Sixers-Pelicans Lottery Thread

[MDS]

the bucks probably wont win 5 more games....unless MONDAY

[ice grillin you]

admit that tonight is more exciting than any olympic hockey game

[MDS]

its more exciting than any olympic hockey game thats not usa/canada gold medal played in usa or canada.

the possibilities that open with a loss....

[ice grillin you]

its more exciting than any olympic hockey game thats not usa/canada gold medal played in usa or canada.

the possibilities that open with a loss....

if i tried i think i can make an argument that tonights game is bigger than eagles saints playoff game this year

[MDS]

you couldnt, simply because even with a loss, the bucks winning 4 more games than the sixers the rest of the way are slim to none

milwaukee is catastrophically bad....theres a decent chance they dont even get to 15

[ice grillin you]

The Sixers, in the midst of a 10-game losing streak, added more fuel to the tanking fire last week when they traded away two of their top four scorers, Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes, for four second-round picks. Yes, they also received Danny Granger's expiring contract, Earl Clark, Eric Maynor and Byron Mullens in the deals. But even Sixers PR called it for what it was. "Sixers acquire Two Second Picks in 2014 from the Cavaliers" read the email headline for a trade that netted Clark. "Sixers Acquire Two Future Second Picks as Part of a Three-Team trade" for a deal that brought them Maynor.

I'll be shocked if the Sixers make it to 18 wins this season. They're the only team left that has a real shot at catching the Bucks.

[ice grillin you]

hinkie dust...

Pop quiz. What do the following players have in common? Marc Gasol. Manu Ginobili. Paul Millsap. Monta Ellis. DeAndre Jordan. Lance Stephenson. Luis Scola. Chandler Parsons. Carlos Boozer. Rashard Lewis.

If you guessed "second-round draft picks," you're a sharp NBA observer (or just really attentive to column headlines).

Believe it or not, you can find some serious talent in the second round. There's the reigning Defensive Player of the Year (Gasol), a future Hall of Famer (Ginobili), a collection of All-Stars (Millsap, Ellis, Boozer and Lewis) and key cogs to championship contenders (Jordan, Stephenson, Scola and Parsons). And that's before we get to really solid players like Goran Dragic, Lou Williams, Amir Johnson, Marcin Gortat, Kyle Korver, Nikola Pekovic and Isaiah Thomas. All of that talent was taken in the second round.

This makes Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie a mad genius, right? At Thursday's trade deadline, the first-year GM continued to raze the 76ers' roster, dumping impending free agents Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes in exchange for second-round picks, among other things. All told, Hinkie has accumulated five second-rounders in the 2014 draft and a couple of extras down the road.

Is this a case of a mastermind exploiting a market inefficiency? Are second-rounders really that valuable? What in the name of Dr. J is going on in Philadelphia?

As in most cases, it's complicated.

The historical value of second-rounders


What I didn't tell you at the top was that 32 percent of all second-round picks never even play in the NBA. Not a minute. This is one of the many discoveries of the NBA DRAFT Initiative study that I published at Insider in 2009, which I've dusted off and updated this season. From Pervis Ellison to Janis Timma, I've analyzed all 1,442 picks who have been selected since 1989, the first year the draft shrunk from three rounds to the current setup of two.

76ERS' 2014 PICKS
*If season ended today

Overall pick Acquired
2 own
11 via Pelicans
32 own
39 via Cavs
45 via Nets
50 via Grizzlies
55 via Rockets
What else do we find after putting the draft under the microscope? Yes, it's true: Second-round picks are essentially a crapshoot. About one-third don't even play in the NBA. And even if they manage to slip on an NBA uniform, most burn out before lasting three seasons. Of the 603 second-rounders picked between 1989 and 2009, just 246 of them made it to Year 3.

Take, for instance, the 2010 draft class. Stephenson has developed into an All-Star candidate after being drafted in the second round in 2010. Success! Not quite. Just four of the 30 second-rounders from 2010 are still playing in the NBA: Stephenson, Utah backup big man Jeremy Evans, Toronto Raptors reserve Landry Fields and Jarvis Varnado, who is on a 10-day contract with the Chicago Bulls. The 26 others have either flamed out (like Dexter Pittman and Andy Rautins) or never got to light the wick in the first place (like Nemanja Bjelica and Tiny Gallon).

We can dig deeper. Using John Hollinger's Estimated Wins Added metric -- which is player efficiency rating translated to wins produced by taking into account minutes played -- we can examine the value of second-rounders compared to, say, late first-rounders.

PICK VALUE SINCE 2005
Picks Tot. EWA AVG EWA
26-30 246.4 0.8
31-35 153.4 0.5
Looking back to 2005 when the draft expanded to 60 picks because of the addition of the Charlotte Bobcats, we find that the final five picks of the first round (Nos. 26 to 30) have substantially outperformed the first five picks of the second round (Nos. 31 to 35). The late first-rounders have yielded 246.4 wins over that time, an average annual EWA of 0.8 (think Darrell Arthur) whereas the early second-rounders have contributed just 153.4 wins, an average annual EWA of 0.5 (think Steve Novak). What this means is that late first-rounders have produced nearly 100 more wins than the second-rounders picked right after them.

Second-rounders don't look like such a great bet now, huh? With all this information in mind, can we say Hinkie is a fool for hunting for second-rounders like they were basketball bitcoins?

Ah, but this analysis goes only so far because the new collective bargaining agreement has changed the game.

Second-round pick as currency


The CBA, ratified in 2010, has altered the NBA market thanks to a luxury-tax system that crushes teams for crossing over a designated threshold. It used to be that teams were taxed dollar-for-dollar for going over the luxury-tax line. Spend $1 million over the luxury-tax threshold and spend an additional $1 million in tax payouts.

But now, teams are taxed $1.50 for every dollar up to $5 million over the luxury-tax line. And it gets worse from there. The tax rate balloons to $1.75 per dollar for the next $5 million, $2.50 for the next $5 million and so on. In the old CBA, the Nets would pay about $30 million in luxury-tax penalties this season, but under the new punitive system, they'll pay about three times as much. Mikhail Prokhorov's tax bill this season has nearly reached nine figures.

There's more. The new CBA also introduced the repeater tax guillotine, which starts taking effect next season. The repeater rate piles on an extra dollar to the tax rate (starting at $2.50 per dollar, not $1.50 per dollar) and is designed to dissuade big-market teams from bullying the rest of the league with their deep pockets. Starting in 2014-15, teams are forced to pay the repeater rate if they were taxpayers in three of the four previous seasons. It's a big deal.

So where do second-rounders come in? Good question. First-round picks are not only more expensive than second-rounders, but they also count against the cap regardless of whether they are signed. The key is that second-rounders, by rule, do not. So cost-conscious teams looking to preserve precious cap space in summer free-agent sweepstakes or looking to shave down their luxury-tax bill can still add talent to fill out the roster by unloading a first-round pick for a couple of second-rounders.


Michael Hickey/Getty Images
Luis Scola and Erik Murphy, right, are both second-rounders serving very different purposes.A tax-flirting team like Chicago, which holds two late-first-round picks next season (Charlotte's first-rounder goes to Chicago if it doesn't fall in the top 10 via the Tyrus Thomas deal), could improve its flexibility by swapping a first-rounder with Hinkie for say, the No. 32 pick and the No. 39 pick. Same goes for Oklahoma City, a team that also holds two late-first-rounders in the 2014 draft. Though it doesn't seem like much in February, second-rounders could hold serious currency for capped-out teams come June.

Furthermore, second-rounders are far cheaper for tax purposes than picking up free agents off the scrap heap. As astutely pointed out by SB Nation's Mark Deeks, there's a reason why center Erik Murphy remains on the Bulls' roster even though he never plays: As a second-round pick, he is saving them about $1 million in luxury-tax penalties compared to a similar non-drafted rookie thanks to the fine print in the CBA. With a repeater tax on the horizon, CBA minutiae matters more now than ever.

What other teams could be shopping for second-round picks at the draft? Take a look at the 2014 draft slots for Brooklyn, New York, Golden State, New Orleans and Portland. As of today, they have none. And no one likes to miss out on a draft, especially if it's a deep draft such as 2014's class. Knowing this, Hinkie could be in a position of serious leverage come draft time when any of these five teams get itchy for a draft pick -- any draft pick.

Even if Hinkie swaps two picks for one to Chicago and then sells two second-rounders to pickless teams, he still has one second-rounder left over to use for himself. In this scenario, the 76ers would have three first-rounders (they already have two thanks to New Orleans) in what's considered the most loaded draft in years.

'Together we build'


Ever since taking over GM duties this summer, Hinkie has been all about the long play, laying down building blocks for sustainable success. It's no coincidence that the Sixers' slogan this season is "Together we build." Ten years ago, trading two starters in exchange for scraps and a bunch of second-round picks would have seemed like something a GM would do if he was deliberately trying to get canned. But the equation is a little more complicated in 2014 because of a complicated CBA.

Hinkie obviously is building something in his workshop, but we probably won't know what it is for years to come. As Oklahoma City has shown us, patience is a necessary ingredient to team building but hard to come by in the microwave society in 2014.

To be sure, it's entirely possible Hinkie's efforts might still fall flat. As the DRAFT Initiative study illustrated, second-round picks aren't a reliable venture considering most of them barely even play in the league. For every Ginobili, there are 50 Tiny Gallons. But for Philly, it's not necessarily about the players; rather, it's about accumulating assets. And it could be, as a few execs around the league have theorized, that Hinkie's monopoly of the second round is more a reflection of the market for first-rounders drying up than it is about second-rounders being a golden asset.

But if you're wondering what the 76ers are doing in February, the truth is we might not know until June.

[phattymatty]

stopped reading at future hall of famer ginobili. no way.

[SunMo]

http://espn.go.com/nba/lottery2014/mockdraft  you can do this all day

i did it 5 times so far and the celtics got 1st pick twice.  sixers highest was 2 and lowest was 5

[phattymatty]

first try

[SunMo]

luck of the leprechaun

[Eagles_Legendz]

That was my first try too, but my first try also gave the pellies the third pick.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Three times and on all three it gave me 4th and 11th

[MDS]

didnt get the 1 and kept doing over and over again

[QB Eagles]