Victim of Their Own Success

The Pistons may be a victim of their own success. For all the talk about coaching and chemistry, talent is the biggest determinant of success. Teams with a superstar – or better yet, multiple superstars – have a major step up on the competition.

The problem for the Pistons is that most superstars are claimed at the top of the draft. Three of the NBA’s top-five teams – the Magic, Spurs, and Cavaliers – are built around players who they drafted first overall. Among the eight NBA teams with at least 31 wins this season, five have a player whom they selected with the top pick. Among the top-26 NBA players in PER, nearly all of them were high drafts picks.



Of the 26 players leading the NBA in PER, only nine were selected later than sixth in the draft. Of those nine players, four are foreign players, three of whom (Nowitzki, Parker, and Ginobili) were drafted at a time when NBA teams were generally undervaluing foreign prospects.

Among those 26 players, 17 are still with their original teams. Two others (Garnett, Jefferson) are only no longer with their original teams because they were traded for each other. O’Neal and Boozer both used free agency to leave teams that would have preferred to keep them. That leaves Pau Gasol and Devin Harris as the only members of the league’s top-21 players, based on PER, who were traded away in a deal that did not net another top-21 player. Not surprisingly, there was outrage over the Gasol deal, while the Harris deal was a miscalculation by Dallas.

In order to nab a star, a team’s best bet is to lose enough games to earn a high lottery pick. Occasionally a team can strike gold with a later pick; however the odds of succeeding in that regard are poor. There are alternative methods to building a contender – such as developing castoffs like Chauncey Billups and Ben Wallace into stars – but this tactic fails far more often than not. Of the past 25 NBA Champions, the best player on every single one of those teams was a player drafted in the top-5 (Bird, Magic, Isiah, Jordan, Olajuwon, Duncan, O’Neal, Billups, Wade, and Garnett).

As a result of the Pistons’ recent success, they have been drafting in the wrong half of the first round far too often to find a superstar. They were handed a gift from the basketball gods when a 1997 trade gave the Pistons the second overall pick in the 2003 draft; however Joe Dumars made a rare blunder and botched the opportunity by selecting Darko Milicic. The Milicic pick was the only top-14 pick the Pistons have had in the past seven drafts.

The trade for Allen Iverson will be worth every loss if Dumars is able to use the resulting cap flexibility to land a superstar. If not, the Pistons will likely have to enter the league’s basement if they ever hope to return to its penthouse.