To Trade Or Not To Trade? ...That Is The Question

Dishingoutdimes continues to dish out great posts, and here is his most recent, which is definitely worth a read. -Mister P

All of this talk about trading the 3rd pick, like sammy's FanPost pointed out, and the talk of Ricky Rubio not wanting to come to Oklahoma City got me thinking about trade prospects. I think it really boils down to whether or not Thabeet or Rubio falls to us. I don't think a whole lot of teams covet Thabeet, at least not as much as Rubio. If we have the chance to select Rubio at 3, I would suspect the phones will be ringing off the hook. If it's Thabeet, the Thunder may field a few calls, but just how good of offers they will be, that remains to be seen.

What are the chances Rubio falls to us? They seem pretty good. Despite a lot of people hating on Chad Ford, he offers an explanation as to why he said Memphis would take Thabeet:

Several sources told me that owner Michael Heisley loves Thabeet. He wants the team to be tougher defensively and thinks Thabeet would give it the shot-blocking and size it desperately needs.

I'm told that the rest of the Grizzlies' front office is partial to Rubio, but as we've seen the past few years, Heisley runs the show in Memphis.

This seems like a plausible scenario. The Grizzlies don't really have anyone in the middle either, and they just drafted Mike Conley Jr. at the point. With all that being said, let's take a look at the relative value of the Thunder's pick and what they might expect on the trade market.

Click below to read the rest of the article!

First, let me point out a couple of articles that I stumbled upon, and this will be the basis of what I spew out for the rest of my article. The first article is a nice article done by a Ph.D. who used to play basketball at MIT. He wrote it for 82games.com and you can find it here. Barzilai discusses the relative value of picks by performing a regression of 4 different metrics for the draft pick's careers: their player efficiency rating (PER) multiplied by the number of minutes they played, player wins, player win shares, and estimated initial salary. As you might suspect, the graph looks something like this, with the value of the top 5-10 picks much greater than the rest:

Image courtesy of www.82games.com

The other article that I stumbled upon was another written for 82games.com by Roland Beech who summarizes expectations for each draft pick from data from 1989-2008 (click here). He gives each player a rating simply by adding ppg, rpg, and apg. A star had a rating of 20 or better (basically they averaged a double double, or probably scored a ridiculous number of points). A "deep bench player" was basically anyone with a rating of between 5 and 10, and a bust was worse than 5. Overall, it seemed like a good metric of how guys are producing.

Let's take a look at where the Thunder stand based on both articles. We'll start with the second article. It's pretty amazing that, on average, over 90% of the players selected with the first four picks were either solid players or stars. The other less than 10% were players who were at the very least role players - none were busts or deep bench players. This stat is pretty important in arguing for the Thunder to stay put and take the best player on their board. More likely than not, they'll be getting a solid player.

When you get down to the 5 to 8 range, things get a little more risky. 37.5% of the players selected still become "stars", but 17.5%, or about 1 out of every 6, is relegated to a deep bench role. Still, no complete busts in this range (they may still be considered busts based on what their expectations were) so you're still relatively safe. For the picks 9 and below, the odds of getting a guy who doesn't contribute a whole lot increase dramatically.

Does Sam Presti covet the value of a top-4 pick? Image via www.realgm.com

Basically what all that says to me is that I don't see the Thunder trading down farther back than 9, unless the team offers a very attractive piece in addition to the pick. Besides, the teams near the top of the draft order will likely be hungrier to add talent. It also says to me that Presti could still expect to do reasonably well with a draft pick (especially given his track record as a talent evaluator) in the 5-8 range. Historically he's got nearly a 2 in 3 chance (60%) of getting a star or solid player, based on the 82games article.

The first article can then be used to evaluate value gaps between particular picks. For instance, the hot buzz has been that the Wizards want to trade up. They would offer an up-and-coming center who has been a role player thus far, and the 5th pick in return for the 3rd pick. Doing simple math with the relative value of the 3rd pick (.87) and the 5th pick (.78) gives us: 0.87/0.78 = 1.115. You could historically expect a player about 11.5% better with the 3rd pick than the 5th pick, although there are the risks to consider (as discussed above), plus the lure of Rubio would probably command a much higher price than Thabeet. Based on the value discussed above, the Wizards-Thunder trade floating around the internet would be a steal for the Thunder.

The Thunder have the luxury of a ton of cap room, even more than the Grizzlies. This gives them the opportunity to take on a large contract from a team that really wants to trade up a ways, but they will probably be picky about who it is (see: Chandler, Tyson).

There are teams just below the Thunder that might want to unload a big contract while moving up the board. The Knicks are an obvious choice who should be close to $70 million salary next season, not counting off season additions, and that would put them over most projected salary caps for the 2009-2010 season. Golden State is projected to have at least $59 million on the books. The problem for the Warriors is that a lot of their contracts extend well into the future. The Knicks however, have Larry Hughes' expiring deal good for $13.6 MIL next year and Chris Duhon's expiring $6.0 MIL deal.

Why make a trade with the Knicks? Well, even absorbing Larry Hughes' deal gives the Thunder a viable shooting guard for a year to bridge the gap to the lucrative 2010 offseason, and gives them enough flexibility to draft a good player at #8, and sign a couple of free agents without going over the cap. I can guarantee you the Knicks will be calling if Rubio is still on the board with the Thunder on the clock.

Summary

A lot of this will depend on which top 3 pick (according to the "experts") is still on the board when the Thunder are picking. If it's Rubio, I think the Thunder could rob quite a few teams in terms of value - especially the Kings and the Wizards who would only gain slight statistical/historical value by trading up 1 and 2 spots respectively. If Thabeet is there, there could be a few teams who need a big man who would call - notably the Kings who don't need a shooting guard with the other K-Mart, but also possibly the Wizards and also possibly the Timberwolves who could use a true center to put alongside one of their many young power forwards.

It all comes down to how much teams value Thabeet or Rubio. The Thunder could legitimately trade down a few spots, and history would still support them getting a solid player as long as they do their homework. Not only that, but in the trade I would suspect they'd add a nice piece either at SG or an interior presence, probably in the form of an expiring deal to bridge the gap, or an underrated young guy to add to the nucleus.

Here are some of my trade targets:

 

• Francisco Garcia (6'7" SG from the Kings): He can shoot it with an effective FG% of 47% on jumpshots, something the Thunder need. He has a manageable deal at about $5 MIL per year, but it is a long contract.

 

 

• JaVale McGee (7'0" C from the Wizards): A rookie but showing promise. Would add to the interior presence and allow us to get over not getting Thabeet, plus having the ability to add a SG by moving down.

 

 

• Mike Miller (6'8" SG/SF from the Wolves): He has an expiring 9.7 MIL deal but can really nail the open shot. He's always been better as a second or third option which he would be in OKC. Shoots it with an eFG% of 52.3% on jumpers.

 

 

• Larry Hughes or Chris Duhon from the Knicks. Both have expiring deals and were discussed above. Duhon has a decent jumpshot, putting them in with an eFG% of 53% on jumpers.