Tag Archives: Los Angeles Lakers

Everyone’s wrong but me.

Yup. It’s true. Everyone’s wrong but me.  That’s why the number of people who read this blog has increased from 3 people to 4 people.  Because I’m really crushing it over here.  Cru shing it.

As the kids say… HOLLA! (The kids still say that, right?)

Back to the matter at hand.

To be clear, it’s not that other people are wrong about everything and I’m right about everything. If that were the case, I’d probably have more than 4 readers, and maybe even an advertiser or 2.

It’s just that other people are wrong about one particular thing, and it’s an important thing.  So, congrats to all 4 of you – you’re about to learn something that nobody else knows!

Every time I hear people speculate about which free agents are going where, I hear some version of this argument: “Big markets don’t have an advantage over small markets. Superstars can play in Oklahoma City and still make the same money they’d make in bigger markets, like New York or L.A.”  The “thinking” behind this argument – to the extent that “thinking” is the proper way to describe it – is that with the explosion of social media, and the easy access to NBA games for fans across the country, there’s no difference between being in a tiny market and a huge market, when measuring the earning potential of star free agents.

Certainly, social media and the easy access to NBA games for fans across the country have reduced the advantage big markets have over small markets, in terms of advertising money a star player can make.  But, here’s the thing that only I – and now the 4 of you – seem to realize…

Since this fundamental change in the social media / cable television landscape, the extent to which superstars have been in small markets, as opposed to big markets, is a statistical fluke.  If this statistical fluke ever corrects itself, and superstars wind up in big markets at least as often as we’d expect them to if they were randomly assigned to teams, I think there’s a whole new level of popularity the game can reach.  It follows that there’s a whole new level of advertising dollars available to star players, if those star players begin gravitating to big markets rather than small markets.

To dig into that a bit, let’s look at data from the previous 5 seasons.  The classifications of “big market” teams and “small market” teams can be a bit fluid.  For purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on both the population of the city in which the team plays, and also the team’s historical pedigree.  So, even if Phoenix and Philadelphia have close to the same population, let’s say that the Sixers’ history over generations – with long-time fans of many ages, as well as more fans dispersed across the country –  makes them more of a “big market” team with an established fan base than the Suns. The Sixers had Wilt, and the Suns had Larry Nance.  With all due respect to Larry Nance, Wilt’s numbers were much more impressive. (I’m talking about his numbers ON the court. What were you thinking about?)

From there, it’s not so controversial to say we’ll look at these four teams as our big market teams: Knicks (largest city), Lakers (2nd largest city), Bulls (3rd largest city), and Sixers (6th largest city), and we’ll look at these five teams as our small market teams: Cavaliers (51st largest city), Thunder (27th, with only a few years in OKC), Blazers (26th largest city), and Grizzlies (25th largest city, with a pedigree of being an expansion team which was born during the 1990’s in Vancouver, and subsequently moved to Memphis).  This is not an exact classification of the 4 biggest market teams and the 4 smallest market teams, but it’s probably quite close, and it allows for a discussion that isn’t skewed by the overwhelming recent success of the Warriors and Spurs – neither of which is a clear “big market” or “small market” team. [Population statistics here, if you don’t believe me.]

How have those teams done during the previous 5 playoffs?

Knicks: won 0 playoff series

Sixers: won 1 playoff series, in ‘18.

Bulls: won 1 playoff series, in ‘15

Lakers: won 0 playoff series

Cavaliers: won 3 in ‘18, 3 in ‘17, 4 in ‘16, 3 in ’15 – total of 13

Thunder: won 2 in ‘16, and 2 in ’14 – total of 4

Blazers: won 1 in ‘16, and 1 in ’14 – total of 2

Grizzlies: won 1 in ‘15. [Last 5 playoff brackets available here, if you don’t believe me: ’18, ‘17, ‘16, ’15, ’14.]

That’s a total of 2 playoff wins in the past 5 seasons for the big-market teams and 20 playoff wins in the past 5 seasons for the small-market teams.  The Cavaliers skew the numbers, but even if we drop them and also the “winningest” big-market team from the discussion, that’s 1 win for the big guys and 7 for the little guys.

The point is simple: playoff wins recently have been heavily skewed towards small market teams. If talent was randomly assigned each year to the 30 teams, the big-market teams would have done much better over the previous 5 years than they actually did. So, when people tell you that “because of social media, a player can be as popular in OKC as in NY,” they don’t know what they’re talking about.  We can’t know that to be true until we see the Knicks and Lakers start winning as much as the Thunder and Cavs have been winning.  I humbly submit that if Russ and PG were on the Knicks instead of the Thunder, they’d be selling a whole lot more sneakers, and they’d be much more valuable to Nike than they have been so far. By being more valuable to Nike, they would get paid more by Nike, and, just like that, would be making more money in a big market than they were able to make in a small market.  Ya know – the thing everyone else says doesn’t happen.

So, in conclusion… Mr. Durant, sir… If you happen to be reading this blog post, please take notice!  There’s a whole new level to your popularity that hasn’t been tapped into yet.  If you come to New York, you can help your legacy, raise your profile, elevate the popularity of your league, and make a whole lot more money than you can make anywhere else.

I can’t quite guarantee it, but I assure that all 4 readers of this blog will be more than happy to buy themselves new KD sneakers if you come to NY. Just give us a chance to show you!

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Stop Banking on Tanking

Ask yourselves, Knick fans, how good would this team be?

  1. Andrew Wiggins
  2. Jabari Parker
  3. Karl-Anthony Towns
  4. D’Angelo Russell
  5. Ben Simmons
  6. Brandon Ingram
  7. Markelle Fultz
  8. Lonzo Ball
  9. Deandre Ayton
  10. Marvin Bagley

I submit that they’d be very good but not great.  We don’t have to use too much imagination to figure it out, because some current NBA teams have more than 1 of those players. The Wolves, for example, have Towns and Wiggins.  With Towns and Wiggins, the Wolves are out of the playoffs.  Let’s stipulate that Simmons and Russell would be an upgrade over Rose and Teague, and that having Deandre Ayton coming off the bench would be a major talent upgrade.  How much of an upgrade? I’d say enough to bump them from being out of the playoffs, to a middle-tier playoff team, behind Golden State, Houston, Denver, and OKC.

Uh, Kraver, why are you talking to Knicks fans about a random group of 10 players who will never be on an NBA team together, let alone the Knicks?

I’m glad you asked.

That group of 10 players is not random at all.  It represents the top 2 picks in each of the previous 5 drafts. In other words, if a team somehow “succeeded” at tanking so magnificently – tanking better than any team has ever done anything in the history of teams doing a variety of things – that it found a way to get the top 2 picks in 5 straight drafts, this is the group of players it would have wound up with.

So, let’s keep going.

How good is that group of ten? (I’m putting aside issues of “fit” and judging by the talent.)

The Lakers also have two of those players: Ball and Ingram. They’re the 8 seed, at the moment.  Nobody on the list above approaches LeBron James, and it’s not clear that anyone is much better than Kyle Kuzma.  But let’s say the collective upgrade in talent would bump the Lakers into the first tier out West, still behind Golden State and possibly others.

Lastly, the Sixers have two of those players: Simmons and Fultz. They’re currently a 4 seed. Nobody else on the list above is better than Embiid or Jimmy Butler. The cumulative collection of 8 players probably represents a talent upgrade over the best 8 players on the Sixers’ current roster along with Simmons and Fultz, but it’s not a major upgrade.  They’d still be around the same team.

Got that?  If some team had managed to tank at an impossibly “successful” level, and somehow figured out a way to get the top 2 picks in each of the last 5 drafts, it wouldn’t have a championship team.

Thus, I respectfully submit that the various Knicks fans whom I hear rooting against their beloved ‘Bockers are misplacing their energy.  Tanking is no guarantee of anything – at least not anything good.  If you try to lose, the only guarantee is that you’ll lose. If you want to win, then I respectfully submit it’s worth trying to win.

Granted, I don’t have a secret formula that can make the Knicks good.  Let’s be realistic.  It’s a 30-team league, so if your team wins one championship every 15 years, it’s ahead of the curve. And lots of the other teams are run by competent folks, not to mention that they’re starting with more talent on the roster than the Knicks have. I’m just a dude with a blog that only 3 people read, and I don’t claim to have the secret formula for success for the Knicks.

Plus, I recognize that turning this ship around won’t be easy.  The Knicks are 10-33 as of this writing.  I’m not suggesting they should trade young players and draft picks for veterans, in the hope of running off a 23-game winning streak just to get back to .500.

What I’m suggesting is that losing is not a great path to greatness. The Knicks are 102-187 since the start of the 2015-16 season. I respectfully submit to all my “pro-tanking” friends that the problem with the Knicks isn’t that they’ve been winning too many games recently.   If you think they haven’t been bad enough for long enough yet, then we’ll agree to disagree. For the rest of this season, I don’t suggest that they move mountains to pick up a few extra wins.  But, longer term, if you still find yourself rooting for losses at this time next year, I think you’re pursuing the wrong strategy.  While I don’t claim to know the secret formula for success, what I do claim to know is that championship teams win much more than they lose. The more you lose, the further away you are. If your team is trying to lose, it’s foreclosing some of the only options for improvement. If you’re  bad, you’re unlikely to land a star free agent, because the best generally look for good teams to join. And, if you’re bad, you’re largely out of the trade market for an impactful player, because impactful players hardly ever get traded for draft picks. So, if you’re bad, your only reasonable hope to get better is to do it through the draft. And that rarely works. (See the list of ten players, above.)

In sum… Wanna win? Then start winning.

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