NBA GM's on the NBA Draft

Source: NBC

The economic principle I’m exploring is Because of scarcity, people choose. All choices have an opportunity cost. My research question to help me study the economic principle is How do NBA owners and GM’s make decisions on acquiring players.  The article Think Teams Have Gotten Smarter in The NBA Draft? Think Again, published in the Chicago Tribune ” demonstrates this economic principle by showing that the player must be a good fit on the team, showing the process of evaluating such young players and their potential future, and showing the high gambles of picking players in the draft.

 Similar to my last blog post, the player must be a good fit on the team. The NBA draft is not meant to be pick the best players in order. The fit is huge for the success of the team. As Mark Selig says, “it's rarely so easy as taking the best available player. Teams must consider how well he'll fit into a system, whether he fills a need and if he can help immediately.” Let’s say a team already has a phenomenal point guard like kyrie irving. Just because say the next most talented player is a guard does not mean that that team will select that guard. They need to select someone of a different position so they will make the biggest impact.

 Second, GM’s must go through the difficult process of evaluating if the player has potential to succeed in the NBA. "Some processes, some futures, are just impossible to predict," said Cade Massey, a professor at Penn. Some of these players in the draft are only 18 and are still developing and are inconsistent. A way that helps GM’s make the best decision is scouting. They review hours of film to see if the player is good enough to be effective in the NBA. Mark Selig states that besides film, scouts will also use the NBA combine and take a player of interest through private workouts to test them physically and mentally. Predicting the success of a player in the future is tough, which leads me to my next point.

 Every team has a limited number and scarcity of draft picks so they must make their picks effectively. The term effectively, however, is used differently in NBA GM’s minds. GM’s tend to pick the high risk players that can either have a very high chance of being elite, but also a high chance of being a bust. As counter intuitive as it sounds, they tend to stay away from the players that will be a consistent product for years. As Bobby Marks puts it, former executive for the Nets, “Were looking for that home run pick that can keep you employed for a long time.” Because if a GM makes a poor average decision, there’s a chance they will be fired. When your swinging for the fences, the chance you hit the ball isn’t always high, but when you do hit it, it’s golden. So, GM’s will usually take the high gamble when acquiring draft picks. But, there’s another strategy that I will talk about in my next blog post.


 In my next blog post I will research how GM’s using tanking to their advantage.