Good rookies are vital

Except it doesn't change the fact that every lottery team in the West last season had at least one "newbie" on their team. I'm willing to bet every lottery team in the East had at least one as well.

Heck, I'll go out on a limb and say 90% of all teams in the NBA since its inception has had at least one player who played "significant" minutes before his third year in the league.

 

I'm not sure how you are interpreting the data you're looking at but think about this. What year was Rudy Gay drafted? If the Grizz win the next NBA Finals, what year will it be?

 

It doesn't, unless I missed somebody.

1997-1998 Lakers (Year 1, no siginficant rookie)
http://basketballreference.com/teams/teamyear.htm?tm=LAL&lg=n&yr=1997
1998-1999 Lakers (Year 2, no significant rookie)
http://basketballreference.com/teams/teamyear.htm?tm=LAL&lg=n&yr=1998
1999-2000 Lakers (year 3, no significant rookie)
http://basketballreference.com/teams/teamyear.htm?tm=LAL&lg=n&yr=1999
2000-2001 Lakers (year 4, Championship)
http://basketballreference.com/teams/teamyear.htm?tm=LAL&lg=n&yr=2000

 

Terse... winning a championship is a rare event (only 1 team a year gets to claim this) and having no rookies play 1000 minutes in a 3 year period is also a rare event (look at your previous posts to convince yourself of this). The fact that these 2 rare events have never (or infrequently) overlap doesn't mean they are tightly associated and it's probably more just a demonstration of their rareness.

Here's one to think about: no championship team has ever started a Chinese center or a Canadian point guard; what would you conclude about this? (nothing, I hope...)

I think your point that healthy franchises generally draft well over the long term is true and doesn't require any data "analysis", but playing a rookie at least 1000 mintues in a 3 year period probably isn't a prerequesite to winning a championship for a _particular_ year.

 

could this also be said about this forum?

 

I just don't see what's so shocking about this proposition.

Rookies give you a good opportunity to get talent for less than it's worth. Most free agents have a more representative sample size for their body of work, so it's harder to underpay for them. A good team maximizes value - that includes exploiting all avenues of getting good players.

Of course, I'd also wager than you could find a correllation between "key" veteran additions and winning.

 

You mean, the first championship if they win multiple ones?

 

Yeah, but as I said before the same also holds true for the "no Chinese starting centers" condition too and that doesn't much mean much either.

Here's something for you to consider: Per your work, the champion each year has never satsified your 1000 minute rookie drought for the previous 3 years. I'll bet that this is nearly true for the 2nd place teams, and the 3rd, and the 4th, and the 5th, etc... In fact, I'll bet if you look it up that you'll find that at least 90% of the teams at each particular spot (all the 2nd place teams for the last 60 years, etc...) also fail to meet the no significant rookie condition.

Lastly, I'll go out on a limb and predict that like the champs, 100% of the worst teams in the league for the last 60 years didn't satisfy this condition either (that one seems like it should be true because teams that totally tank are more likely to play rookies...)

Look Terse, you'll get no argument from me that trying to develop players is critical to a succesful team, but defining a rigorous condition that separates champions from non-champions isn't really that useful if almost all of the time everyone else is doing it too...

 

I'm sure drafting a contributing rookie within the last 3 years, whether that guy is your superstar (Kobe) or semi-important role player (Okur) helps with your chances. But we can also say the same about other positive things happening to a team like "No team has won a championship without trading for a significant veteran contributor within the last 3 years of the championship run".. and then conclude "Trading for veterans is vita!"

Basically all your theory said was that when teams make good moves, they tend to have a better chance of winning.

 

Good analysis and all but at times changes has to be made. So for the Rox, team has to find players that understands the coach and that compliments greatly with star players. So far most of the rookies such as Bookie, Francis n mobley has not taken the Rox to higher level and barely made playoffs.

Its all about team chemistry and winning, if either of it is missing then there will always be changes to be made to make it work.

 

No team has ever won a championship if they start a PF that eventually goes on to score 20,000+ points, grab 10,000+ rebounds, and dish 4,000+ assists. This occured 35 times since 1983. Whatever the Rockets do, they must not get one of those again.