Don't let the title of this post fool you. I like basketball. When the Celtics were in the finals just a couple weeks ago, I wore my Kevin Garnett jersey and my "Banner 17" shirt for a week straight. I get pumped up for a clutch 3 as much as anyone, and I love playing a pickup game at the park, though I'm not any good. And like everyone else who follows the game, I'm eagerly awaiting word on which of the top free agents in this year's class ends up where.
But it's far from my favorite sport, and the previous sentence is one of the reasons why. I am a big fan of the team-building side of sports, as anyone who has read my writing knows. While it has its flaws in retrospect, and the shine is off the Billy Beane "rose" (As he apparently is just obsessed with soccer now, to the detriment of the A's), I am a fan of Moneyball, and follow the salaries, minor leagues and feeder leagues of all sports avidly. Unfortunately for my liking, there are a few things about the structure of basketball, both in-game, and out of it, that conspire together to make the team-building aspect of the game not as interesting.
The main reason is that individual players have an enormous impact on the outcomes of games. This is pretty self-explanatory, but allow me to illustrate it a bit. Each team has 5 players on the floor at any one time, and there are 48 minutes in regulation. So there's 240 minutes to distribute in each basketball game, and the best players, besides power forwards and centers, play near 40 a night, and more in important or close games and the playoffs (Monta Ellis of Golden State led the league with 41.4 minutes per game, and Kobe Bryant was at 38.8 per game). So that's at least 15% of a team's total available "team minutes" being taken by one player, far more than any other sport. This point is intuitive, but I'll spell it out for effect. Applying this same formula to other sports we get:
Hockey: 5 positions (besides goalie) * 60 minutes per game = 300 "team minutes." Hockey has the same number of positions as basketball, but players need much more rest during a game. The best defensemen play around 25 minutes per game, and maybe up close to 30 in the playoffs, or 10% of their "team minutes." Top forwards play around 20 minutes.
Soccer: 10 outfield positions * 90 minutes = 900 "team minutes." No one can go over 11% of their team minutes in a game, by the rules, unless someone is red carded (which of course puts their team at a disadvantage).
Football: This is a little tricky, as time of possession isn't always the same for each team, but there are 11 players on the field and 60 minutes in a game, so there's 660 team minutes to go around. A player isn't likely to see more than 40 minutes or so on the field, or around 6% of his team minutes, but the quarterback almost always handles the ball, so I'm willing to buy the argument that he's as important to his team as any basketball player -- but only for half the game.
Baseball: Baseball of course doesn't have a clock, but each offensive player wouldn't get any more than 1/9th of his team's at-bats, and the most active fielders (the shortstop) are only involved in 4 or 5 plays per game, or around 16%. But considering that they share those plays with the first baseman and the pitcher, their share of the contribution is certainly less than the 15% given by most basketball players. Starting pitchers have a great impact on a game, but they can only pitch every 5th game, so their impact is lessened. Possibly most importantly, the players must bat in a set order, and can only field when balls are hit to them, so no one knows who will have the chance to win the game in its most important moments. How many games have teams lost with their "fearsome slugger standing in the on-deck circle?"
Basketball, on the other hand, not only depends greatly upon individuals in my invented stat of "team minutes," but also, in "clutch" moments, you can choose who to have handle the ball, take important shots, and defend the other team's star player. Therefore, one player can have a much greater impact in basketball than in any other major sport.
Because of the importance of one player, great players dominate the sport. It is very rare for a team to win a championship without having one of the top 5 players in the league (and usually another of the top 20). The 2004 Pistons were an exception to this, and the 2008 Celtics may be (though they probably had 3 of the top 20 and some crucial role players). But generally, if you have a player who is one of the five best in the game, you have a good chance to win a bunch of games even if you just surround him with average players (see James, LeBron). If you can give him another top player, preferably a player who plays a position opposite his (see Gasol, Pau and Bryant, Kobe, or Jordan and Pippen, or Shaq and Bryant, or Shaq and Wade), you're going to be very tough to beat in the playoffs.
So, building a good basketball team is mostly about having a top 5 player. And how do you get a top 5 player? Mainly by being a really bad team and winning the draft lottery. It's not too often that a player like Rajon Rondo (who isn't even a top 5 player, at least not yet -- and can't win a championship by himself unless he develops better shooting touch) falls all the way to a pick in the 20s and then is discovered by a team and develops into a star. For the most part, teams know who the stars in each draft are going to be and they don't fall much lower than 4 or 5 overall.
Or, you can get a top 5 player in the free agent market, as many teams are trying to do currently. There's two problems I have with this. First, it's boring to follow. We as fans have no idea what the players are thinking, what the teams are saying or where anyone will be until it happens. Second, you have to gut your team for years to open up the space for one of these free agents. The Knicks, Nets, Bulls have held off on making moves that could help them in the hopes of signing a top player this year, and that's not good for competition.
Once LeBron, Bosh, and Wade sign we will know which NBA teams are going to be good next year. If two of them go to one team, they will probably be the favorite to win it all. There's no drafting a player in the 62nd round as a favor and having him turn out to be the second-best hitting catcher ever. There's no demoting a struggling player, having him master a pitch in the minors and keep his confidence level high, and become one of the best pitchers in the league. There's no players who go undrafted and win Defensive Player of the Year. It's unfair to say basketball doesn't require skill in scouting and drafting, but there certainly aren't as many gems to be had by teams who can see through the knocks on players as there are in other sports.
Sure, teams can certainly be helped by players who are undervalued and drafted late. The Celtics are a great example of this, with Glen Davis and Leon Powe, who were both drafted in the second round, playing crucial roles off their bench, or the aforementioned Rondo. But Davis and Powe aren't starters, and it wasn't just his stubbornness that made Rondo fall in the draft -- he's also a poor shooter, and likely always will be.
I don't know that there's a better way to set up the NBA. The lottery works well to discourage teams from tanking and the salary cap does encourage player movement and parity (though the various "levels" of cap are confusing and encourage salary dump trades, which are disappointing). I think as long as one player can have such a huge impact on the game, teams are going to luck into great players, or teams are going to tank for a few years as their whole focus is opening salary cap space in a player's crucial free agent year. Maybe at some future time when either there are 10-20 players as good as Kobe, LeBron and Wade teams will have to do more than sign one of them to win, but I don't see the talent level being that high anytime soon. Until there are radical changes in the way teams build and rebuild, basketball will trail the other sports in my world.
*photo courtesy of Cody Mulcahy via Creative Commons License
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