Inside the draft: A top-three pick is pretty much a must if you want to win a title
When the Philadelphia 76ers make the first pick in Thursday night’s NBA draft, it will be seen by some cultish fans as vindication of the team’s years-long strategy of being very, very bad in order to eventually become very, very good.
The 76ers represent the most brazen version of a strategy long embraced by struggling NBA franchises: Lose a lot of games and secure one of the top picks in the draft in order to maximize the odds of landing a game-changing superstar. The tanking strategy, led by a general manager, Sam Hinkie, who resigned in April, has irritated a lot of people and inspired a lot of mockery.
But a contingent of Sixers fans, and some other admirers of the strategy, contend that Philadelphia had been stuck in mediocrity for a decade: a treadmill team too good to get a top pick but not good enough to make meaningful noise in the playoffs.
They believe a demolition would allow the team to draft a superstar who would be unlikely to sign with Philadelphia in free agency and that time spent in the middle is simply a waste. (Full disclosure: I am one of those cultish Sixers fans.)
An analysis of championship teams since 2000 suggests the Sixers may not be totally crazy. Almost every team that has made the NBA final in that span has had a player selected in the top three of the draft and most of them had someone who was picked first overall.
Sure, it’s possible your team could sign a top-three player or acquire one in a trade, but most teams struggle to attract top players if they’re in a less-desirable market or don’t already have a core of talent in place. For most teams, the surest way to acquire a superstar is to draft one.
Of 17 championship teams since 2000:
12 teams had a player selected with the No. 1 pick.
14 teams had a player selected with a top-two pick.
16 teams had a player selected with a top-three pick.
What about the teams that lost in the finals? The numbers are similar:
11 teams had a player selected with the No. 1 pick.
15 teams had a player selected with a top-two pick.
16 teams had a player selected with a top-three pick.
The list of players picked in the top three holds many of the franchise cornerstones who have dominated the NBA, including LeBron James, Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal.