🚨SPECIAL EDITION🚨: 2021 Draft Preview
What types of players do NBA teams want? STL investigates. Plus, finance/gambling nerdery and more.
OPENING TIP
The dog days of summer have arrived. The crowds are gone, the champagne has been mopped up, and somewhere in the bowels of the Fiserv Forum the last basketball has bounced itself silent. It’s over.
Which means, of course, we can finally move on to the good stuff! The offseason—everyone’s favorite part of the NBA schedule—is upon us. We at STL are ready. Free agency. Draft Picks! Qualifying offers!!
Due to this year’s compressed schedule, the NBA draft is tonight(!), and you may have heard it is a five-player draft. We are here to tell you that is true, perhaps in more ways than one. The mockers, reporters, and draftniks have coalesced around a top five of Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, Jalen Green, Jalen Suggs, and Scottie Barnes. But as the STL draft machine ground into motion, breaking down the tape, combing the mocks, and digesting the player guides (Sam Vecenie’s at The Athletic clocks in at over 150,000 words, which is solid… for a Stephen King novel), it became ever clearer that every draft has become a five-player draft.
Every GM is looking for one of five guys to fill out his Platonic Roster:
Ja Morant (the Lead Guard and creator)
Bradley Beal (The Bucket; instant offense)
Mikal Bridges (The 3 & D wing)
Jimmy Butler (The On Ball wing)
Clint Capela (The versatile big who guards inside and out)
Yes, there are players who transcend or combine these archetypes. Giannis gives you rim protection, perimeter help, and 30 points a game. Jokic gives you playmaking from the 5 spot. But there’s no planning for those unicorns. Mostly, GMs are squinting at the tape, less interested in what position you play than in how you fit into one of these archetypes.
It should go without saying, but GMs are looking to what a guy could become, not what he is now. We were tempted to call the “3&D” category “3 and/or D” because rarely does a prospect deliver both at first (and sometimes, they never do either). We gotta give it to hope — it’s what makes this game beautiful. Shout out to that jaded, world-weary GM who can look at Scottie Barnes’ shaky jumper and say, “Yeah, we can fix that!”
So we’re breaking down this year’s class based on the archetypes to see if we can draw any sophisticated conclusions (STL is all about sophisticated conclusions…. and also shoes). Below is the consensus Big Board ranking of this draft class, along with which archetype each player fits (if any):
First, some stats:
So what sticks out?
Most guys fit (if you squint!) into one of these archetypes. If you don’t, your draft stock is either all over the place (Keon Johnson) or falling (Jalen Johnson).
Players with the potential to be On Ball Wings are the most desired skillset, with by far the lowest average ranking. This is why teams are seriously considering talking themselves into Jonathan Kuminga despite his, uh, questionable feel for the game.
The Lead Guards, guys who can run an offense for 30+ minutes, are a little thin on the ground at the top of the draft. Don’t be surprised to see talented distributors like Josh Giddey sneak upwards tonight.
What else to watch for this evening? It’s worth remembering that GMs are just guys with poor job security. Not too long ago, a team would weigh a few possible picks, and then someone would point out that, “you can’t teach height” and they would draft a big to play it safe. Today, we’re seeing the same thing with 3&D guys. It feels safe to draft a guy knowing he only has to do two things well. It isn’t. The number of players already in the league who meet this criteria is already small, and most of these prospects won’t get there.
We wonder if there isn’t some value in guys who don’t fit these molds quite so well. Alperen Sengun, the 6’9” big from Turkey, is a throwback center. He has post moves, soft hands, and was MVP of the Turkish League at 18 years old. It will be interesting to see if the NBA still has a place for him.
A few more guys to keep an eye on:
Franz Wagner. A lanky German whose brother Mo plays in the league, he could have been a second rounder last year even without much of an offensive game. We’re hearing he could go Top 7?
Corey Kispert. What STL has been calling the “3 and/or D.” How high Kispert goes will tell us a lot about whether GMs are starting to value the 3-ball above almost everything else.
Chris Duarte. The draft is incredibly young this year, and then there is Duarte, who will be 24 when the season opens. The production is intriguing, but we wonder if someone that old can really excite anyone?
The ‘G’ men. Jalen Green, Jonathan Kuminga, Dashien Nix and Isaiah Todd all skipped college to play in the G League (and get paid) for a year. They were playing against much tougher competition, and (because of COVID rules in the NCAA) were much more available to NBA scouts. Will teams reward that choice, or will familiarity breed contempt?
Finally, we encourage you to keep your eyes peeled for the things that make the NBA draft special every year: who made a terrible mistake with their tux? Whose mom is trashed in the Green Room? Whose hugs make Adam Silver the most uncomfortable? And of course, who is devastated they got drafted by the Kings and are trying to make the best of it? We can’t wait to find out.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Owen Phillips with another take on a consensus Big Board:
STL EXPLAINS FINANCE: THE NO ARBITRAGE PRINCIPLE
Very, very rarely, someone is wrong on the internet. On Sunday that someone was Team USA “coach” Gregg Popovich. We stepped into the breach to correct this injustice:
Our brilliant take inspired a slightly less brilliant one from Simon:
It occurred to us that there may be those out there (surely not you, dear reader!) who would let such misguided sentiment pass by without comment. Could it be possible that US bookies offer terrible odds for betting on Team USA, to capitalize on misguided patriotism of US bettors, while international bookies are forced to acknowledge the deadly shot creation of French wing Nando De Colo with a more “fair,” less lopsided betting line?
Actually, no. It couldn’t. The no arbitrage principle from finance explains why.
Arbitrage is the action of making a riskless profit by taking advantage of different prices for the same asset. The no arbitrage principle explains that under certain conditions (e.g. free movement of capital), arbitrage opportunities don’t persist. If two securities are mispriced to offer a riskless profit, arbitrageurs step into the gap and correct such mispricing. Gaps may persist, but these are generally lower than the transaction costs incurred by attempting to capture them.
So how does this apply to betting? Bookies make money by taking bets on both sides such that the total implied odds of both outcomes is greater than 100%, and make money on the vig. In the above example, let’s say greedy US bookies only pay out 1:10 on a bet on Team USA. Any bookie offering such short odds on Team USA has to offer long odds on France. Why? Generally, the vig that bookies take is ~10% of the handle, so if Team USA has implied odds of 90%, France should have implied odds of ~20%, which requires a 5:1 payout on a France bet.
Competition between sportsbooks keeps the vig compressed. If your book has Team USA at 1:10 and France at 1:1 (implying a ~40% vig), the bookie down the street can steal your bettors by promising better odds—e.g. 1:9 on Team USA and 2:1 on France—while still locking in riskless profit by taking in enough money on both sides.
So if books can’t compete (much) on vig, why not compete on odds? Why not rip off stupid Americans who failed to heed STL’s warnings about Team USA’s roster construction? To use a finance term, you’d get your face ripped off.
Why? Well, as mentioned above, books need to take in at least some money on both sides in order to consistently make money: not necessarily 50/50 on both, but enough to keep sharps honest. If they offer terrible odds on one of the teams (say Team USA), they’ll have a lopsided book, with everyone avoiding their bad line. So unless you have a truly captive audience, you have to follow the herd, or risk your sports book becoming a ghost town. As sports books make money on volume, this is a losing proposition.
It might be tempting to think that this wouldn’t happen. But stories abound of the lengths bettors take to find and exploit bad lines! This one was our favorite from recent history:
So no, it wasn’t just US bookies who thought Team USA should have beaten France – it was everyone. Pop, what’s your excuse?
AT THE BUZZER
Kyrie Irving trashes the upcoming Kyrie 8 sneaker in the comments to an IG post. You can’t make this stuff up! (Instagram)
PJ Tucker shows up with the unreleased Giannis Freak 3 sneakers… before Giannis had even seen them. Also props for the pair he’s wearing bedazzled with $250,000 of diamonds (Streamable)
What is the median value of each draft pick? Worse than you’d expect (The Ringer)
Jonathan Givony’s final mock draft. Bones Hyland to the Knicks! (ESPN+, $)