(The original article was published on October 12, and the author is Zach Kram, a special contributor of The Ringer. The content of the article does not represent the translator's views.)
Introduction: As the price of superstars soars like a rocket, draft pick swap qualifications have become an indispensable part of various trading plans. But when the agreed time comes, how many teams will really exchange draft picks? What about the level of players selected by those draft picks after being swapped? We already have the answer.
The price of getting a NBA superstar has never been as high as it is now. Not long ago, teams could get an All-Star player without paying any future draft picks or at most one. And now, every big deal has become a feast for draft picks.
But the way NBA teams trade draft picks is less creative. They cannot trade "conditional picks" like NFL teams. Due to the "Steping clause" introduced by the league in the 1980s, they cannot trade out all draft picks for two consecutive seasons. They can also trade draft picks for the next seven years at most.
So, as team general managers are investing more and more assets in the superstar trade while seeking some flexibility, they are increasingly turning to a method that can be explored: draft pick swaps. The trade of
Thick-Brow gave the Pelicans and Lakers to exchange for the 2023 first-round draft pick. The transaction of Paul George and the transaction of Zhu Holiday in gave Thunder two chances to swap future draft picks respectively. Harden 's trade left the Rockets with four possible draft pick swap qualifications. Just this summer, three more big deals involving draft pick swaps appeared: Spurs got a draft pick swap qualification in Dezhangtai Murray 's trade; Jazz got a draft pick swap qualification in Gobert 's trade, and then got two in Mitchell 's trade.
Here is a way to quantify the draft pick swap qualifications that are flying all over the league in an unprecedented way: this year is only 2022, but the first-round draft pick swap qualifications sent by each team since 2020 have exceeded any decade in the past.
Number of draft pick exchange qualifications sent in each decade
But, how valuable is a draft pick exchange qualification? To answer this question, we surveyed every first-round draft pick swap qualification in NBA history based on data from Pro Sports Transactions. We have recorded whether each swap qualification was used; if it was used, we also used it based on Kevin Pelton's calculation of the pick value as a benchmark to estimate how much value this swap qualification brings to the teams using it.
calculations show that draft pick swap qualifications are far less important than they seem. Historically, a first-round draft pick swap qualification is only about the same value as a No. 36 pick. This is worth repeating: the average value brought by a first-round pick swap qualification is only equivalent to a second-round pick! Some team managers also believe that within the league - even more so in the public's eyes - the draft pick swap qualifications included in the star trade are overvalued.
Celtic , which has qualified for draft pick swaps in the past decade, proves what the ideal result can be obtained by initiating such swaps. Nets in the 2016-17 season had the worst record in the league and got the No. 1 pick; the Celtics at that time had the best record in the East and got the No. 27 pick. But because the Celtics obtained draft pick swap qualifications from the transactions between Pierce and Garnett , which the two teams made four years ago, they were able to sign the Nets' No. 1 pick for themselves, and the Nets' draft pick slipped to 27th. Before the draft, the Celtics exchanged the No. 1 pick for a 3rd draw - that was obtained after the 76ers exchanged draft picks with the Kings, and used it to add another Tatum to the lineup that had just reached the Eastern Conference Finals.
Although such a result is a dream for any team that qualifies for draft pick swaps, it is far from the norm. Let's consider what happened after the first record-breaking deal that included draft pick swap qualifications. In October 1980, the Lakers, who had just won the championship, gave Portland the chance to swap the 1984 first-round draft picks, thus getting a big man named Jim Brewer who had been playing in the league for many years. To illustrate how people's assessment of the value of a deal has changed over time, let's take a look at the Los Angeles Times' comments on the deal at the time. The newspaper wrote that the Lakers hope Brewer can meet "their demand for a new backup center and power forward." To this day, this is like Bucks last season wanted to use a future draft pick to exchange qualifications to get Ibaka . Imagine what kind of sensation this will cause.
Even if Brewer averaged only 2.6 points per game in Los Angeles in the next two seasons, the Lakers would not regret giving the qualification to swap the first round draft pick. In 1984, they were better than the Trail Blazers , so they got the first round picks that were not as good as the Trail Blazers, so Portland did not choose to swap draft picks. (The Blazers instead used a second-last pick from the Lakers in previous trades.) The example of
shows a much more common result. As of the 2022 draft, only 12 of the 31 possible first-round draft pick swaps have come true. That means that 61% of the league's ever draft pick swap qualifications end up being worthless.
(Please note that three of the 19 unused draft picks are protected picks. A recent example is that Oklahoma City has obtained the qualification to swap the first round picks (top four picks protection) with the Rockets from the deal between Westbrook and Paul . But the Rockets signed well that year and got the second pick, so the Thunder could not use this swap qualification. However, even if those protected picks were eliminated, our final conclusion will basically not change. Pick protection is not the reason why the pick swap qualification is not very valuable in history.)
So, what about the twelve used swap qualifications? For those teams who can get better picks, many of them only bring a little value, such as turning the No. 20 into the No. 18, or turning the No. 17 into the No. 15, or turning the No. 26 into the No. 18. Some swaps—especially the Celtics and Nets—are of course much more valuable, but that's rare.
So in general, after taking into account the unused interchange qualifications and the ranking improvements brought by those used interchange qualifications, we can calculate that the average value created by a draft pick interchange qualification is approximately equivalent to a No. 36 pick. This is only 20% of the average value of a first-round draft pick. It can be seen how much value difference is between draft pick swap qualifications and an unprotected draft pick in the trade.
(Ken Clayton of Salt City Hoops recently examined a smaller sample and calculated that the average value of a draft pick swap qualification is about one-third of the average value of a first-round draft pick - better than what I showed, but still equally inconspicuous.)
has several factors that can help explain why draft pick swap qualifications often don't support teams' ambitions. First of all, it is worth emphasizing that draft pick exchange qualifications are often not used at all. Teams that give away draft picks to swap qualifications through trades are often very competitive, and those teams that get swap qualifications are often in the process of reconstruction, so it is more likely that the former will have a better record than the latter, and therefore the draft pick rankings will be lower than the latter.
For example, the Rockets have obtained some draft pick swap qualifications in the trade that sent Harden to the Nets, one of which was in 2021—the year when the deal took place. That summer, the Nets' draft pick was definitely not better than the Rockets' one.
Therefore, teams qualified for draft pick swaps will try to delay its application time through negotiations to a further future, that is, when they may have fallen from their current championship position. Utah's three draft pick swap qualifications this summer are in 2026 (from Minnesota), 2026 (from Cleveland ) and 2028 (from Cleveland). It is almost impossible to expect a team to be strong three years or more – less than half of the 50-win teams will be equally good three years later – so Utah may still enjoy another Nets/Celtic-like draft pick swap in the second half of the 1920s.
But even at that time, this kind of interchange is difficult to happen. A team is selected at random, and it has only 50% chance of getting a draft pick after a season is better than another team selected at random. So even in the best case scenario, the benefits a team can get from pick swap qualifications are almost always equal to zero in the long run.
Check out those swap qualifiers that will take effect next summer: In the 2023 draft, the Thunder can swap draft picks with the Clippers , which is unlikely. The Rockets can swap draft picks with the Nets, which is unlikely unless the Nets completely collapse or the Rockets perform very well. On the other hand, the pick swap between the Pelicans and the Lakers is more likely to happen.
In addition, even the interchange qualifications used are difficult to create huge value. This is because the influence of the first few picks in a draft is much greater than the rest. According to Pelton's draft form, the gap between the No. 1 pick and No. 5 pick is almost as big as the gap between the No. 5 and No. 30 picks. The gap between the No. 1 pick and No. 17 pick and No. 7 pick and No. 60 pick and No. 60 pick.
The value of first-round picks (based on Kevin Pelton's draft table, horizontal axis-draft picks, vertical axis-converted to values between 0 and 100)
Therefore, to collect real value from the draft picks exchange qualification, you have to exchange for the first few picks - this is a handful. Historically, only two teams have used their swap qualifications to upgrade their draft picks to the top five. One of them is the Celtics in 2017, who exchanged the No. 1 pick from the Nets. The other is the Supersonics in 1987. They exchanged the No. 18 sign to No. 5 sign and got a Hall of Fame player. That year, Knicks selected Mark Jackson with the No. 18 draw from the Supersonics. Supersonics used the No. 5 draw to select Pippen , and then sent him to Bulls , in exchange for some assets including future draft pick swap qualifications - also coincidentally.
Speaking of the third-influential draft pick swap in league history, the Knicks are also the loser. As part of the Eddie Curry deal, the Bulls exchanged the No. 9 draw from the Knicks in 2007 and finally selected the Jockin Noah , while the Knicks had to accept the No. 23 draw from the Bulls.
(Okay, there is another draft pick swap for the Knicks. The aftermath of the big deal of Anthony continued to the 2016 draft. At that time, Nuggets used draft swap qualifications and got the No. 7 pick from the Knicks, while the Knicks got the No. 9 pick. The expected value of the No. 7 pick and No. 9 pick is almost the same, so this is not a big problem. But the Nuggets chose html. l5 Murray , and the Knicks - well, the Knicks didn't choose anyone with the No. 9 pick because they still owe Toronto a 2016 first round pick in previous Andrea Banyani trades.)
However, based on Pelton's value calculation, only three of the 31 possible pick swaps so far this year have brought the team equivalent to or better than a No. 20 pick.
The last point worth remembering is that unlike most draft pick trades, teams that receive draft pick swap qualifications do not actually get one more draft pick. In the Kings-76ers pick swap in 2017, Philadelphia simply upgraded its No. 5 pick to No. 3 pick.As shown in the above table, the expected value difference between sign No. 3 and sign No. 5 is no more than a sign No. 30. No one should be too excited about getting something that is essentially the last pick in the first round.
So, if draft pick swaps are almost always mediocre, why are teams in rebuilding more and more pursuing it in recent seasons? Part of this is because the change is forced, as the price of getting stars from the trading market is soaring. In Mitchell's trade, Cavaliers agreed to send unprotected draft picks for 2025, 2027 and 2029 to Utah, but due to the Steeping clause mentioned above, they cannot send 2026 and 2028 draft picks as well. They can only provide the draft pick swap qualifications for the past two years.
However, team managers also believe that the league generally has too high valuation of draft pick swap qualifications because these qualities contain a hint of potential to improve the team's strength. A top data analyst compared draft pick swap qualifications to lotto draws themselves - any team that is bad may not get the No. 1 pick, but this does not affect their desire for No. 1 pick. If a team gets a bunch of draft pick swap qualifications—like the Rockets do in a big deal, or like the Jazz do in several deals—the chances of at least one of them becoming a high pick (as in the 2017 Celtics case) increase.
However, history has proven that the substantial increase in draft pick rankings caused by swaps depends on a series of coincidental superposition. As this decade of this century continues, teams may continue to send stars to get draft pick swap qualifications, but these swaps may not cause any storm before they are forgotten.
Original text: Zach Kram
Compilation: Asteroid Falling
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