Basketball’s ‘Draft Lottery’ is a smokescreen.

Every year the NBA makes a TV event out of their lottery to
decide who picks first in the draft. However, when the draft itself comes
around, teams have a better idea of what they are getting than in perhaps any
other sport. Analysts agree that the odds of finding a marquee talent are
minimal when you get beyond the first half of the first round.

Just take a look at the draft position of these notable
basketball Hall of Famers who make the NBA’s all-time top 50 list, plus current
stars:

LeBron James: 1^st round, 1^st overall

Dwight Howard: 1^st round, 1^st overall

Kobe Bryant: 1^st round, 13^th overall

Magic Johnson: 1^st round, 1^st overall

Michael Jordan: 1^st round, 3^rd overall

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 1^st round, 1^st
overall

Julius Erving: 1^st round, 12^th overall

Oscar Robertson: 1^st round, 1^st
overall

Bill Russell: 1^st round, 2^nd overall

Notice a pattern?

The NBA draft is the most predictable in American
professional sports, both in terms of who teams will take, and the success they
will have with them.

Compare that to baseball – the least predictable in both respects, with a sampling of the greatest
Hall of Famer and current players since the draft was instituted in 1965,
according to a 1999 list compiled by The
Sporting News:

Albert Pujols: 13^th round, 402^nd
overall

Alex Rodriguez: 1^st round, 1^st overall

Barry Bonds: 1^st round, 6^th overall

Greg Maddux: 2^nd round, 31^st overall

Johnny Bench: 2^nd round, 36^th overall

Mike Schmidt: 2^nd round, 30^th overall

Tony Gwynn: 3^rd round, 58^th overall

Rickey Henderson: 4^th round

Reggie Jackson: 1^st round, 2^nd overall

Roger Clemens: 1^st round, 19^th overall

What does this all mean? Several things:

a.)   Raw
physical skills alone will get you further, quicker, in basketball than
baseball, where complicated motor skills take many years to develop and
perfect.

b.)  Basketball’s
draft system is more likely to produce parity in the league than baseball, as
the worst teams are much more able to draft a ‘can’t-miss’ prospect than their
baseball counterparts. Witness the Pittsburgh Pirates’ epic run of futility in
recent years. Their last Hall of Famer was Roberto Clemente (d.1972), their
last winning season was 1992 (not coincidentally, that was the last year they
had Barry Bonds), and their best effort at a winning record since then was 1997
when they finished two games under .500. 

Consider also that their two
number one overall draft picks in that time, Kris Benson and Bryan Bullington
are, in turn, staggeringly mediocre and a gigantic bust.

c.)   Baseball
rewards the rich teams who invest millions of dollars on academies in central
America and the Caribbean, as players from outside the USA are not subject to
the draft system. Only a spending cap or an expansion of the draft system are
going to change that, and neither suggestion are ever likely to be accepted by
the teams.

d.)  Baseball
scouts should earn way more than their basketball counterparts, as it’s quite
clearly a more difficult job. Either that or baseball teams should operate a
draft-by-roulette policy to ensure they take human error out of the equation
and abandon scouting altogether.

All that said, not everything in basketball can be predicted
by draft order. For example, do you think the Portland Trailblazers have
forgiven themselves for drafting Sam Bowie at no.2 overall in 1984, ahead of a
certain Michael Jeffrey Jordan?

Me neither.