In terms of competition, where does the French league that Wemby played in stack up as far as competition level? High Major D1, Mid Major D1, etc.?
2023 NBA Draft: Wem! Ban! Thank You Yam!
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So looks like Dallas’s decision to tank worked beautifully for them, at the meager cost of $750k. Considering that it was a second offense Silver’s light “penalty” now feels like implicit support.
It’s funny, the league supposedly cares about tanking so much that they reworked the postseason to include a play-in tournament, but when a team like Dallas blatantly engages in unapologetic tanking they do so without consequence. Silver should have taken away a first round pick -at least- as it’s clear that anything less isnt going to be effective.Teams like Brooklyn have good reason to be angry..
It’s funny, the league supposedly cares about tanking so much that they reworked the postseason to include a play-in tournament, but when a team like Dallas blatantly engages in unapologetic tanking they do so without consequence. Silver should have taken away a first round pick -at least- as it’s clear that anything less isnt going to be effective.Teams like Brooklyn have good reason to be angry..
There are some interesting New England basketball prospects that might be coming up in a few years. Some of you are probably aware of AJ Dynbantsa, a Brockton native who plays at St. Sebastian's in Needham, who is the #1 ranked played in the Class of 2026. The #2 recruit in the Class of 2025 is a guy named Cooper from Maine:
View: https://youtu.be/nVSg6MJgnow
View: https://youtu.be/nVSg6MJgnow
I have no issue with what DAL did. Teams tank every year. At least DAL made a run for it, then realized they had no chance. What about POR that threw in the towel in early March? Should they lose a pick? Or how about teams that trade away all their veterans in order to secure a better draft pick?
Yes, this is what the league incentivizes teams to do. If they don't want teams to tank, don't create immensely positive upsides for tanking.
I disagree in the sense that there are certain unwritten rules to tanking and DAL broke them. The one clear rule is.... the guys on the floor and the coach play to win, the front office builds the roster and manages injuries to lose. Dallas' coach came out and said that he made his in-game decisions with the intent of losing no matter what. If DAL just sat Luka and some other starters people would be annoyed, but less upset than them actively trying to lose on the court, the general acceptance of tanking was based on managing your roster not throwing games on the court.
So what's the difference between that game and this famous junk-off from the last game of 2021 in which Daniel Oturu played 38 minutes for the Clippers? https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/202105160OKC.html
Is it just that Jason Kidd didn't gaslight the public and tell them that he wanted to get some rest for his guys? Teams do this all the time - the Trailblazers have mastered it in recent years, to the point of signing bad G League players to lose games. I don't get why the Dallas thing is uniquely breaking an "unwritten rule."
My point wasn't that they rested guys, it's that in-game they started benching guys (not just Luka) when it looked like they might win in the 3rd quarter, they didn't do basic stuff you do to try and win with the guys who were eligible to play. There is a difference between setting up a game so that you are unlikely to win, and going into a game and actively making moves in game to reduce they chance you win.
What is that difference, though? Why is it worse to sit guys for one half vs. an entire game? It's not self-evidently true to me. In the game I link to, Serge Ibaka and Patrick Beverly only played 18 minutes - Reggie Jackson with a tight 7 - while Jay Scrubb got 36, Oturu 38, Patrick Patterson 42, and Yogi Ferrell 27 (total NBA games played by that group since: 23). That seems to me like Clippers were very much intentionally trying to lose that game with a combination of bad starting lineup plus worse in-game management.
With all due respect, that’s not what Dallas did, they threw basketball games. There’s a difference between trying to win with the available players and taking your regular backups out of the game because they’re playing too well and replacing them with the 11-14 guys.
How did Dallas "make a run for it"? They could have made the playoffs up to the last day of the season when they decided to quit, no?
This keeps being repeated as gospel - a "difference" - but it doesn't track at all. Why is one better than the other? How is one throwing a basketball game and the other is not? I hate to defend Dallas, but it's no different than what the Clippers have done to get "better" playoff seeding in recent years, or the Blazers to tank, etc. I mean, people we're annoyed that the Clippers tried to do too much to win their last game of the season this year! Here's Bob Voulgaris saying that they should've lost on purpose to go into the play-in matches instead of playing the Suns: View: https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1645165765396680706
This is endemic to the NBA in 2023. Losing on purpose is a feature, not a bug.
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I don't have a perfect answer - I'm sure @Conigliaro's Potential would be able to speak better to it - but I'll give you what indicators I've found.
This website is really insightful as to what salaries players make in leagues beyond the NBA, I learned a lot from it:
https://www.josecolorado.com/overseas-basketball-salaries
He's done a ton of first-hand research and built a lot of relationships with league execs and agents around the world (having played abroad a lot first); his main business is advising NCAA players as to where they'd be well served to look for a pro bball job after college if they're not NBA material.
Top of the pyramid is Spain's league (ACB) and the rest of the EuroLeague-grade teams around Europe, who can pay an average of like $1-2M for a starter and median-roster salary of ~$500k, and whose teams wouldn't embarrass themselves on the court against an NBA team. Right behind them is the Chinese league, which pays more (median more like $1M), and has a lot of washed-up NBA veterans playing there, but not quite the same depth of talent.
But take a look at the rosters of some of these top European teams, and see the former NBAers there:
- Real Madrid (Mario Hezonja, Rudy Fernandez, Anthony Randolph, Sergio Rodriguez, Vincent Sexpants Poirier, etc)
- Barcelona (Nikola Mirotic, highest-paid overseas player at $5.4M, Jan Vesely, Tomas Satoransky, Alex Abrines)
- Anadolu Efes in Turkey (Shane Larkin, 2nd-highest paid player in Europe; old friend Ante Zizic, nobody else had more than a cup of coffee in the NBA)
- Panathinaikos in Greece (Derrick Williams, Nate Wolters, Georgios Papagiannis, Georgios Kalaitzakis, Matt Thomas)
- Olympiacos in Greece (Isaian Canaan, Kostas Papanikolaou, Joel Bolomboy, Tarik Black)
Those are all players who played for multiple years in the NBA, often on multiple teams. These are the legendary clubs of Europe, that can pay the most, at the very top of which (RM / Barca), the team salaries are about 1/3 of the NBA salary cap and most of whom are more like 1/6 to 1/4*. Few of these guys were good in the NBA, basically none of them are good enough to hack it in the NBA now.
- Larkin would've been end-of-bench for the Celtics; in Istanbul, he's a superstar.
- Dominique Wilkins went from the NBA at age 34 to Panathinaikos at 35 (where the club treated him like crap), back to the Spurs at 36.
- Byron Scott went from the Lakers to Panathinaikos at age 36 for the last year of his playing career.
- Luka Doncic, at age 18, was the best player in Europe and absolutely dominated the EuroLeague for Real Madrid (for whom he had debuted at 16), blowing teams away in the Final Four that year despite giving up a lot of "Grown man strength" to his mid-career opposition. He of course won NBA ROTY, and was All-NBA 1st Team by his second season.
- Nemanja Bjelica was 27 and playing for EuroLeague team Fenerbahce in Istanbul when the NBA called him, he played 7 seasons here and then returned to Fenerbahce at 34.
So the very best players in Europe are probably peripheral NBA players, and some of them have just chosen to remain domestic and never really pursued the NBA, but usually when the NBA calls, these guys pick up the phone right quick. Lots of EuroLeague teams have former D1 NCAAers who just couldn't crack an NBA roster and made a career for themselves abroad. Likewise, the CBA in China takes guys like Jeremy Lin who can't stay in the NBA anymore, and they're usually stars in the CBA. Lin went to China in 2019, came back in 2021 to the Warriors' G-League affiliate (aged 32), couldn't hack it, and returned to China.
After you get past Spain (and top Euro teams) and China, the next tier down is the rest of the "good" European leagues, median salaries $150-300k. Turkey and Russia are a half-step above Italy, Israel, Germany, and Greece. Throw in Japan and Australia and you've covered the top-11 overseas leagues in terms of what talent they can pay for. At some point in that spectrum, you go from "teams who would definitely whup a G-League squad" to "teams who would consistently lose to a G-league team".
Welp, France is a tier below that, with middle-50% of reported salaries being $80-170k. The country has 2 teams in the EuroLeague, and the highest reported salary in it is $300k. So while it's hard to compare college-aged players to mid-career pros, it seems like they probably end up with NCAA D-1 level players who are mid-major level with occasional Power 5, albeit players who are now veteran pros who fought to have a pro ball career anywhere they could get it. ASVEL, the top team, is run by Tony Parker and coached by his brother, while Nick Batum is the GM; it has players from USC, Florida, Ohio State, Alabama, MS ST, Tennessee, and one NBA veteran (Joffrey Lauvergne). They've won the league the last few years, usually over the other EuroLeague team, Monaco, which has one legit NBA vet (Donatas Motiejūnas) and some D1 representation (Alabama, UC Davis, Furman, Clemson, Providence, Lamar, High Point, plus some NBA 2nd-rounders who washed out). Those teams dominate the league.
Wemby's team, the Metropolitans, are run by team president Boris Diaw and are only a little behind those 2 EuroLeague teams in quality. Their roster includes grads of Michigan, Michigan State (NBA 2-way), NM State, Oklahoma, Florida, LSU (Tre Waters, our old friend and #51 pick!), and another NBA second-rounder who didn't make it. Behind Wemby this season (who was just announced as League MVP), the Metropolitans went up to 2nd in the standings and are now in the playoffs. Last year they also finished 3rd (Wembanyama was playing for ASVEL, but opted out after the season over differences with Tony Parker), and prior to that finished 6th and 4th. Meanwhile, a consistently mid-table team in the French league - say, Nanterre - has a roster represented by grads from Rutgers, Long Beach State, Detroit Mercy, LSU, and Miami, with no NBA experience on it but a few who used to play for EuroLeague clubs. So that's the average level of competition Wemby was facing. Probably sub G-League level, but better than mid-major NCAA opposition.
Jose Colorado also makes clear that the only players who walk into six-figure salaries in Europe are those coming from high-major NCAA programs, those leaving the NBA, or who have been playing at a G-league or two-way deal sort of level. Everyone else has to grind on middle class wages for years before they get a six-figure deal.
* note: EU athlete salaries are often reported net-of-taxes, so use the white numbers on that tweet, the "gross" player / coach budget, for apples-to-apples to NBA salaries.
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They made a huge trade at the deadline hoping it would vault them into contention. When that didn’t work they decided to go the draft route. They absolutely made a run for it.
Could they not have made the playoffs on the last day and they decided to quit?
Wow, thanks for this digest. Where does Taiwan fall in the rankings? Dwight Howard seems to be enjoying his time there?
Luke Doncic didn't really dominate in his time at Real Madrid. I mean, for a teenager he did, but he was putting up 13/5/5 on terrible shooting. He did a little better in the Euroleague tournament, but still was only at 16/5/4 with still terrible shooting.
Worth noting that those mediocre numbers were good enough for him to win the euroleague MVP in 2018, which is insane given his age. I don't know how much of it was just hype, but while those numbers in the NBA would mean he's just an average starter, they were a lot more in Europe.
*checks more thoroughly*
Google says 7'2". So does B-Ref (218cm).
Wiki says 7'3" (221cm).
Yahoo says 7'4". So do RealGM and EuroBasket (224cm).
Tankathon says 7'5". So does ESPN.
So, uh, it seems you could be forgiven for having a different impression of that number than the guy next to you. But there's one article that tries to clear all this up:
That article is itself a pretty good story about Wemby, from back in February.
Also, Wembanyama has a current teammate with a surname hilarious to middle school boys, and a backstory that's even more interesting than that.
They could not have. They were eliminated with their loss in game 81.
Dallas played all out through game 80, which they won.
The next night, OKC beat Utah to go a half game up on Dallas for the last playoff spot(everyone else had clinched).
OKC had the tiebreaker over Dallas, so Dallas could only get into the playoffs by winning their last two games and OKC losing at home to the Memphis backups.
Dallas, figuring that was unlikely(they were correct OKC won that game), decided to shut it down and protect their pick rather than risk losing that pick for the smallish chance OKC would lose.
As it ends up, Dallas could've went balls out, won both games, and still missed the playoffs.
It looked awful optically, but it changed nothing.
And I'm in agreement with some folks above, as long as the NBA rewards tanking, I have no issues with teams tanking to prioritize the long term view over the short term.
More Wembanyama hagiography, if you like human-interest pieces.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/37708936/wembanyama-farewell-france-nba-draft-2023
I very much prefer to believe the article is correct about the French treating him like he's French, because any casual observer of France would probably agree that France has an issue with their black population and treating them like not-fully-French. Nowhere is that mentioned in the article, which is mostly about his nostalgia for the comforts and familiarities of home. I hope Victor's personality and his obvious love of his country help fight against those undercurrents.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/37708936/wembanyama-farewell-france-nba-draft-2023
I very much prefer to believe the article is correct about the French treating him like he's French, because any casual observer of France would probably agree that France has an issue with their black population and treating them like not-fully-French. Nowhere is that mentioned in the article, which is mostly about his nostalgia for the comforts and familiarities of home. I hope Victor's personality and his obvious love of his country help fight against those undercurrents.
Coleman Hawkins decided to go back to college. He would have been interesting for the Celtics at 35.
Looking now, you are hoping that Trayce Jackson-Davis falls to you at 35. Otherwise using the pick to stash Nnajl or Vukcekic would makes sense with the new apron especially if you end up keeping Grant.
Looking now, you are hoping that Trayce Jackson-Davis falls to you at 35. Otherwise using the pick to stash Nnajl or Vukcekic would makes sense with the new apron especially if you end up keeping Grant.
Like, what does that even mean, bet on himself, though? Ok, you declined to be drafted this year, but you still need a year more of development - how is that more "betting on yourself" than training elsewhere for a year? What about G League Ignite (rather than an NBA team's G League team itself), or Overtime Elite? The NBL is fine but I'm not sure it's any better a league than playing in a bunch of places in Europe. Just seems like weird framing to me.
I know Overtime Elite will have 2 top 10 picks this year, but the most common comment on those is how abysmal the level of competition they played against was. No idea what the future looks like without the Thompson twins. I guess they do have a potential first rounder from Spain coming in
In terms of Ignite, that is a very crowded situation there. They have 2 wings projected in the top 5 next draft. I guess if you are saying you are betting on yourself, you could bet on yourself to outplay a couple other lottery picks. Honestly it is too early for me to say on G-League guys, there have been some successes, but at the same time, outside the absolute elite guys, it hasn't been great for players.
I assume the NBL team pretty much sold him on a big role on the team, etc.
yeah, like, you could argue that it's "betting on yourself" to go ahead and be drafted as a second rounder and fight your way into being a rotational NBA player, once you're in a position where an NBA team is invested in your development. That that's better than going out and rolling the dice that some other development program or team is going to do better for you in terms of getting you a career as an NBA player.
G League players are paid better than all but the top 2-3 leagues in Europe. If you get drafted as a second rounder and put there, you've got good coaching and are NBA-adjacent. Going and playing in Cairns Queensland, might as well be the moon. I guess that city is the "gateway to the great barrier reef", maybe he's super into scuba diving. But otherwise that decision doesn't look like what I'd consider "betting on oneself".
G League players are paid better than all but the top 2-3 leagues in Europe. If you get drafted as a second rounder and put there, you've got good coaching and are NBA-adjacent. Going and playing in Cairns Queensland, might as well be the moon. I guess that city is the "gateway to the great barrier reef", maybe he's super into scuba diving. But otherwise that decision doesn't look like what I'd consider "betting on oneself".
Unless overseas salaries to American players have crashed since Covid I don't believe this is accurate at all. Ex-Celtic summer leaguer Nick Fazekas was playing in Japan's B-League and making nearly $500k annually. Americans get paid good money overseas especially if they have being an NBA draft pick or any NBA service time on their resume. A good friend I played with long ago was making todays G-League money playing in a low level league in Ireland back in the 90's and he was far from an NBA prospect.
Yeah I'm pretty sure high level ball in Europe pays more than a typical G League deal. The G League offers certain opportunities related to the NBA for younger prospects with NBA dreams, but I think Europe offers more money.
Didn't Shane Larkin turn down an NBA offer from the Celtics to go back to Turkey a few years ago?
Didn't Shane Larkin turn down an NBA offer from the Celtics to go back to Turkey a few years ago?
I think Scoot got a 1/2 million dollar deal. Almost all G league players make like 40K a year though
Some SOSHer, much smarter than I, proposed what I thought was a brilliant solution: draft order is determined, among non-lottery teams, by the order of most wins secured after the trade deadline. Effective on so many levels.
Except that it penalizes teams that suffer injuries to stars. But I do like the creativity of the idea.
I think Exhibit 10 guys get like an additional 50-50k on top of that. The Bewley brothers bypassed school to make $500k each with Overtime Elite this year but these are the outliers.
But if you think about it, maybe that’s not a bad thing??? David Robinson gets hurt for a year and the Spurs get Duncan…
It also punishes legitimately bad teams, I guess the theory is less incentive to be really bad.
Biggest problem is do you want the scenario you would have had this year which is the Bulls playing in the final play in game where a win and they go to the playoffs, and a lose and they get Wemby.
You could base the lottery order, or at least the ping pong ball odds, on each team's record after a randomly chosen number of games between 65 and 82. If it turns out to be game 75, for example, let teams know as soon as everyone has passed that threshold, so teams close to the play-in have incentive to play hard and maybe no incentive to tank any more. I'm not sure this is a good idea, and any randomness added to the process adds fuel to conspiracy theories.
He said only for the non-lottery teams. I.e. the playoff team draft order.
I'm not sure that solves the problem really well - there's only about 25-30 games after the trade deadline - and it would create some unfairness at the top, the value diff between picking #16 and #30 is steep, this would make the rich richer, etc.
I'm not sure that solves the problem really well - there's only about 25-30 games after the trade deadline - and it would create some unfairness at the top, the value diff between picking #16 and #30 is steep, this would make the rich richer, etc.
OK sorry missed that part. That confuses me more because it seems the playoff team draft order is not really a concern for the league. Why should the 72 win GS team pick 15 spots ahead of some mediocre team who played poorly at the end of the year for whatever reason.
Agreed.
The tanking problem has historically been only in one place: the bottom feeders hoping to get the #1 pick. The lottery was designed to solve or at least mitigate that issue. I think for these teams, you could maaaaaybe segment them at the trade deadline, and say "okay, you guys are picking 1-5, you guys will be 6-10, and the play-in losers will be 11-14. For each subgroup, those who have the most wins between now and the end of the season will pick earlier than the others". So then you'd have tanking to get into that top group, and no possibility remaining of someone floating up from the 6-10 group to get a top pick. But those bottom 5 teams would fight like hell to win games in order to get a top pick. Could be fun! Would definitely be messy.
But what the Dallas situation has shown is a different, and novel, situation: non-bottom-feeders, deciding that not making the playoffs is a better play than making the playoffs. That's a bit weird to me. Don't teams get a lot of money, even just for participating in the play-in games? Why would Dallas calculate that their long-term interests are better served by tanking for what is likely the #11-14 pick? And, are there lots of teams on the bubble of playoff participation (clearly not contenders, but also not bad teams) that are a risk to calculate similarly? I'm not sure if they're weird or the start of a trend.
The tanking problem has historically been only in one place: the bottom feeders hoping to get the #1 pick. The lottery was designed to solve or at least mitigate that issue. I think for these teams, you could maaaaaybe segment them at the trade deadline, and say "okay, you guys are picking 1-5, you guys will be 6-10, and the play-in losers will be 11-14. For each subgroup, those who have the most wins between now and the end of the season will pick earlier than the others". So then you'd have tanking to get into that top group, and no possibility remaining of someone floating up from the 6-10 group to get a top pick. But those bottom 5 teams would fight like hell to win games in order to get a top pick. Could be fun! Would definitely be messy.
But what the Dallas situation has shown is a different, and novel, situation: non-bottom-feeders, deciding that not making the playoffs is a better play than making the playoffs. That's a bit weird to me. Don't teams get a lot of money, even just for participating in the play-in games? Why would Dallas calculate that their long-term interests are better served by tanking for what is likely the #11-14 pick? And, are there lots of teams on the bubble of playoff participation (clearly not contenders, but also not bad teams) that are a risk to calculate similarly? I'm not sure if they're weird or the start of a trend.
It's weird. The 11-14 pick is not generally more of an impact guy than the #17 pick or whatever they would have gotten. Sure you can find studs at any spot, but the average WAR of the #12 pick isn't very material.
The Dallas situation was something of an anomaly because they would lose their pick to New York by making the play-in, so the cost-benefit analysis was not the delta in pick spots, but having versus not having a pick at all, especially because they are asset poor.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but who will be? My guess is Amen Thompson, but he's got some developing to do.
Because of injuries? Hard to imagine him not being the best unless it is because of injuries. And of course the injuries are certainly a possibility.
I have been puzzled back to last year's draft why the injury concerns for Wemby and Holmgren are viewed so differently. I totally get Wemby has shown more and more diverse skills - but injury-wise to me they each present a historically large risk and I heard a ton last year and very little this year about that.
of course, Holmgren then proved the concerns valid so maybe it is as simple as "different people different bodies"
But to me, the biggest concern with Wemby is that guys with that body type have a pretty scary long-term track record....his best comp is Sampson, right? That still means he may well be best in the class, but I very much get the long-term/durability concerns.
of course, Holmgren then proved the concerns valid so maybe it is as simple as "different people different bodies"
But to me, the biggest concern with Wemby is that guys with that body type have a pretty scary long-term track record....his best comp is Sampson, right? That still means he may well be best in the class, but I very much get the long-term/durability concerns.