> Except, for how the Warriors even "lucked" into Steph Curry during the draft. It's because David Kahn of the Timberwolves drafted both Johnny Flynn and Ricky Rubio two spots ahead of Curry.
Sports leagues are zero-sum games. Being smarter than the competition is the point, and in this case the competition was stupid. In an American sports league, the highest draft picks go to the worst-performing teams, who are generally the dumbest teams.
The temptation, as exhibited by your Kahn examples, is to go for crazy home-run picks that fit your mental model of superstars. The Warriors instead took the best basketball player available even though it would take him a few years to get to this level.
> Sports leagues are zero-sum games.
Sorry you're going to have to explain this. Otherwise I don't really know what this means. If Golden State "gains" a Curry, who "loses" a Curry here? When teams trade a player due to money factors rather than the player's skill factors, do they "lose" or "gain" against the other team?
The draft is a huge crapshoot IMO and no one has been able to consistently pick out winners year over year. And no one really knows for certain who will actually do well in the NBA until they actually step on the floor.
To say the Warriors knew anything about how Curry would mature would be false. Also considering the narrative for Curry at the time (undersized, can't handle the NBA's size, not really a point guard), I would say Curry was a "gamble" pick.
A zero-sum game is one in which when you do better, someone else does worse. Which is to say, it's not like the economy, where both of us can get richer at the same time, but for Golden State to improve, someone else has to get worse.
When teams trade, they might both improve, but it will be at the expense of the other teams in the league.
When Golden State "gained" Curry at the draft, the team picking behind them "lost" the opportunity to take Curry.
> I would say Curry was a "gamble" pick.
I don't understand how to reconcile this with saying that the Warriors were lucky Minnesota blew their picks and he fell to them.
Sports leagues are zero-sum games. Being smarter than the competition is the point, and in this case the competition was stupid. In an American sports league, the highest draft picks go to the worst-performing teams, who are generally the dumbest teams.
The temptation, as exhibited by your Kahn examples, is to go for crazy home-run picks that fit your mental model of superstars. The Warriors instead took the best basketball player available even though it would take him a few years to get to this level.