The Denver Nuggets are the blueprint for small market team-building
By Max Carlin
While there’s widespread fear that NBA Draft Lottery reform represents the death of small market contention, the Denver Nuggets serve as proof that there’s so much more to team building than intentionally losing.
In what was widely perceived as yet another crushing blow to small market teams, the NBA Board of Governors recently approved reforms to the NBA Draft Lottery system. Under the new rules, the league’s very worst teams — the tankers — have lessened odds at the draft’s coveted top picks.
The draft is unique in that it does not discriminate against small market teams. Players have no agency in the draft, no say in where they end up. Once you draft a guy, he’s stuck with you for, practically speaking, nine years.
The draft affords teams an immense amount of power, something that small market teams aren’t used to. When small market teams smell blood, when they get the sense they can finally seize some power, they pounce.
This yearning for power has created a reliance on tanking, or intentionally being as bad as possible to earn the most favorable lottery odds, thereby increasing the chances at a top pick, and thus, the superstar talent needed to win in the NBA.
The most egregious recent offenders (Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers) make the NBA look bad, and the NBA, above all, does not want to look bad.
And that is why you have lottery reform. The idea is that the incentive for losing has been decreased to the point where teams will perform the cost-benefit analysis of intentionally losing and find that giving it the old college try is more beneficial.
But what if tanking isn’t necessary in the first place?
For the last few years, the Denver Nuggets have been consistently mediocre. They’ve finished in the draft lottery each of the last four years (trading back in 2014 and 2017), but they haven’t been one of the ignominious tankers—they haven’t needed to.
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In the 2014 NBA Draft, the Nuggets traded down from the 11th pick for the 16th and 19th overall picks from Chicago. The move proved to be a stroke of genius, as Chicago paid a hefty price for the privilege of drafting Doug McDermott, who’s now on his third team in the last year.
Meanwhile, Denver selected Jusuf Nurkic 16th and the recently-extended Gary Harris 19th. Nurkic’s time in Denver was marked by high highs and low lows, and he now finds himself thriving with the division rival Portland Trailblazers, but Harris is still in Denver, and has blossomed into an absolute gem of a player and crucial piece of the future.
The real prize in 2014 was Nikola Jokic. Selected 41st overall, Jokic is one of the brightest young stars in the league; his shoulders will carry the Nuggets to greatness.
In 2015, the Nuggets failed to uncover any gold, missing badly on Emmanuel Mudiay with the seventh pick, but they returned to their resourceful ways in 2016. Seemingly, they finally hit on an early pick in Jamal Murray (seventh), but the selection of Juancho Hernangomez with the 15th pick is far more impressive.
In a draft that was considered historically weak, the Nuggets hit with the 15th pick. Bravo.
The Nuggets haven’t had the most valuable picks, the ones that are theoretically necessary to build a contender, yet they have one of the most talent-rich and promising young rosters in the NBA.
How? Economics.
The Nuggets discovered inefficiencies. They realized that the NBA was not paying close enough attention to Europe (not even the Spurs, who have built a dynasty on plucking internationals from every corner of the world). They realized that taking shots on multiple guys in the late teens was far more valuable than reaching for one guy in the late lottery.
Ultimately, that’s all that team-building really is: finding inefficiencies. When former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie organized the most overt systematic losing scheme in NBA history, he was capitalizing on an inefficiency. Teams were not valuing lottery odds — the chances at the most valuable assets in basketball — highly enough.
NBA front offices are run by smart people, but they’re not infallible. Inefficiencies always exist. Opportunity is always out there if you can outthink your opponents.
Next: 30 reasons to be excited for the 2017-18 NBA season
The Nuggets are the blueprint. They’ve shown that a small market team, provided it’s smart and considers all the possible avenues for improvement, can build a winner — regardless of ping pong balls.