need to indicate who’s top two of all time. Other top 10 players include LeBron, Steph, Harden, Giannis, Embiid and . . . I’m not sure. Jokic? Klay? Dame? Oladipo? Westbrook?
PPPPS. Go Milwaukee Bucks in 2019-20!
Tags:
6. July 2019 at 15:48
I wonder how many people agree that NBA players need their own private doctors to avoid conflicts of interests with team doctors but still are willing to give up their private doctors and health insurance for government doctors and government insurance.
6. July 2019 at 16:05
Hi Scott…sorry to keep bothering you on this but gonna try and get you on twitter one last time! (I’ll stop after this lol 🙂
Below is an example of how you can get across complex ideas with twitter and threads (don’t necessarily agree with everything Nick says here, just an example)
we could use you on twitter!
https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/992056245707128836
6. July 2019 at 16:07
I notice you don’t suggest KAT as a guy who might be in the top 10. I think that’s because you don’t want to be reminded about this post:
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/three-cheers-for-the-nba-draft/
Which concerned this draft:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_2015.html
“Even worse, the NBA is rapidly evolving in the direction of centers being unimportant. In the recent playoffs, teams would often go without any center at the end of games, when it mattered most. The team that won the championship was able to do this for long periods, without the big men on the other team being able to take advantage. So this is an even stronger argument to draft small. And yet once again, the top pick and probably the top two picks are expected to be big men.”
6. July 2019 at 16:10
I meant to add, I’m really kidding, that was a fun post. But KAT did turn out to be the right guy, and there’s not really a overall pattern that year of bigs taken too early – Okafor was taken too early at 2, but Porzingis would probably be 2 now, and Turner would certainly move up a ways from 11.
6. July 2019 at 16:15
Correction: Okafor went 3, Russell went 2. Maybe the Lakers brain trust read your blog post, back then. Too bad they missed your later post about not trading away players based on a single social media post….
6. July 2019 at 16:30
In reading Scott Sumner’s commentary about coastal cities pulling away from the interior cities, and being more exciting places to live, more sophisticated and even having the better professional sports teams, I am reminded why young professionals feel compelled to migrate to and congregate in coastal cities.
Unfortunately the coastal cities are defined by very strict property zoning and a consequent institutionalized, legalized and petrified system of economic rents.
It is, for example, a criminal act to build dense housing almost anywhere in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
6. July 2019 at 22:08
Avoid Twitter (an endless time sink!). We need you here.
7. July 2019 at 04:58
Nice to see an essay on the NBA.
It is interesting that players are willing to take less guaranteed money, by a decent amount, to play where they want to play. That seems to be new—-unless we say T. Brady set the example—-I think that is different.
I need to make a small cultural point. In a Macro sense, I don’t disagree that Durant and Irving came to NYC. But in a local sense, they came to Brooklyn which is Brooklyn. NYC is Manhattan. To get more detailed about this is way to “inside basketball” and “inside Brooklyn”—but I wanted to make the point. Further, if for example, the Wizards, the Bulls, the Hawks, or even The Mavericks happened to have a team set up where the Durant fit truly can make the difference (the injury really does put this whole plan in deep jeopardy) he could have and might have gone to one of them. And it is interesting that Brooklyn was not the “negative” that many thought it would be perceived—-hence the delusional belief of Knick fans.
The Leonard move is different. He has proved twice he can be the “guy”—-particularly this season. He wanted to move home. As did George. What is different (besides the aforementioned willingness to take less money), is the ability of players to force trades —-Davis and George——this too is new. George and Leonard grew up there—-not sure it’s coastal per se—although it is that too.
I am not really with you on the quasi-conspiracy theory re: team doctors. The evidence is not there, nor the incentive. GS was already going to offer Durant the 5 year Super Max after the injury. They knew they needed him. All were in on risk reward. He also had his own doctors. I do not know about Leonard. To play for Popovich (or Belichick) requires a certain personality——and for whatever reason, even though Leonard was going to be top dog, he just did not want to. We can debate what his obligations were, given what he was getting paid——but it is all moot—-and we will never know.
You named enough of the “top 20”—no argument there.
I disagree that Leonard, who I like, was treated in a condescending way by media or the teams. He was most definitely not viewed as stupid by any observer with a brain. He was viewed more as a “mystery” in that it was difficult to figure out what he would do. I did not think he would want to go to that S…..t show which is the Lakers for many reasons. Nor did it seem like he would just go to the Clippers—-just to be in LA? His coordination with George was the surprise (not a free agent for one) only because the collective “we” did not have the imagination to consider it possible—-but he did—-so I agree he was smart or “shrewed” (I don’t like that word!—-:-).
So—-while I have to agree there is a “big hill” in the center of the country that tends to make economic activity of all kinds roll down toward the coasts—-I think these two examples, while likely influenced by that, was not determinative. Few know, for example, that Irving is from NJ and his “hero” was Jason Kidd when he led the Nets to two finals.
I think there were both personal and basketball reasons (but not short term monetary reasons—the real new change) that drove both these moves.
Any way—I like sports—so it is fun to comment!
7. July 2019 at 08:20
Thanks Jim.
anon/portly, You said:
“I notice you don’t suggest KAT as a guy who might be in the top 10.”
Because he clearly is not. And my post looks pretty good today, as Russell turned out better than Okafor.
Today, centers are often taken off the floor when it really counts, at the end of important games.
Ricardo, Yes, time is a problem.
Michael, Today Brooklyn is also viewed as a hip location, and you can live in Manhattan if you wish.
There’s a lot of evidence that team doctors favor the team over the player, not just one or two anecdotes.
You said:
“To play for Popovich (or Belichick) requires a certain personality——and for whatever reason, even though Leonard was going to be top dog, he just did not want to.”
I see no evidence of that. Most reports suggested the exact opposite.
By the way, I could have mentioned Markelle Fultz as another case treated by the press as a head case due to an injury.
7. July 2019 at 09:08
Scott. Re Leonard and Pop. Are you saying that there was no evidence he did not want to play for him or that he was not going to be “top dog?” Either way there was plenty of evidence. What am I missing?
7. July 2019 at 14:48
“Los Angeles and New York have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau” — a semi-famous economics professor
7. July 2019 at 15:08
Scott, you are right about the product being entertainment.
However, the strict North American cartelization is not the only way possible. The European football teams have relegation and promotions as an orderly way for changing their members, and they have no salary caps.
7. July 2019 at 15:31
OT…Scott Sumner and American economists rarely address TLTROs, the ECB tactic. But there now is a European track record on TLTROs and I guess the consensus there is that it is a program worth extending.
Any thoughts?
7. July 2019 at 17:56
I’d be very interested in hearing Scott’s views on European soccer, where teams do go bankrupt, and the free market is very relevant. Relegation/promotion ensures the level of cooperation is limited. I personally find it way more interesting than the US, where the regular season is meaningless, and the bad teams can stay bad forever and not have to pay any consequence. A sports franchise in the US truly is like a money printing machine. You could have the worst run team in the league for many seasons in a row with pretty much no downside. That’s especially the case now where gate revenue is of less importance than ever.
Many economists seem to be in love with the NBA these days- and it’a s great league- but it’s not the only game in town by any means.
7. July 2019 at 21:05
@Matthias:
European soccer is also more corrupt than the NBA or any other American sporting league, on a scale that would make Trump blush. The teams are the playthings of Russian oligarchs and Arab billionaires. The transfer fees alone are ridiculous. There’s talk of the best teams leaving their respective national leagues and forming a super duper league, which would lead to the collapse of most nations’ leagues.
Google Rui Pinto and see for yourself.
8. July 2019 at 05:42
As someone who thought that Boston would be really good last year and that Toronto would not get over any significant hump, maybe my opinions are bad (though GSW nearly beat Toronto even after Klay went down, so I don’t consider myself wrong on thinking they were nearly unstoppable). Still, as I look at all the new “super” teams, I have some trouble finding the depth on each team beyond the big two (Kawhi/George, LeBron/AD, Kyrie/KD – and I think Kyrie is a big step down from the other players listed here). Two likely Hall of Famers hasn’t really paid championship dividends for the Rockets over the past few years, almost all of these pairs were created via extremely costly trades, and each of these pairs has dealt with very major injury limitations over the past two seasons. I think we ignore the potential continued ascent of Embiid, Giannis, etc, at our own peril. Maybe if some of the new pairs were closer to a big three, I would be more optimistic about them.
Anyway, I really like this dispersal since it makes the NBA’s outcome no longer a foregone conclusion. But it is a little sad about GSW since I think that they would have still been nigh-unstoppable in 2019-2020 if they still had Igoudala et al. and Klay.
8. July 2019 at 08:36
“[KAT] clearly is not [one of the ten best players].”
Is that so? I don’t really know. He’s a 24/12 guy who shot 40% from 3 last year. He’s in Bill Simmons’ “trade value” top 20 and has made an all-NBA 3rd team. But I don’t follow the NBA that closely, and can’t really remember watching the Twolves in a whiles. I would have thought he was a candidate.
“And my post looks pretty good today, as Russell turned out better than Okafor.”
Hmmm, I think the general idea of your post was true – that you should be very careful about where you draft tall players.
But that doesn’t mean, that after taking that into account, you shouldn’t take a tall guy. “And yet once again, the top pick and probably the top two picks are expected to be big men.” If you take that as saying the Lakers should have taken Russell over Okafor, it looks like good advice. If you take it as saying the Twolves should have taken Russell over Towns, it looks like bad advice.
“Today, centers are often taken off the floor when it really counts, at the end of important games.”
It’s possible that if that draft was rerun now, Towns, Porzingis and Turner would go 1, 2, 3 – they’re not guys that team are going to (necessarily) take off the floor at the end of games. I don’t know how teams value Devin Booker, maybe he’d be in there somewhere.
Jahlil Okafor at 3 was a bust, but the next three non-bigs taken after him were Mario Herzonja, Emmanuel Mudiay and Stanley Johnson. It was a busty draft.
Looking at the 2014, 2015, 2016 drafts, I don’t think you see a strong pattern of tall guys going too early. 2013 Len, Zeller, Noel went 4, 5, 6. But then a 6’11” guy went 15th and is now the league’s best player. I think it’s possible that the NBA as a whole is now valuing tall players more appropriately.
9. July 2019 at 11:35
Michael, My understanding was that the problem between Kawhi and the team resulted from how they handled his injury. That may be wrong, but it’s what I read. Previously the Spurs had nothing but good things to say about Kawhi’s attitude.
Hoosier, I know nothing about soccer.
Derek, I actually partly agree. But the Clippers were good even before adding Kawhi and PG, so I see them as a cut above the Lakers. Their late game small ball line-up will be pretty hard to beat. (Beverly, Williams, Kahwi, PG and Harrell.) Imagine the (slow) Lakers trying to keep up.
Anon/Portly, Top 20 is way different from top 10.
I just don’t think KAT helps you win many games. Indeed in 2 or 3 years Russell may be the more impactful player. Turner is just a regular season player, and Porzingas hasn’t proven he can help teams win, although he has potential. BTW, one of my criticisms of bigs is that they are injury prone. Unfortunately, I look for Embiid and Zion Williamson to have injury problems, due to the stress they put on their knees and feet. The Bucks had a good center (Bogut) whose career was destroyed by injuries.
And the 15th pick in the 2013 draft was a skinny 6’9” wing. Indeed I regard both Durant and Giannis as effectively wings not “bigs”, although I should have made that clear in the original post.
10. July 2019 at 05:49
Good NBA post. And I agree, Kawhi is a game theory master.
Btw, this is the best basketball pundit in the world right now, bar none (Thinking Basketball on YouTube). He just did a post on the Top 10 players (my only gripe is that AD is rated a bit too high).
Give it a look when you have some spare time. Also, check out his profiles on Westbrook (and Jokic — the passing clips/analysis are amazing).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93zief7g2Jk
10. July 2019 at 13:04
“Leonard was often discussed in a very condescending way by people who mistook his introversion for stupidity. It turns out he is much shrewder than we imagined.”
Well, NBA stars are pretty smart as a group, and there was never a trace of stupidity in Leonard’s play. But (following the link) HaroldinGMinor says:
“Has it been brought up that KL had no intention of ever going back to Toronto but gave the appearance he might so the Clips would up the ante to get George? That would be some serious Machiavellian **** right there.”
Okay, fine, KL, following the LBJ playbook, has played GM and engineered his immediate future. That seems (as many are pointing out) more like the “general theme of this offseason” than “some Machiavellian ****.”
Was KL the GM exceptionally shrewd? The LAC overpaid for George, by all accounts. I think KL would have been smarter to hold out for not just Paul George, but “Paul George acquired for a sensible price.”
10. July 2019 at 17:24
“The NBA put into effect a draft lottery, salary caps, and “restricted free agent” rules which favor weaker teams. For a while that seemed to at least slightly balance things out, as the NY and LA teams were no longer very good. But now their pull is rapidly overcoming these artificial barriers to success. You can only hold down a good city for so long.”
For the “NY” half of this statement, maybe it’s relevant that the Nets arrived from the ABA in 76-77, and have won 50 or more games 1 time, and lost 50 or more games 18 times. The Knicks over that same time frame have won 50 or more games 9 times, and lost 50 or more games 14 times.
It’s hard to see why the draft lottery favors weaker teams, since it hurts the draft position of the weakest teams, but the salary cap arrived in 84-85, awhile back. I’m not sure which free agent rules matter here, but anyway that “for a while” would seem to have to mean something like “for a few decades,” which kind of renders the “only so long” point a little odd.
If Durant recovers well from his industry and ages well, the Nets might be relevant again at some point. But I wonder what percentage of NY fans born, say, in 1969 – too young to appreciate the Knicks two titles, and now turning 50 – will die of natural causes before seeing a NY team hoist the Larry O’Brien. I’d put the over/under at about half.
11. July 2019 at 13:33
“The NBA put into effect a draft lottery, salary caps, and “restricted free agent” rules which favor weaker teams. For a while that seemed to at least slightly balance things out, as the NY and LA teams were no longer very good. But now their pull is rapidly overcoming these artificial barriers to success. You can only hold down a good city for so long.”
Odd thought: is the goodness of LA (or at least “West of Sepulveda” LA; notice that baseball’s second team went East but basketball’s second team preferred to stay in the Lakers’ shadow) “rapidly overcoming” or “less rapidly overcoming” these barriers?
Or alternatively, do we expect the cumulative impact of the LeBron, AD, KL and PG moves to be greater than the Shaq move, by itself, was?
At first glance, Shaq turned the post-Magic Lakers from a “makes the playoffs every year, but can then only beat a George Karl coached team” to a genuine contender, and then they won 3 titles.
But then again, although those 3 title teams featured Shaq as the big star, they were Shaq + Kobe + Phil + Phil’s band of savvy role players, and then Pau + Kobe + Phil + Phil’s band of savvy role players won two more titles.
Still, you might want to credit Shaq’s move as being worth X expected titles. Are LeBron + AD + KL + PG worth more than X, or less than X?
11. July 2019 at 13:47
“The NBA put into effect a draft lottery, salary caps, and “restricted free agent” rules which favor weaker teams. For a while that seemed to at least slightly balance things out, as the NY and LA teams were no longer very good. But now their pull is rapidly overcoming these artificial barriers to success. You can only hold down a good city for so long.”
As I pointed out above, I think this is wrong about NY, as history has proven that you can hold down NY for basically forever, not “only so long.”
But the formulation also doesn’t really fit LA either, since it really hasn’t been held down, very much, at any period. The Lakers were “very good” in the 80’s 90’s and 00’s, and “no longer very good” only recently, in the 10’s, but the Clippers were vice-versa. So LA has never seen an era in which both of its teams were not “very good” for very long. The post-Magic, pre-Shaq interval is about it – but even in that 5-year span the Lakers made the playoffs 4 times and the Clippers twice. A 60% playoff rate, and even in an era where between 59% (16/27) and 55% (16/29) of the teams made the playoffs, that might seem like a golden era to Nets/Knicks fans.
11. July 2019 at 21:26
Thanks John, That was excellent.
anon/portly, So is your argument that Lebron, PG, Kyrie, AD, KD and Kawhi all suddenly going to LA and NYC is just a coincidence, and that the 6 superstars might have just as likely all decamped for Memphis and Milwaukee and OKC this year? It has nothing to do with the lure of the bright lights?
Why does the draft lottery favor the weak teams? Because they have a much bigger chance of winning the lottery. They should go back to the lottery where all non-playoff teams had an equal chance.
Yes, the Nets were a bad team for a long time, and Brooklyn was a dump for a long time. Now Brooklyn is cool and the Nets are cool.
The Knicks management is pretty bad, I’ll give you that.
12. July 2019 at 07:50
Many oil companies have already moved their headquarters from Louisiana and Oklahoma to Houston. And now the OKC team is moving to Houston (Harden, Westbrook.)
13. July 2019 at 21:52
“Why does the draft lottery favor the weak teams? Because they have a much bigger chance of winning the lottery. They should go back to the lottery where all non-playoff teams had an equal chance.”
Well, if that’s what you meant, it’s a somewhat obscure point, since that lottery system was only around from `85 to `89 (with all selections by lottery for `85 and `86 and just the first three from `87 to `89).
Also it assumes that the NY/LA teams, when ending up in the lottery, have tended to be the better lottery teams. This is clearly not true for the Clippers or Nets, with all their many bad years. I’m not sure if it’s true for the Knicks.
The Knicks have the following distribution of lottery-year W/L records: 37-45 (2); 33-49 to 29-53 (8); 24-58 or 23-59 (4); 17-65 (2). I’m guessing the weighted lottery isn’t an expected negative for a team with this distribution, but if it is, not a significant one.
Maybe surprisingly, I think the Lakers have benefited from the weighted lottery system as well, since they weren’t in the lottery but twice until the post-Kobe era, at which point the weighted lottery system enabled their finishing 6th, 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 10th and 11th from the bottom and then picking 7th, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, [traded for Nash] and 4th. Admittedly, not exactly the best three year stretch in NBA history to be picking second, but still….
Final note: for the Clippers, at least the weighted lottery system begat Blake Griffin, which begat Lob City and a series of 50+ win seasons, which surely helped the Clippers in becoming a destination that self-respecting NBA superstars would go to.
15. July 2019 at 11:40
“Why does the draft lottery favor the weak teams? Because they have a much bigger chance of winning the lottery. They should go back to the lottery where all non-playoff teams had an equal chance.”
Following on to my previous comment, here’s a fun stat. Both the Lakers and the Jazz have missed the playoffs 8 times since 1984. Here’s their win distributions in those 8 seasons:
Jazz:
25-26 (2)
38-43 (6)
Average 36.75, median 39.5
Lakers:
17 (1)
21 (1)
26-27 (2)
33-37 (4)
Average 28.75, median 30
Well, I couldn’t stop myself – please, someone just shoot me – I had to do the medians for all 23 teams from 1984.
Celtics: 10 misses, median 32.5
Blazers: 7 misses, median 32
Bulls: 11 misses, median 23
Houston 10 misses, median 38
New York: 17 misses, median 29
Washington: 22 misses, median 29
Nets: 19 misses, median 26
Atlanta: 13 misses, median 30
Denver: 16 misses, median 31.5
Milwaukee: 16 misses, median 31
Philadelphia: 17 misses, median 27 [endogeneity alert!]
Phoenix: 15 misses, median 32
Kings: 25 misses, median 28
Detroit: 13 misses, median 31.06 (25-41 strike year)
Dallas: 15 misses, median 28
Cleveland: 17 misses, median 30
Indiana: 11 misses, median 35.5
Clippers: 25 misses, median 29
Sonics/Zombie Sonics: 12 misses, median 36
Warriors: 23 misses, median 30
San Antonio: 4 misses, median 26
Notice the 4 teams with the high median win total during lottery years: Sonics/Zombies, Jazz, Pacers, Rockets. Pretty much your definitional “smaller market teams with many very good teams but not so much great teams” franchises. You could add the Blazers to this group, perhaps, and other teams for parts of this period but not all.
Obviously the median does not capture the nuances of these distributions, in my mind in an overall “expected” sense the weighted playoff thing has most benefited franchises that have alternated really good stretches with really bad stretches like Chicago, Phoenix and Dallas.
Teams that go through stretches where they’re just bad for years and years – Nets, Warriors, Clippers, Kings – well, they’re just bad for years and years. But you have to figure they’re better off with the weighting than without it.
15. July 2019 at 13:42
“So is your argument that Lebron, PG, Kyrie, AD, KD and Kawhi all suddenly going to LA and NYC is just a coincidence, and that the 6 superstars might have just as likely all decamped for Memphis and Milwaukee and OKC this year? It has nothing to do with the lure of the bright lights?”
It’s complicated! There are so many aspects to all of this, I hardly know where to begin. I’ve been writing and rewriting a reply – I have way too much free time, apparently, and not that my final effort will reflect actual effort – and am not sure where to begin.
Anyway, here is the OP language I was objecting to:
“For a while that seemed to at least slightly balance things out, as the NY and LA teams were no longer very good. But now their pull is rapidly overcoming these artificial barriers to success. You can only hold down a good city for so long.”
I wouldn’t argue that Los Angeles and New York (and other cities) don’t have “pull” from their “bright lights” while other cities (say Utah or OKC) don’t have “push” from their lack of same. That is no doubt true. But it’s only one aspect of their push and pull.
Let’s take the Clippers. For years and years, the Clippers, overall, didn’t have “pull” or “allure,” they had its opposite, that is I think clear.
I get that it’s quite possible that they have just now “turned a corner” in the sense that our expectations for them should now be that their “pull” is now positive, and can be expected to be positive going forward.
But what I object to is the suggestion that this is in any way *inevitable* or even especially likely. I say it’s not. The Clippers are pursuing a somewhat risky strategy, specifically in acquiring – partly by giving up a lot of assets – two 30-ish players with injury downsides. In two or three years, if this goes badly, they could, for all we know, be back to more decades of poor outcomes.
Obviously the Clippers have a lot of positives at this moment: the afterglow of the Lob City years coinciding with a down period for the Lakers; a well-run organization that traded away its two biggest stars and replaced them with good young players, giving them assets that got them George and will help Leonard and George going forward; Doc Rivers; and yes, the “bright lights” and “hometown” (for many NBA stars, often but especially of late) aspects of LA.
To what extent was that last aspect, the bright lights and hometown thing, dispositive for Kawhi? I don’t think we know. If the Clippers didn’t have all these other positives, were still the bad Clippers of old, would Kawhi have inevitably become a Laker? I think we’ll never know. What we do know is he once re-signed with San Antonio.
Here’s a data point: just one year ago, a major NBA talent from LA turned down LA to stay in the hickest town in the NBA. The “bright lights” of LA, a chance to play with LeBron, all of no avail. What changed? Not the Clippers turning a corner, I’d say the biggest single factor in George’s decision was OKC’s on-court performance, not just this past season but in his expectations going forward. No doubt “LA” versus “OKC” was some factor, but maybe he would also preferred to join up with Kawhi in Toronto, Sacramento, Orlando, Amarillo or Pocatello.
Okay, yes, Kawhi did choose LA, LA may have been KL’s intended destination this year regardless of circumstances. And LeBron. And Shaq. There’s no doubt LA’s “pull” is a force.
But how big of a factor is it, compared to mundane “basketball stuff?” That’s a tough question, in my view. What is “NBA title expectation” for a random LA team, in any given year? 1.5X the average? 1.2X? 1.05X?
15. July 2019 at 13:45
Actually the whole LA dynamic will be pretty interesting to watch. Can both the Lakers and Clippers be really good, for long, at the same time? Can this be like Manchester now, where both United and City are good, or will it revert to Manchester then, where one team eclipses the other?
15. July 2019 at 13:54
A brief mention of the Nets – I’m far more skeptical of this “Brooklyn is now cool” thing than I am of the LA thing.
For one (bloody obvious?) thing, the betting favorite on Durant’s destination was the Knicks, not the Nets. If Brooklyn’s “coolness” is dependent on “pretty bad” Knicks management, how cool is it really?
It’s possible Brooklyn’s “coolness” is a thing, but I’d say the “pull” of Brooklyn is pretty close to the NBA average, going forward. I think the odds that the Clippers winning record over the next 5 seasons is below .500 are pretty low, but I’d but those same odds for Brooklyn at about 50%. And of course Brooklyn is taking on even more downside injury risk than the Clippers are; I think if we were told that one of the four “super duo” teams (LA, LA, Houston and New Jersey) was going to be in the lottery each of the next three years, we would all instantly guess New Jersey.