SQ14 #63 Changing Times and the Picks That Morph with Them

When the league was young, there were less than two dozen teams dividing up the talent coming out of college each year,  There weren’t a whole lot fewer cagers entering the pool; and scouting was pretty limited, often consisting of only a phone call from an old coach, player, or acquaintance who dropped a hint to an GM or owner that he should take a look at this kid from Podunk U., or even Midsize U. on the other coast.  Also teams drafted for about a zillion rounds, so there was a lot of take-a-look later-round draft picks.  Initially later-round future picks had no trade value since teams kept picking until there were no more prospects.  And, of course, with only 17 teams at the start in 1949, the last pick in the second round was ostensibly the 34th best player coming out of college.

Researching this article, I found myself amazed that it was only in 1989 that the number of draft rounds was cut to two.  Very, very few deeper picks stayed in the NBA and certainly being a free agent was far more desirable than a 3rd or 5th round pick on a team who might have half a dozen players ahead of the draftee on the depth chart.  Still, even now with scouting a much more refined and mature profession, the odds are against a second round pick making much of a splash; it does happen, but seldom.

For some years now, second round draft picks have become a favored chip to sweeten trades in the NBA.  Now they are often the only asset being transferred on one side of the trade.  In recent years futures trading has become such a hot trend that the league has limited the distance into the future a first round pick may be committed.  In the last few years another trend has been to trade “protected” picks, both first round and second round.  Even more recently we have seen the “highly protected” pick has become a fashionable trade piece.  And now we see the actual partitioning of picks where a team will trade the same second round pick to three or more teams. 

Some of you old timers will remember days when you would go to school and find your mother had made you a lunch of yet another tuna fish sandwich, put in the last apple of the bag bought last week, and a real treat of a dessert was a fig newton wrapped in wax paper.  The positive glee with which you discovered a friend had peanut butter, his least favorite, a banana, and some nearly stale Oreos . . . yes!, thank goodness, a lunch swap where everybody is happier.  Imagine not just exchanging school lunches, but swapping off the parts.  The tuna sandwich to one kid for his peanut butter, the apple to another for his two peaches, and the fig newton to yet a third child for her M&M’s.

Well GM’s have become school kids on steroids.  Not satisfied with trading a second round pick, how about swapping off the pick in pieces, more and more pieces.  We’ve already seen a second round pick partitioned with “protections” into three pieces.  It can only be a matter of time until some enterprising general manager partitions his second round pick into 30 pieces (of silver?).  Then Adam Silver will come out and pronounce that he is “shocked to learn that team X is abusing the rules” and the owners will screw up a restriction that will undoubtedly penalize the non-abusers far more than the one offender.  And the parable of politics, and society, will replicate forever.

As Boston undergoes a massive remodeling, Ainge has accrued draft picks like dogs draw ticks.  This summer the wails to dump those picks to do this or that, most often to rid the team of Wallace’s contract (which ironically is source of how many of those picks landed in Danny’s quiver), grew even more strident and persistent.  Their line of reasoning seems to go something like:  we can’t use all those picks, we have to get rid of at least some, we need to do something, ergo, we need to dump the picks.  It just doesn’t seem productive to argue with such skewed logic, so I won’t try.

I will however note that those picks can be used to move up in the draft, draft and stash players overseas, sweeten trades, trade straight up for a player, balance unequal trades, or as in the most recent move with Cleveland, exchange improbable picks for actual ones (is this a twist on Alladin’s new lamps for old scam?)  Personally, I’m all for giving Trader Dan all the chips possible as he wheels and deals at the GM casino.

You wouldn’t believe how far afield I have wandered from the title with which this piece started.  Still, as I re-read it seems a mildly entertaining walkabout, so I’ll just re-title it and apologize for the lack of a definitive conclusion.  If you can shoot where you look, try to look where you shoot.

Only 1 more day until training camp Media Day Eve.
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